Having spent roughly six months and some change as the Levelland City Manager, Brandon Anderson has a spent this time assessing the state of the city.
“What I have found in municipal business and in the city management business is you need to come in and first evaluate where you’re at and what you’ve got to deal with,” said Anderson. “The first six months has been a lot of that.”
Anderson says the evaluation process is not unlike any other industry where staffing has been difficult and the ability to remain staffed has been an included challenge.
“We are pretty blessed right now here at the city level,” explained Anderson. “I believe we’re almost fully staffed. I think we’ve got three or four open positions.”
Looking at various surrounding municipalities or city level governments who have struggled to keep or even fill positions, he feels fortunate to come into to situation where that isn’t the current case.
Anderson acknowledged that turnover is bound to happen with any company, but with the more time he spends in his position he feels the current state of things are quite stable.
“All the staff that I have been exposed to in addition to department heads and on down do a great job for our community,” said Anderson. “They have truly been servant leaders whether it be the department heads or the employees.”
Anderson highlighted through the Christmas holiday, city employees worked diligently through the freezing temperatures to fight various water leaks and ensuring things are operating properly during the harsh conditions.
“Anyone who sees city staff out there doing that type of demanding job, just know they’re doing it to serve their public and it’s not always a fun job,” explained Anderson. “We hope it’s rewarding, and it is nice to give back to the community, so we’re blessed with a big staff here.”
As one can imagine, Anderson is constantly in communication with almost every department to gauge the progress of the city.
However, understanding that his position is to serve the community he added that his door is always open for the citizens of the City of Levelland.
Constantly working internally with staff, Anderson has visited with a lot of department heads and hopes there has become a stronger sense of stability during his time.
“Obviously, there was a transitional period and anytime any entity goes through a transition like we have from having a long absence in in city management they’ve gone through a lot,” said Anderson. “I think just stabilizing that environment has been good for all of our departments and were learning how to work with those department heads and those department heads are figuring out my leadership style and how I like to see things done.”
Helping Anderson switch gears and become more proactive is Assistant City Manager Joe Cavazos.
Cavazos has been working for the City of Levelland for a long time and has spent his career working up the ladder to earn his position.
“He’s truly a success story when you think about a young man from this town grew up here went to work for the city and then worked his way up,” explained Anderson. “I’ve always said he needs to be the one that gets interviewed and talked about his experience with the city of Levelland, so having help me through this transition has been very valuable.”
After talking with Cavazos, Anderson is moving forward the rearrangement of some departments and for the most part moving forward he will stay as the assistant City Manager and director of public works. Cavazos will preside over the water wastewater, parks and cemetery and landfill will be all under his guidance.
“With the amount of time Joe has worked for the city, I know those areas will capably guided,” said Anderson. he knows all about our water and sewer systems and I think that fits right up his alley.”
He will be focusing on working with the other department heads and other committees that he’s not been able to cover effectively.
Anderson says having Cavazos by his side has been a great value and the transition for him coming in as a city manager has been made a lot easier.
Anderson and the city have had to move quickly in a short period of time with a such a large project in the wastewater treatment plant but feels confident in the way it was handled in such a short period of time.
“I think anytime a city can go through the process that we did in terms of realizing a need, which I know the city is known they had a need at the wastewater treatment plant for a very long time,” said Anderson. “To put your heads together to work with staff, the engineering firm and then hustle through and really have council be able to wrap their head around everything that we’re doing and do it in the quick time frame was impressive.”
For Anderson, another duty he has been handling is sitting in and offering his thoughts in various board and committee meetings.
“We have a lot of good boards, some more active than others,” said Anderson.
Two groups he has yet to meet with are the TIFF boards.
The city has two TIFF tax increment funding zones which includes one of them for the rail park and then one of them is for the residential development that’s going on.
“They had invested a lot in the last couple of years so funds are a little depleted in those TIFF zones,” explained Anderson. “It’s not so critical to have those meetings but we plan to have those very shortly.”
After sitting down with the other boards, Anderson says he has been very impressed with the volunteer ship from the community.
“To be actively involved in those various boards, I really feel like we’ve got a great set to work with,” said Anderson. “I’ve also been with the Levelland Chamber of Commerce and many offshoot boards that the chamber has.”
Anderson also highlighted the positive work the Levelland Main Street board has accomplished as they stay very active throughout the year.
“Tonia and her group do a lot for the downtown association and have helped make the vibrant downtown that we’ve got. I’m really pleased with all the boards that have,” said Anderson.
Moving forward with his overall evaluation, one area that he would like to focus on is the general fund.
When talking about the general fund, Anderson is referring to the fund that handles, police, fire, streets, parks and ems. He also added that a lot of the quality-of-life areas are covered by the general fund as well.
“We’re pretty tight as far as the budget goes,” said Anderson. “We’re really tight I’ve talked to council about the period of time spanning the last six years.”
The city has managed to stay at the no-new revenue rate and there was a period of time where the adopted tax rate was even lower “Everyone knows what inflation’s done over the last year and a half that has affected the city as well,” said Anderson.
Everything the city has planned is costing more, everything purchased cost more, but the city is still dealing with the same pool of dollars from years back.
“That’s created a little bit of a challenge as we look forward for the city and that’s what I’m tasked with to figure out how we can get the best bang for our buck out of out of what we’ve got. Spending time in Levelland has opened the eyes of Anderson and he feels that the city has a unique position to continue to grow.
“In west Texas we all deal with the same environment, but I think opposed to a lot of other towns, Levelland has the ability and has the ability to grow and continue to be a partner city with Lubbock,” said Anderson. “With a lot of the growth and development that Lubbock has seen, I think we can kind of benefit and vice versa keep our foothold in west Texas.”
Having assets such as South Plains College, the agricultural industry and oilfield industry, businesses continuing to find their way into Levelland, Anderson believes the city will be able to grow and maintain a good independent level of economy.
“It’s important to encourage our citizens to support one another in business and in various avenues to help drive the local economy and state of the city in a positive direction,” said Anderson.