Friday, February 24th, 2017
Friends & Neighbors,
It’s been an honor to serve you on our city council and it’s been one of the blessings of my life to get to know you and to become friends with so many of you. I’m absolutely humbled by your support over the last few years, including honoring me as “best local public official” in the Courier-Journal.
As my oldest son is graduating from GHS this spring, my priority right now is to be a dad and for our family to enjoy its final months with him at home. Competitive campaigns require focus, time, and work. After all, that’s how I earned your support when you elected me. My family and I understand this commitment; so, we decided this last weekend that I will not seek re-election this May.
It was never my ambition to hold this office for the long-term or to become a professional politician. I’m just a husband, a father, and a proud Colleyville resident, who saw a need for change in our local government and decided to get involved. Thousands of you have joined me in being part of the solution by bringing accountability and reform to city hall and by participating in the largest elections in Colleyville’s history.
After all, it was you who brought lasting reform by voting overwhelmingly for ethics, transparency, and term-limit amendments to our city charter this last November. By margins of 86%-14%, your votes ensure that no institutionalized incumbency will exist in our town again; and, your votes ensure that no elected official or city staff will get away with not disclosing business and real-estate conflicts — to prevent politicians from placing their personal interests ahead of Colleyville citizens.
With your support over these last few years, it’s been an honor to deliver on every promise made when I first earned your vote:
- Spearheading the first tax rate cut in city history.
- Eliminating wayward profiting in what was a burdensome and unfair water-rate structure.
- Cutting spending while prioritizing long-neglected street repair and redevelopment.
- Advancing a responsible Highway 26 re-development plan that addresses traffic first while mitigating the impact to land owners.
- Amending our city’s controversial 2015 comprehensive plan to preserve and protect Colleyville’s signature, semi-rural character.
None of these accomplishments would have happened without your involvement. We all have worked tirelessly to restore lasting integrity and transparency to city hall.
To continue this legacy, I have one final request: please don’t allow Colleyville to go backwards – to surrender into the hands of self-serving politicians with personal agendas or to retreat into the back pockets of people not motivated by service but by the prospect of improperly profiting from local politics.
Because term limits now prevent any long-term political grip of incumbency, the responsibility and power remain with you to continue to participate actively in the political process, to involve yourself in governmental affairs, and to become educated on whom you are voting for and why.
We must maturely separate personal alliances from our public-policy decisions. Often, doing what’s right for our fellow citizens comes into conflict with some of the personal relationships we’ve forged.
Politics isn’t about serving our personal interests or favoring our friends. Politics is not about pleasing everyone or going along to get along. Politics is about demanding accountability from those who seek your vote and who spend your tax dollars.
Remember this: politicians lie, but their votes don’t. As engaged citizens, we should not merely judge our elected officials by what they say but by what they do.
Colleyville is back your hands for the first time in a long time; and, for the last three years, Place 3 has been the people’s seat and vote. During the upcoming May election, please continue the campaign we started by joining me in supporting George Dodson (Place 4) and Kathy Wheat (Place 3). I am confident Dodson and Wheat will continue the legacy of a truly citizen-centric city government.
Thank you and God bless you.
For Colleyville,
Chris Putnam
