COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Timothy Delasandro, a Navy veteran and Aggie, has chosen to run for a County Commissioner position for the second time in his career.
Delasandro is a candidate for the Precinct 4 County Commissioner's seat and is running against Wanda Watson.
We caught up with Delasandro at The Brew Coffeehouse in College Station where he said that he wants to make lowering taxes his priority.
Question:
"You mentioned your wife was from the Brazos Valley area. What connects you to the Brazos Valley area?"
Answer:
"So, I'm from Texas. I graduated high school from Livingston, Texas and went into the Navy. I spent four years in the Navy and two years in the Reserves and during that time I went to nursing school. My first job was at the VA in San Antonio, I worked there for two years. Those are all Texas ties, generally. In 1995 I moved from San Antonio to the Brazos Valley and started going to Texas A&M. I graduated from Texas A&M in 1998, loved the area, and I stayed."
Question:
"You said you ran for office before. Can you explain to me what you ran for?"
Answer:
"I ran for County Commissioner four years ago and the reason I ran before, and the reason I'm running now, is because this is an amazing time for Brazos County. There's a lot of future growth growing and the decisions that we make today as a county will have a profound impact on our future in the next decade or two to come."
Question:
"Despite what happened last time, what makes you keep wanting that drive to serve?"
Answer:
"Well because I want to make a difference. There's a key point here when it comes to making a difference is to keep property taxes low. Right now there's three votes to raise property taxes, significantly more than the current budget needs and there's two votes against. That's what the current controversy on the court is. Precinct 4 is one of the votes for. You have a real opportunity in Brazos County right now to change one of those swing votes."
Question:
"Are there any missteps that have been made on the county level that you would want to improve on if you were elected?"
Answer:
"Yes, I mean some of the budgeting issues. I think we should keep property taxes as low as we can. The only way we're going to do that is focusing on our core services such as our roads, our court systems, and our law enforcement officers. So, I think that's where the focus of Brazos County's funding should be. We haven't seen a whole lot of that focus so it's seen like the county has gotten off track some.... I want to talk specifically about property taxes. The county plans to spend $377 million dollars on their proposed budget this year. They have $80.4 million in unrestricted funds, which means they've collected $80 million dollars more than is currently allocated. We need to peg our taxpayers to what the actual budget is."
Question:
"What have you seen over the past decade in Brazos County that you'd want to improve on?"
Answer:
"We've had a lot of growth in the past decade and maybe we haven't kept up with the infrastructure. We need to handle that growth such as our law enforcement and court systems. One of the things I've seen in the last decade is a dramatic needs in mental health needs in Brazos County. Instead of increasing our mental health capacity, it's gone down because the only in-patient mental health facility, Rock Prairie Behavioral Health, closed a few years ago. So, I've seen an increase in needs in that area that haven't been met."
Question:
"There are several nonprofits that are trying to assist in mental health in that area. Do you think that there needs to be more county-level action committed to that?"
Answer:
"Yes. For example, the American Resource Plan Act (ARPA Act) in COVID gave the county $50 million to spend on COVID relief. Part of that COVID relief could include core infrastructure. The county is planning on spending that on a medical examiner's office, but I think spending that on a mental health facility for Brazos County would meet a much more immediate need for the citizens of Brazos County, right now.
If you'd like to learn more about Delasandro, you can visit his campaign page here.