Douglas Athas had a long list of things he hoped to accomplish as mayor, a list with more things to do than anyone could complete in one term, or even two. He would like to have the opportunity to accomplish more by remaining in office for a third term.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in four years,” he said. “And we have so many exciting things going on.”
He said that one of the major problems he was determined to solve was that downtown wasn’t “legal” and now it is. He added that if downtown had burned down before he was mayor it couldn’t have been built back like it was, but now it can. Existing building codes would have prohibited rebuilding it as it was for several reasons including the distance from the building facades to the streets and inadequate parking area.
Another accomplishment is that LBJ Freeway improvements have been repositioned to the top of the priority list. Athas said that he is confident that the money for the improvements will be available but said that the challenge will be whether the money can be obtained as quickly as it is needed in order to avoid disruptions to the businesses in the improvement area.
He pointed out that Interstate 30 improvements took so long that many businesses were lost and those that relocated during construction would obviously not return after they were established in new locations.
“I’m most proud of changing the model for GP&L and TMPA and our investments there where by 2018 we were going to be in such a bad situation with untold costs coming,” Athas said. “We solved that with the last legislative session. We also took on the water district to try to get a better business model for its operation.”
He also mentioned small accomplishments such as Garland being close to getting a dog park and that the city will soon have a skate park. The length of time that it took to get these things accomplished, however, has been frustrating for Athas.
“Sometimes our past slows us down,” Athas said. “Sometimes it’s the fact that we haven’t changed our attitudes. We haven’t updated ourselves in different ways that we need to.”
He added that there are a lot of things that the city has done very well on and should be proud of but it’s time to “move it up another notch.”
Garland started off as a town but It is a city now that is bound to 57 square miles.
“We cannot stop growing. We can’t be stagnant,” he said. “You’ve got to constantly be growing, maturing and investing and attracting new people.”
Garland is a city with an extraordinary amount of assets.
Athas said that the “Texas Made Here,” is meaningful and that Garland does have numerous people and companies with the capability of making things. He also said that a large number of Garland residents invest in the community by volunteering in various ways.
“We’ve got so many things that make our community unique and I celebrate all of those things, but I mostly celebrate the diversity of our city,” Athas said. “The school district says that 114 languages are spoken in the homes of our students.”
He added that Brown University reported that Garland has the most racially integrated neighborhoods in Texas and the fifth most integrated in the country.
“In that diversity, we live peacefully and cooperatively,” Athas said. “There are so many different flavors in our community to experience and I think people really do like that.”