U.S. Representative Bill Flores will hold an official town hall meeting for Bryan-College Station to discuss key national topics and answer constituent
questions at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday at Rudder High School’s Margaret
Rudder Auditorium.
Among other issues, Flores, who is the representative for Texas’ 17th Congressional District, will be addressing employment changes in the shifting economy and deficit spending. Flores will also be addressing any other national topic that comes up in the open question portion of
the meeting.
“The reason to hold the town hall is to find out what is on our constituents’ minds directly, so I expect we will have a lot of questions on the NSA, I expect we will have some on ‘Obamacare,’ and then also I would imagine that immigration would come up,” Flores said. “Now there could be another dozen issues as well, but I think those issues will come up in addition to the first three.”
While the last town hall meeting held in B-CS in March also addressed U.S. immigration standards in addition to the state of the economy and the health care system, Flores expects immigration to be a stronger topic at this town hall meeting due to the U.S. Senate’s recent passing of a new immigration bill.
This week’s town hall Meeting will follow a different format than previous meetings. In the past, one of Flores’ moderators has taken all questions that seemed similar and built a composite question, but attendees will now put their written questions into a box and Flores will answer each directly.
“Some people thought we were screening the questions by [building a composite one],” Flores said. “So we’re going to try it a little bit differently this time so that everybody gets a chance to ask directly what
they want.”
For repeated or overly similar questions, the congressman said he will simply ask the audience if he has answered the question satisfactorily in previous
discussion.
To truly get feedback from the people, Flores said he plans to give the audience several choices and see how strongly people are for or against certain issues before exploring
each topic.
Maggie Holman, chair of the A&M chapter of the College Republicans, said the town hall meetings are a great way for Flores to connect with his
local constituents.
“Mr. Flores is great at paying attention,” Holman said. “He is very charismatic and responds really well to questions. I think he did a good job of listening to people in previous meetings, even if they were people that were being unreasonable.”
Flores said the town hall meeting he held in College Station in 2011 had a number of disruptions from the audience. Flores said when he has meetings with disruptive attendees, his solution is to respect everyone’s First Amendment rights by listening to everyone’s points
of view.
“The town hall is better for everybody if everyone is respectful,” Flores said. “We had one meeting in Bryan-College Station that got little out of hand back in 2011, but the people of Bryan-College Station are really generally a community of respectful people. When everyone is respectful, everybody can hear everyone else’s opinion, but if you have one group that is shouting and screaming that just means that someone else’s First Amendment rights were not
respected.”
President of the Texas Aggie Democrats, Ryan Williams, said he hopes no such disruption breaks out at this meeting.
“I think meetings like these are important and constructive,” Williams said. “However much our group may disagree with some of the policies of Congressman Flores, we appreciate the initiative. Our Congressional Representatives should be responsive to us, their constituents. This town hall meeting is a sign that Congressman Flores takes this facet of his
job seriously.”
The meeting will conclude Flores’s three-stop tour of town hall meetings across Texas this week, with the other two taking place in Waco and
Austin-Pflugerville.