THE BATTALION: What kind of issues would you like to address as a Bryan City Council member?
SOUTHERLAND: The most important thing in District 4 right now is the drainage and sewage back-ups and the parking and traffic associated with Blinn College. It’s getting worse because Blinn College is growing so much, and I was involved early on in getting Blinn consolidated to be located where they are back in the early 90s. We need it and need the business here but the traffic has largely been ignored. Streets are blocked up and people park all over the area, so it’s difficult for them. There are solutions though, you just have to go to the people and say, ‘Hey, let’s figure something out.’ The drainage backup has been around for sometime. The Barton Creek culverts are undersized and a study was performed in 2002 but never did anything about it. You have to resize the culverts and create a better flow-way.
THE BATTALION: What are some goals you would want to achieve as city council member?
SOUTHERLAND: In the study they did on Barton Creek, they set out what needs to be done. In 2002, it would have cost around $1 million to correct it, so now that is around double. It would reduce damage to people’s property all over that area, but it’s all over District 4. As far as sewage, we need to oversize some of the lines in the ground right now that are blocked up. The sewer lines for the city get clogged and that causes backups. When someone upstream floods, their sewage goes in someone else’s house. What’s so criminal — or appears to be criminal — is that a person has that happen to them and the people have $50,000 in damage to their home and the city wouldn’t reimburse them for it. On the traffic, I’ve talked to Blinn before about maybe finding some way to stagger classes differently. I don’t think that is a solution, but we need to find one. We must work together to figure something out.
THE BATTALION: What kind of issues would you like to address as a Bryan City Council member?
INCARDONA: A lot of times, college kids don’t understand that Bryan works in districts. District 4 roughly extends from the College Station border on up to almost Coulter, and from Highway 6 to Texas. My job is to take care of the families and businesses in my area as well as the entire city. In District 4, we have a couple different issues. The first one is we have aging infrastructure. Another issue we have is known as ‘water in, water out.’ What that means is sewage lines are aging and there is drainage when it rains. When we get more than three inches of rain, a lot of people’s houses flood in this area and that’s not cool. I know myself, my house has flooded four times in the past three years, and those are issues we have to deal with. I also want to help the firefighters and police officers have everything they need because they’re putting their lives on the line every single day for us.
THE BATTALION: What are some goals you would want to achieve as city council member?
INCARDONA: If there’s a problem, I come up with different solutions. I want to take it back to the citizens. My Facebook page is up to 400 likes and is reaching around 6,000 people. I want to hear from everybody, I want to know what they are saying. I’ve door-knocked to 3,000 homes, and I did it on purpose, because I want to meet everyone so they can put a name to a face. We do ‘Coffee With Kyle’ every Monday through Friday at 8:15 [a.m.] here at the funeral home. Sometimes one person shows up, sometimes 15 people show up. Everyone has to talk about something, and I’ve found if you keep those lines of communication open, the citizen feels better and you’re able to help them out. Sometimes they just need to be able to voice their opinion and know they’re being heard.