Meeting Immediate Needs and Delivering Long Term Solutions

Central Texans are leading the way during the pandemic. Our public officials must follow their example.

Every day, I see Central Texans doing their part to defeat COVID-19. I’ve never been more grateful to the communities I’m honored to serve.

The longstanding stewardship of our churches, food banks, and shelters has been augmented by thousands of citizens helping those most vulnerable and in need. This is all good work. This is all humbling work. This is all awe-inspiring. By donating, volunteering with discretion, and sheltering at home, Central Texans showed that the health and safety of our community is one of our most important values. My family and I thank everyone who has committed to serve, protect, and support one another.

As we make our way through this crisis, taking every opportunity to refresh relationships with family, faith, and community, the focus must not only be on rebuilding, but rebuilding better. That will require regional leadership with the proven ability to listen and collaborate, shepherd vision to reality, and deliver a fresh perspective and optimism to all communities.

With each step we take toward meeting the immediate crisis, we must recommit to ensuring all Central Texans are positioned to benefit from our region’s still strong potential. That all voices are welcome and will help guide us to a stronger future. That all citizens and towns have a stake in delivering solutions to the challenges we face.

To emerge from this crisis, we need leaders who can overcome generations of physical and cultural barriers and long-standing regional expectations of have and have not.

As our citizens, businesses, and churches work together to meet the immediate needs of our communities, we also need to keep our eye on the other side of the pandemic, anticipating the needs of a renewed, revitalized, and refocused future for all Central Texans.

Today’s work needs to be augmented with an ongoing review of the problems Central Texas has faced for years and will continue to face when we emerge from this crisis.

Below is my list of the issues that need to be addressed in the next decade to deliver sustained economic security for the next generation of Central Texans.

• Workforce readiness and education funding
• Homelessness and its causes
• Public safety and social equity
• Healthcare funding
• Mobility, density, and gentrification
• Sustainability and natural resource conservation

What are your priorities?

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Rudy Metayer currently sits on the Pflugerville City Council, CAMPO, and the Austin Bar Association. He is the son of Haitian immigrants, a proud Central Texan, graduate of UT Law School and LBJ School of Public Policy, and a happy husband and father of three girls.