MIDLAND, Texas — One of the most important decisions you can make is deciding who will run your city.
In Midland, voters will be making a big decision on Nov. 2.
The District one seat is up for election, and the two candidates running for the spot are incumbent Scott Dufford and his challenger Ross Schumann.
NewsWest 9 spoke with both candidates, and infrastructure was a big topic.
Schumann says the city should prioritize things like water, sewer and roads
"Unfortunately, when we look at our sewer, we look at our roads and we look at our water systems, they're starting to fail, they're starting to degrade. And that's because our city has not made prioritization of those systems. We have prioritized everything else in the city. We've looked to spend money at the airport, we've looked to spend money at all these other things but we haven't spent money on the things that we need to spend money on. They passed $100 million road bond that was supposed to go to fixing our infrastructure, over the time of that $100 million road bond, our infrastructure got worse, not better," Schumann said.
Dufford disagrees, saying that some roads were improved by the bond the city passed.
However, he adds that in the last 10 years the oil and gas boom has taken a toll on Midland's streets, and the city went from spending just a few million to $25 million a year to improve the roads.
Dufford says he's also working to find innovative ways to lessen the burden on taxpayers for infrastructure costs.
"We've been able to find more money to improve with just our very wastewater treatment, created a property partnership with pioneer, something that had never been done before. And we were going to have to make upgrades to that water treatment facility no matter what. So the fact that we were able to partner with them on a win-win situation for not only the city because we got our upgrades, but also for Pioneer. We save the taxpayers, right, wants to pay for their water or save them hundreds of millions of dollars because of that partnership," Dufford said.
Schumann believes property taxes are a big burden, especially when they continue to rise.
To be clear, the city does not set the appraisal rates-that's the job of the Midland County Appraisal District.
Schumann still thinks the city should have extra financial incentives to bring more businesses here.
"We often hear all too often about people saying, oh well, 'Lubbock just got this new thing and Odessa just got this new thing and Abilene just got this new thing, why aren't we getting that in Midland?' Well the reason we're not getting in Midland is because our costs are higher, we not only have higher property taxes, we have higher wages, and because of that, people are going to say 'Well, if I'm going to build a new business, and I'm looking at 100,000 possible customers, I'm gonna go to Odessa, I'm gonna go to Lubbock I'm gonna go to Abilene where those factors are more competitive.' Where we are losing is on those factors, so we have to empower our citizens to be more involved in how the city is raised and built," Schumann said.
Dufford says the city is working on bringing more businesses to Midland, but at the end of the day oil and gas is our bread and butter.
"We are attracting more and more businesses out to our spaceport, which is fantastic. But really at the end of the day, the oil and gas industry is our business. And so what we want to be able to do is we want to be able to recruit and retain good professionals, engineers, geologists, folks, just driving the trucks up and down the road. Transporting our oil and gas out of here to our water. We've got a huge infrastructure that we need to have people here for. And so my first priority is our oil and gas business. And I think everything else will just kind of take care of itself, but until we bought our last drop of oil out of the Permian, not too worried about attracting new businesses to our community," Dufford said.
For more information on the Midland County election, including everything on the ballot and where to vote, you can click or tap here.
For the full interview for Scott Dufford, click Here.
For the full interview for Ross Schumann, click Here.