Mayor's Corner - February 23, 2021

Dear Citizens,

We at City Hall are hopeful that you and your families and neighbors are well and warm. It seems impossible that our community and the entire state of Texas suffered from an unprecedented winter storm. The widespread outages of electric power and the resulting loss of water for over four days locally, was a severe threat to lives and the wellbeing of our fellow citizens.

In response, I declared a State of Disaster and will ask Council to extend the Declaration at a Special Meeting Wednesday, February 24, 2021 at 2:00 p.m.

While still in the battle to turn the corner on the Covid Pandemic, we are also turning our attention to the Woodcreek Snovid Disaster.  In the aftermath, we are committed to reviewing and investigating the underlying circumstances of the outages and, more importantly for our city, attention to consideration of what's next. We will be seeking FEMA assistance and other emergency funding.

The upcoming Special City Council meeting will offer our citizens the opportunity to provide public comments for council discussion. Together, we will work for winning solutions. 

It is the Woodcreek Way.

This brings us to the acknowledgement of the awesome community spirit alive and well in our little city. Your City Hall personnel and their families worked under extraordinary circumstances to provide official information promptly as received from our utility providers. We were able to utilize our new website, e-blast and text resources to better inform of news updates. We reached out to social media, as well, in an attempt to reach a greater number of residents. 

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Aurora Le Brun. Thank you, City Manager Brenton Lewis; City Secretary Linda Land; Administrative Assist. Maureen Mele.

Special recognition to Councilmembers Aurora LeBrun, Judy Brizendine, Bob Hambrick and Jeff Rasco for going those extra miles to implement the spirit of our new city Neighbor to Neighbor Program. Each took their time to reach out to neighbors in need, and inform city staff, in order to help follow up with the utility providers. In a make-do situation, the council members, along with staff, forged a customer service function to work with the utilities. This was an unseen performance and not to be overlooked. Each of these named council members also went door to door to provide door hangers with essential information about city resources: DURING the SNOVID. Councilmembers also distributed drinking water at city hall.

Before memories are lost, we give a shout out to our local Aqua Texas Team for tireless hours spent restoring service and for providing drinking water. 

Thanks goes to Lon Shell and his team for Hays County emergency drinking water. 

Cody Abney and Pat Rawlings, members of the Parks and Recreation Board, each have assisted in an exemplary manner. 

Finally, we must say we are blessed to have a core volunteer group of citizens, too many to name here, but they are unsung heroes and invaluable. 

We are grateful for ALL those who took time to reach out to neighbors.

Rest assured, Woodcreekers, we will turn the corner soon. We have survived Covid-2020 and Snovid-2021. 

We will continue striving for excellence and will continue our Woodcreek Winning Ways.

My Best and Blessings, 

Mayor Gloria Whitehead