On March 25, 2025, the Richardson Area Democrats (RAD) hosted an online forum for Richardson mayoral candidates. The forum also included Place 6 candidates and RISD District 2 trustee candidates, but here I focus only on the mayoral candidates. You can watch it on YouTube yourself (the mayoral portion is short) or you can read my takeaways here. I recommend you do both.
Despite the raggedness in how the forum was moderated (a dry run could have made things much smoother), I applaud RAD for organizing this event in a non-partisan manner.
Mayor Bob Dubey and former Councilmember Amir Omar participated. It was stated that Alan North, the third candidate on the ballot, was invited but declined to participate.
Q. Do you support single-member districts?
Amir Omar answered no. "I think if you have a city that has considerably more differences, large swaths that are just very, very different from the others, [then] I think there you might look at single member districts, but in Richardson, I haven't seen that to be the case...What I love about the way that we do things today is that every single council person can feel accountable to the entire city so that we're making the best choices for the city at large versus just our little segment of the city."
Bob Dubey answered no. "We have solved the problem with our culture issues, with our community engagement and inclusion commission...I don't want something that would be divisive to the council."
Mark Steger: Omar isn't against single-member districts in all cases, but he doesn't see a need for them in Richardson. Dubey goes farther and says single-member districts can be divisive. That's confusing cause and effect. Single-member districts don't cause division. They highlight underlying divisions and bring them out in the open for deliberation on the Council dais. That's a good thing in a democracy. As for Dubey's assertion that "We have solved the problem with our culture issues with our community engagement and inclusion commission," if he really believes that, he's only fooling himself. A powerless advisory commission is not a solution. At best it's a means to understanding the problem. The solution comes from making changes to how we run elections. Like, for example, switching to single-member districts.
Q. There has been a lot of frustration across the city over the last couple years with the number of street projects going on and the amount of time they linger in construction...What can you as Mayor do to mitigate that?
Amir Omar: "First and foremost, I say kudos to Richardson and Richardson leadership. The leaders, over the last number of years, have really emphasized infrastructure and making sure that we're constantly making sure that our streets and alleys are trying to keep up with any kind of deterioration. Where I do think that there's room for improvement, is making sure that we're communicating in a much clearer way with our neighborhoods."
Bob Dubey: "Speaking specifically about Canyon Creek, that was a debacle as far as time goes, the city knows that. We know that there was a company and some management that were fired over that. The bottom line is we reacted appropriately. We have incentivized the next projects in such a way where [if] they get through earlier, they make a little bit more more. If they drag it out, they're going to pay us money. So we've got a solution to it."
Mark Steger: Give Dubey credit for admitting to a debacle. I don't recall hearing such openness before. But note that he pins the fault on an external company. Also give Dubey credit for citing an actual process improvement made to prevent recurrence. I don't recall hearing Dubey suggesting many of those, either. But also note that Dubey did not recognize any shortcoming in communications, a continuing problem Omar highlighted.
Q. What do you see as the most important aspect of the Mayor's role in working with the City Council?
Bob Dubey: "I run a council meeting where [councilmembers] are free to speak, give their expertise, talk about it, and then I don't tell them they're right or they're wrong. I listen because I want to build a consensus."
Amir Omar: "I don't know that the goal as mayor, from my perspective, is to reach a consensus each and every vote. I think it's important that we allow and make sure that every single councilmember feels like it's okay to vote against something if there's five others that are voting for it. And so I'm going to be the kind of Mayor that's going to make sure that each person's voice is heard, but I'm also going to not be shy about weighing in on my own decisions, because that's also a part of leadership."
Mark Steger: There clearly is a difference in management style revealed here. I see Dubey as trying to avoid disagreements, even by remaining neutral ("I don't tell them they're right or wrong"). In my opinion, the purpose of deliberation is to surface the disagreements, not avoid them. Even if someone has to play devil's advocate to make sure all angles to an issue are explored, that's what should be done. I personally side with Omar's more proactive approach in fostering thorough deliberations.
Q. Many people in Richardson see our Main Street/Downtown project as not meeting objectives like walkability, infrastructure and destination businesses & restaurants. What will you do was mayor to get us back on track and make sure we stick to our urban redevelopment plans?
Bob Dubey: "We have a master plan. We have a Comprehensive Plan. We have all types of plans, and the Envision Richardson is in place. But back in 2015 the council at that time, they said, we want to redo downtown. The council came together. They said the integrity of Main Street, the frontage of Main Street, they wanted to keep, they wanted to keep McKinney Avenue."
Amir Omar: "There's, there's this thing called the Richardson Way. Mayors for years have talked about it. It's to plan your work and work your plan. If you want to put one major reason why I've decided to run for mayor, it's because I don't see that Richardson Way being held up anymore. You can look no further than downtown Richardson or Interurban, both of which had specific plans and both of which ended up in 4-3 votes, where the mayor went against the plan and doing exactly the opposite."
Mark Steger: Dubey threw a fat pitch over the plate and Omar hit a double. If he had more time for his rebuttal, he might have hit it out of the park. The problem is that the City Council under Mayor Dubey's leadership has voted to ignore those plans that Dubey brags about and grant zoning changes, variances, special permits, and whatever else developers want that go against those plans. For example, Dubey explicitly says that a prior Council, the one that adopted a regulating plan for downtown redevelopment, "wanted to keep McKinney Avenue." Well, Dubey as Mayor then voted to let a developer build a superblock for a 279 apartment building that wipes out McKinney Avenue between Polk Street and Kaufman Street. He counted it as a win for walkability that the developer will put entrances to his wrapped parking garage on both Polk and Kaufman that pedestrians can cut through. A parking lot with front and rear entrances is what Dubey calls "very walkable." There are more examples, beyond downtown, for example, votes to add a car repair shop, a body shop, and a vehicle storage lot in the Interurban District. In short, Dubey accepts the first part of the Richardson Way (Plan the Work), but when it comes to the second part (Work the Plan), he surrenders to developers' requests for exceptions that benefit themselves and harm the citizens who contributed mightily to develop the plans.
Q. What can you do to foster collaboration between UTD and companies in engineering and technology located in the IQ District?
Amir Omar: "I think that's also one of the large value propositions that I bring to the table. My background is been in technology for the greater part of the last 25 years. I'm a business executive, and as we're talking to other businesses, having a business executive be able to understand the language of technology, to understand the language that business executives have to deal with on a day by day basis, that's something that I think would add a whole lot of credibility to the sales pitch that we bring as a city. I'm incredibly excited about partnering with Don Magner, our city manager, who is second to none, and being able to see what we can do to drive economic development."
Bob Dubey: "Well, all of those things, we're currently doing them and doing them very well. Over the last year, we have had over 30 large and middle sized companies call Richardson their home. They've either reproduced, added more or moved here. So the bottom line is, we're working with UT-Dallas. They're in the IQ HQ. They are there with us. We even give them tasks to do, and they work with our companies. We work business to business right there, which is making a huge difference. And so we just added 4000 jobs in Richardson, Texas, in the last year."
Mark Steger: Omar rebutted Dubey by asking, if everything is going so well, "why we've got a 10% year-over-year decrease in our commercial building values. There's a reason why we're 9% down year over year in sales tax. It's because we need to do more in economic development." I agree. As Lewis Carroll's Red Queen said, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" Dubey thinks we are running fast enough. Omar wants to do more, starting with replacing a Mayor whose career experience is in coaching, not business, with one who has a business background in technology. It's perhaps significant that Omar praised City Manager Don Magner in his answer, perhaps signaling that he thinks the problem is not with City professionals, but with our political leadership. Again, the mayor fails to even see a problem. Drive through the IQ District sometime and see all the "For Lease" signs and then tell me everything is fine.
Q. What specific policies would you implement to ensure continued economic development while maintaining our city's unique character and quality of life?
Bob Dubey: "The bottom line is we have an opportunity to really energize the city in the TOD or transit-oriented-development areas with people who don't mind living in and around businesses and retails and those type things. That saves the integrity of our neighborhoods."
Amir Omar: "It goes back to listening to the community. I think if we are listening to the community, then we are creating plans together. And if we're creating plans together, then we ought to stick with those plans...The mayor mentioned a TOD area, which is the Arapaho area, one of the key ones. He was a part of approving a salvage car lot to go at the new entrance of Richardson, right there at Arapaho and Greenville. To me, that's not strategic, and it's not a part of the plan."
Mark Steger: The TOD that both candidates mention is a development around the Arapaho DART station on Greenville Ave. That's in the IQ District. Dubey has a lot riding on this district. He's depending on it to attract businesses to Richardson and also depending on it to create housing for people "who don't mind living in and around businesses." As Omar points out, it's hard to square this with his vote to permit a salvaged used car business to set up business there.
In the quotes above, I've taken excerpts from the candidates' full responses to questions posed by RAD. Again, I encourage you to watch the full forum on YouTube in case you think my choices leave out important context provided by the candidates in their full responses.
"One says things are fine.
One sees things to improve on.
Which way should we go?"
—h/t ChatGPT
2 comments:
Mark, calling it ‘declined’ is a stretch. I skipped the RAD forum because their ‘nonpartisan’ endorsement was a done deal for Amir before the Zoom kicked off—my subsequent emails to you and Ginny prove it. UTD is playing games too. I RSVP’d yes to their April 2 debate, sent Aidan Boyd three emails, with 2 different e-mail addresses, called, left voicemails—silence. Now it’s just Dubey and Omar. This isn’t a process; it’s a rigged deck. I’m running for voters, not to beg insiders for a stage. Transparency’s my pledge—watch it unfold.
Alan North, thanks for the feedback and explanation why you declined to participate in the RAD forum.
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