Steve McAnally: Burleson City Council Place 1 Candidate
Steve McAnally: Burleson City Council Place 1 Candidate
Overview of the Veteran and Burleson Police Department volunteer running against incumbent Victoria Johnson for Burleson City Council Place 1 in the May 4 local election
Thank you, Cobb Plumbing, for sponsoring this newsletter.
Cobb Plumbing is offering Burleson Buzz readers 10% off services.
Cobb Plumbing has been offering quality work at fair prices to its friends and neighbors in Burleson since 1970 with a goal to create life-long customers.
If they’re not already your plumber, they’d sure like to be.
BURLESON – Veteran and Burleson Police Department volunteer Steve McAnally is running against incumbent Victoria Johnson for Burleson City Council Place 1 in the May 4 local election.
McAnally moved to Burleson in October 2020 to retire from his career as a military police officer where he spent time in places like Chesapeake, Virginia, and Bahrain, Iran, after being born and raised in Los Angeles.
He and his wife chose to retire in Burleson after his wife did a lot of research and determined the city’s “hometown-feel” was right for them. The city has lived up to their expectations, he said.
“It’s been absolutely on point,” McAnally said of how living in Burleson compares to his expectations. “We have not had a single issue. We have a great neighborhood. We’ve met some really great people, and we’re meeting more people everyday.”
Although he loved serving his country as a military police officer, McAnally said he absolutely loves being retired in Burleson and “wouldn’t trade it for the world” because he loves the people and the “small, hometown feel” of the city.
“The people in Texas, and especially Burleson compared to a lot of other places that I’ve been in the state of Texas, they’re genuine and they're so open and welcoming,” McAnally said.
McAnally joined the military at 32 years old after a 15-year career as a paralegal to follow in his dad’s footsteps – his dad was a radioman in the military – and serve his country.
“It got to a point where I got tired of actually defending criminals and wanted to start to serve some form of justice,” McAnally said of his career shift.
After a 20-year “indescribable” career as a military police officer where “no two days were exactly the same,” McAnally is getting back into service, this time serving the community he’s chosen to spend his retirement in.
Aside from wanting to serve the city as a council member, McAnally already serves as a Burleson Police Department volunteer in the Citizens On Patrol program. Growing up with his dad in the military, McAnally was raised to serve, he said.
“We give back to the communities and the programs that have given my wife and I so much,” McAnally said of his motivation to serve.
He wants to serve to help Burleson maintain what made him and his wife want to live here.
“I’m all for Burleson growing, absolutely, but let’s grow in the right way,” McAnally said.
The way Burleson grows the right way, McAnally said, is to enable the city’s first responders – which he said includes police officers, firefighters, teachers, school-counselors and parents – to outpace the population’s growth.
“If we have a safer city, we’re going to attract more families, first-time home-buyers, families with small children,” McAnally said.
For Burleson’s first-responders to grow faster than the population, the City will have to spend more to staff more first responders and provide them with adequate training and equipment without additional funding from increased tax revenue from additional citizens. That would require raising taxes or cutting expenses, and McAnally wants to make it very clear he has “no intention whatsoever of raising taxes.”
Instead of raising taxes, McAnally said he wants to review and analyze all of Burleson’s government programs and departments to ensure they’re not spending unnecessary money so Burleson residents are getting “the best bang for their buck.”
One project that supports the growth of Burleson’s first responders – although not enough in McAnally’s eyes – is the expansion of the police department headquarters. October 23, the Burleson City Council chose a police department-expansion plan that involves spending approximately $41.5 million after Burleson voters approved a $36 million general-obligation bond to fund the police department-expansion in 2021. Burleson will postpone a $5 million reconstruction project on Greenridge Drive and Wicker Hill set to begin in 2025 to fund the expansion.
McAnally said he would’ve voted to spend more – specifically the $52.3 million option that included everything the police asked for – on the headquarters expansion and cut more from the city’s budget. He said he doesn’t think the $41.5 million option is adequate, specifically because it doesn’t offer room for 20 years of growth and because it doesn’t involve building a new building, which he thinks is very important.
“[The Burleson Police Department has] always been treated like, for lack of a better word, a stepchild,” McAnally said of the police not getting what they’ve asked for.
Projects that haven’t been approved that would cost additional funds include a new library and city hall, neither of which McAnally is behind. He said he wants to make sure the Burleson Public Library and City Hall are being used to their full potential before he’d consider expanding them or building new ones.
Ultimately, McAnally wants everyone to know that he’s an open book and not a politician but rather just someone who wants to serve his community.