Three candidates are running to represent the Central Lubbock District 3 on the city council, after outgoing councilmember David Glasheen announced in December 2025 that he would not be seeking reelection.
Before Glasheen's announcement, Adam Hernandez, a local entrepreneur and community advocate, announced his intent to run for the city council seat in District 3. Hernandez has previously run as a candidate for Lubbock's mayoral race in 2022 and 2024. He sat down with KTTZ to discuss his campaign and the issues he's focused on for District 3.
Election Day for Lubbock's 2026 municipal election is May 2 and early voting runs April 20-28. You can find more information and polling locations here.
The following interview has been edited lightly for clarity.
Brad Burt: Adam, thank you for joining us.
Adam Hernandez: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Brad Burt: So to start with, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Adam Hernandez: Yes. So I'm a lifelong Lubbock resident, a father, entrepreneur and a community advocate. And I've been a community advocate here in Lubbock since the summer of 2020, when I just made a life decision that I was going to dedicate as much of my free time as possible to volunteer and try to help make Lubbock better for everybody. And so since then, I volunteer hundreds of hours a year, doing various activities, mentoring youth, researching and advocating for public policy and then also letting citizens know about what's happening with city government, especially when there's something big going on.
BB: What motivated you to run for the District 3 city council position specifically?
AH: Well, so some of the listeners may remember, I've run for mayor twice, and so obviously that's city wide, and that takes a lot out of a person to do one time, let alone twice in a row. And so I still feel like I have something to offer the people through the council. There's things that I can do on the council that I can't do as just an advocate outside of the council, right? And so I still believe in that mission, but I just wasn't up for doing the city, the whole entire city, all over again. And I think that we can do some real work on a council seat. And so that's where I landed.
BB: What are issues that you've heard from voters in the district so far?
AH: Well, the same issues that I heard the first two times I ran and that I championed those first two times. We've had marginal moves in those directions, a couple of minimal things, but basically it's been the same thing. So improving city services using the taxes you already pay. My proposal is not, let's raise your taxes so that you can have better services. You should already have the better services, right? Like, our tax rate is not really as high as a lot of other places, but it's also not as low as a lot of other places either, right?
So we're in somewhat of that medium spot, and so that's enough to take care of all of the things that we have, Animal Control Services, codes enforcement, I believe we should have a bulk trash pickup every month. They do this in other cities like Dallas and other places like that, where the city just comes around once a month and you set out big things like couches or whatever the case may be, this would be a great opportunity for people who are fed up with that same couch that's been in their alley for 30 years and they've called the city 80 times and it's never been moved. They could just wait for the day to come around for the monthly trash pickup, and they could be like, ‘I'm putting this thing out in front of my house so they can take it,’ right? And so things like that are very simple to do. I shouldn't say ‘very simple to do.’ They're relatively simple to do. Really, all it takes is the will to do it and then making it a priority.
BB: You talked about the growth that Lubbock has experienced, and so often that gets pointed in the direction of Districts 4, 5 and 6. But in District 3, development is a little different, because it is built out and I think probably the closest thing we've seen to a big development in District 3 would be the student housing project that was brought up a couple of years ago just down the street at 19th. But it was met with a lot of pushback. So how do you approach development in a district like District 3?
AH: Yeah, this is a great question. So first and foremost, I was not in favor of that housing facility, and it wasn't because I'm just against big housing facilities in general, I think that it needs to fit with the character of the neighborhood. That's where I'm always going to start, is fitting in with the character of the neighborhood. And so putting something that big in a neighborhood where nothing is that big is a little bit of a mismatch to me. So that is part of it.
But the bigger issue that I have with those types of developments in particular, is that those types of developments, these big student housings that they build like that, they're not meant to be an asset for that person building it. They're meant to be just a cash transaction, essentially. So what they do is they build it, they put all the money in it to build it, and they already have the exit strategy for that. So they already have, usually, a buyer lined up that's waiting to be the next owner. And so they build it, they run it for a little bit, a very short period of time, you know, five years or less, and then they sell it out. They sell it to somebody else, and then the other person does not maintain those standards all the time that were there previously, when it was new and shiny, right? And so then that becomes a problem for the neighborhood, right? And then now you have this really huge thing that may become unsightly or not as in good condition, right? So that's the biggest issue that I have with those types of developments. Had they proposed – and I also advocated around that issue. Had they proposed some other sort of mixed use development for student housing in that same spot, I probably wouldn't had a problem with it, depending on what it was. And so that's… What I think about development is what I imagine could have been a better option there. So we'll just use that example and stay there.
So for instance, if you've seen the Cottage type situation that they have on like 4th and Toledo, those types of apartments are something that I could get behind, and I think that most of the neighborhood would get behind. It's still student housing. It's a little more enclosed within there, right? So it's like a little community in and of itself. You don't have as much of the volume of the cars, of a big, huge parking garage like the – I think it's 500 cars or something like that, of this development, right? So there's a lot of different things, a lot of different decisions that can be made in those types of developments.
BB: One of the big problems that’s talked about a lot in Lubbock, all over the city, not just District 3, is the stray animals and the overpopulated shelter continue to be major concerns. How would you go about supporting animal services and addressing these issues?
AH: So this speaks to the part about when I talk about improving services without raising your taxes. First of all, so like operational things, there is no need to raise your taxes for them to do things differently in an operational way, right? How they do things day to day could change without any sort of tax increase. So that's first and foremost.
But also, let's say – because part of my plan is to expand the size of the animal shelter. Now I don't really put a size on it because there's a lot of considerations that have to go into it, but the idea is solid, that it needs to be bigger. We don't know how big, but it needs to be bigger because our city is bigger, right? Than when it was even built. And so that's first and foremost. We've got to look at that and see what is the best size for that to be? So that's a part of it.
The second part of it is we need to have proactive Animal Services officers going out, basically street by street, like the old school sort of, you know, what people used to call dog catchers, right? I know that's not a good term, but that sort of idea where you just have a person just patrolling the streets picking up animals, and if it's somebody's animal, like somebody owns it, then that's where you bring in the aspect of the owner responsibility. Because the way that you get grown adults to do things is you hit them in the pocketbook. And so if they pick up an animal that belongs to somebody, at least in my mind, it should work sort of similar to parking tickets, right? The first time, maybe it's $35 or something, right? Second time, it goes up a little more. Third time, a little more. And maybe at some point it can actually end up in the municipal court, right? And so if you have a system like that, it disincentivizes people to be bad owners. So that's a big part of it.
And then the last part I'll talk about – there's many parts to it – but the last part, that's a major part that I would look at immediately, is the process to actually take in animals at the shelter. So a huge part of our problem is when college students leave and they've had a pet here, and they're going somewhere else and they can't take the pet. Well, the process is so hard for them to get that animal to the animal shelter that many of them just don't even try. They just go and leave it somewhere. And that's how we end up with a bunch of strays.
BB: You talk about doing more with people's tax dollars. Does that mean reforms within the system, or just changing how elements of the departments work?
AH: So both, I think. And so when I talk – so, for instance, when you talk about expanding the animal shelter, that would be what the city would consider a capital project, it just means that you're putting out a bunch of money to build something big. That's what that's what a capital project means. So in that sense, the city has a huge pot of money to do that, and the cost to do that expansion – and I know this may sound like a lot to people at home, it is a lot of money right to an individual – but if you're talking about a build out that would be 1 or 2 million that's relatively small in terms of a city project.
But there's a lot of money to do those sorts of things. And where that is is in our reserves. And so the city has to, by law, have a certain amount of reserves. So if you know, if all heck breaks loose, then you have some reserves so that the city can keep running, right? Well, our reserves are way over that, so we're good on our reserves that we need by law. And we have a lot more than that. That money can particularly be used for capital projects. And so the money is sitting there to expand it whenever we say go. So that's number one.
And then when you talk about operationally, yeah, it could mean some reform in terms of, maybe there's a change to the charter and how the animal control functions, or how much employees get paid, or how many employees there are, that sort of thing. But then also on an operational level, which would be more so done through the city manager. So the way it would look is the city council, who the city manager answers directly to, the city council would say, ‘Hey, this is the direction we'd like you to go in. We're going to develop this plan for Animal Services. We want to do phase one, and we'd like you to do that.’ Then he would then go to Animal Services and figure out what's the best way to actually do that day to day operationally, or how to switch things around, and all of those sorts of things.
BB: For all of the city council, but District 3 in particular, we're looking at three new candidates coming into the council, and everybody is going to be coming in right at the start of budget season. Have you considered that as part of your plan for coming into this: a budget to present if you were to be elected?
AH: Yeah. As you can tell, I think a lot about the Animal Services, for sure. And so that plan is much more detailed. And there's so many changes that need to happen there, it would literally have to happen in phases. It wouldn't be smart or even possible to do the whole entire thing at one time, and it probably wouldn't even be the best to do it that way. And so that that whole plan, I would present that, and I would immediately just have some priorities out of it that could be immediately paid for, to move towards that goal, right? So that would definitely be a thing.
I would present the monthly trash pickup into that budget. And then I would also put in there, this one's a little bit more complicated, but I would put in there to look at Codes Enforcement. How the department itself is structured. Do we need more employees? Is there a way to utilize more contractors there? What are ways that we can improve that service? You know, looking at those sorts of things. And so I think those would be my main priorities just right out the gate.
BB: The current representative for District 3, David Glasheen has raised many concerns when it comes to the scope of Lubbock's Public Health Department. Do you see a function of Lubbock public health in our community?
AH: Oh, of course, yeah. I've always disagreed with Mr. Glasheen on this, and that's been very public. But the thing about health departments that I don't think a lot of people really – it's just not top of mind, right – is that having a public health department, and especially one as good as ours, and it's good, I can tell you, it's really, really good. Our director of our health department gets sought out at the national level to go speak on things. We have some of the best of the best out here, right? And I could go on and on about the contributions that she's made, off of the budget alone that the city gives her, which I believe is maybe 3 million or something a year. She's then gone above and beyond that, and brings in somewhere 8 plus million a year, that the city, we don't have to pay for that, but we benefit from all of those services that they have brought in because of that funding. And that's every year, it's not just like one time grant money. So she's been working really hard over there to make it really good.
But besides that, the benefit of health departments in general is, if your population is healthier, that's better for your economy. Cities operate off the economy. That's it. So anything you can do to make your economy run better or run more, is in your best interest. And so I think public health does that. On top of the fact that it takes care of people who just can't take care of themselves.
BB: Politics at the state and national level has become increasingly divisive, and seems to continue that way, but city councils are a non-partisan position. What is it like to set aside personal politics and ensure that you're reaching all of the residents in your district?
AH: Well, to me, it's really not hard. And in my mind, it's just never been hard, because the things that I'm focused on, they don't care about somebody's party registration. I've never seen a red or blue pot hole. Stray dogs don't ask you what party you're in before they bite you, you know? So the things that we're worried about on the city level, none of that matters. It doesn't matter who you voted for. We just all want our city services to work as they should, right? And so keeping it there for me makes it really simple. I'm not a huge fan of the hyper-partisan sort of situation that's going on. I've not been shy about talking about that, and so that's just where I'm at, yeah.
BB: Working on the city council requires working with other council members – kind of the flip side of that question is – working requires working with other council members, staff, and listening to residents who may have different thoughts and beliefs. Can you give us an example of a time that you may have changed your mind on something?
AH: Man, you put me on the spot. Oh, I can remember one. It was during a budget session, and I don't think it was the last one, maybe the one before that – Dr Wilson, and I often don't agree on issues, and she's very partisan in her communications. And you know it is what it is, right? But during that budget session, I thought in particular, the budget being put forth by the mayor, and then the budget being put forth by Mr. Glasheen, I saw those both as just… unwise, to put it politely. And so I didn't really like either of those plans. And I thought Dr Wilson genuinely had a plan that made solid sense.
And so again, it goes back to: what are we talking about? Are we talking about, is it making the city operate more efficiently? Is it making services better for people? In that case, I think it was also included with some other things, it was providing money for the Godeke Library that was trying to be closed during that time, right? And so all of those things we can agree on, right? And so again, just bringing it back to what matters to us here as local residents.
BB: Adam Hernandez, candidate for District 3 city council, thank you very much for joining us.
AH: Thank you.
You can find conversations with other candidates in Lubbock's municipal elections here. And check out KTTZ's 2026 Mayoral Candidate Forum here.