The city of McKinney is at a turning point, leading to a hotly contested race for mayor in the May 6 election.
The candidates are Randy Pogue, George Fuller, and Danny Bishop.
NBC 5's Homa Bash asked each of the candidates the same questions about their thoughts on the city's future.
How do you balance "unique by nature," which is what McKinney is known for, with the development?
Fuller: "I certainly moved to McKinney because I love feel of McKinney – rolling hills and the greenscapes – so I want to maintain that. But at the same time, we have an imbalanced tax base, so I want to see businesses."
Pogue: "Our planning comes in to play in how we solve that issue as well, in terms of creating our sense of place and locations for the developments to occur. The right developments in the right places."
Bishop: "I've been knocking on a lot of doors and people want to slow things down. Well, you can slow growth down by your zoning practices. You can be selective on homes and those developments."
How do you deal with downtown parking issues? The city recently signed an agreement for a public-private partnership for a parking garage.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
Bishop: "Well, I don’t like the garage. I like the downtown the way it is. I'd like to see maybe a private individual be able to build the parking garage and make the revenue from it. I don't like to see the city spending our money doing that."
Pogue: "We were able to bring a solution to that problem. We are able to get something today that would otherwise take us five to 10 years to accomplish."
Fuller: "What do we do? We have to build more structures and we have to do it quickly. We have to support those businesses downtown and the residents who want to come and spend time downtown."
What do you see as the future of U.S. 380 and any possible bypass options?
Pogue: "My preference is to go further north, but that is still to be determined as to where the exact alignment would go."
Fuller: "Speaking to TxDOT and experts on the state side, a bypass won't relieve the stress on 380, so at this moment, I'm categorically opposed to a bypass. Plus, we're prematurely discussing bypasses and routes without having any kind of impact study done."
Bishop: "I support it as a highway because that's what it is. 380 is a highway, and sooner or later it's going to continue to develop and grow."
The election will be held on May 6. Early voting is from April 24 to May 2.
Current Mayor Brian Loughmiller has been in office since 2009 and has reached his term limit.
