Palmer files for city council place 6
By LYNETTE SOWELL
Cove Leader-Press
Danny Palmer, another former member of the Copperas Cove city council, filed on Tuesday to run for place 6, presently held by George Duncan.
Palmer served 31 years in the United States Army and has made his home in Copperas Cove since 2005.
He first ran for council in 2009 to fill an unexpired term, then was reelected to serve a full term from 2010-2013.
Although Palmer hasn’t been on the council in several years, Palmer has kept tabs on city operations and the current council. He’s not happy with what he’s seen.
“I have decided after watching, that the voice of the people is not heard on city council,” Palmer said. “There’s only one voice, and that’s the voice of the staff telling what they’re going to do for the city, and I just think the citizens of Copperas Cove should have a little bit of input without being told to shut up and sit down.”
Palmer also took issue with the decision to outsource the city’s utility management in 2016, and talked about his own woes with the new water meters.
“They shut down the utility office, moved it over to what they call City Hall, and they put it in an office that won’t hold six people with two windows. But now all of a sudden they’re telling all the citiznes, ‘Well, you need to do it all online, you need to go online and pay.’ They finally put in a drop box, and on top of that, one month it’s a the other end of the building and this month, it’s down at near the city secretary’s (office). So that’s my issue. Nothing was done about the cost.”
Palmer said there was an issue with his water meter and he questioned the reading of 6,000 gallons for one month in his two-person household.
“I’m not the only person who’s having these issues, and the city’s just trying to muddle on through this. But there’s a $7 million bill out there somebody’s got to pay.”
Since filing to run, Palmer said he’s spoken to several people about things like the possible shift of the city from having a type 4A economic development corporation to a municipal development district (MDD).
He questions whether there has been a proposed plan for what the city plans to do if voters approve the change to an MDD, because he hasn’t seen any plan.
“I looked at that – who’s going to assume the debt of the EDC? What are they going to do with the savings account that the EDC has, which is substantial? And what are they going to do with the money that’s coming in now? Where does it go? Where’s the accountability?” Palmer asked. “If the city has no accountability, it’s going to disappear. If you look at the city budget, it’s already disappeared. You cannot put your finger on the one-eighth of a cent that the state sends us, which is what the voters voted on.
If we ran our household checkbooks like they run the budget, we’d be in trouble.”
Palmer is running against John A. Hull for place six. Filing to run for office ends on August 22.