Meet the Candidate: Karl Mooney- Brazos County Commissioner, Pct. 1

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – We are less than a month away from the start of early voting.

One race some Brazos County voters will see on their ballot is the Precinct 1 Commissioners seat.

Three candidates are vying for the Republican nomination: Steve Aldrich (Incumbent), Karl Mooney and Bentley Nettles.

In Precinct 3, Nancy Berry (Incumbent) and Fred Brown are vying for the Republican nomination.

All the candidates will appear on News 3 at 6 this week.

Former College Station Mayor Karl Mooney joined News 3 at 6 on Monday to discuss why he believes he should take the seat.

“I was the mayor. Nobody has had to go through leading a city, particularly a city with a big university, through COVID,” Mooney said. “I’m proud of some of the things we were able to accomplish while I was a city councilman, planning and zoning and even of course as mayor.”

“Sometimes you learn lessons from life experiences and one of those experiences caused me to be the advocate for what the county is now picking up on, a medical examiner’s office,” Mooney said. “It’s one of those things you don’t know how much you need it until you need it.”

One of the hot topics commissioners have had to address in the last couple of years is how to set the tax rate. Mooney says property taxes will be a problem no matter how commissioners look at it.

“There is a process involved in determining what that property tax rate should be, and that means everybody needs to be at the meetings and debate the issues,” Mooney said. “When you aren’t there, you can’t have that debate.”

Mooney says it’s better to be prepared with reserves, but be reasonable with property taxes.

“Property values keep going up, so we have to make sure we still have reserves when we look at our property tax rate,” Mooney said. “We were very fortunate, particularly in the more rural areas of Precinct 1, we didn’t have a massive wildfire this year. Go back to when we had the storm in February 2021, that hit College Station just for electricity at $48 million, but we had reserves.”

Mooney spent six years in office as Mayor.

“One of the things I was proudest of as Mayor; I walked into neighborhoods. By the time I was finished being mayor I had walked throughout my entire city three or four times, every street,” Mooney said.

He says the county needs to focus on not just the needs of Bryan and College Station, but the smaller, more rural areas as well.

You can watch our full interview with Karl Mooney in the player above.