Lubbock City Council District 4 covers portions of South Lubbock, largely between Slide Road and University Avenue.
In March, current District 4 representative Brayden Rose announced his resignation for personal and familial reasons.
Rose took office in May 2024. Whoever is elected to take his position will serve out the remainder of his term and a regularly scheduled election will take place in 2028.
Early voting in the Lubbock City Council District 4 Special Election runs June 15-23 and Election Day is June 27.
The race to determine Rose’s replacement has five candidates: Gary Boren, Stephanie Ferran, Tim Green, Bill Curnow, and Boyd Goodloe.
KTTZ reached out to each of the candidates and did not receive a response from Stephanie Ferran before publication.
You can find interviews with the other District 4 candidates here.
Gary Boren is a former Lubbock city councilor, local businessman, and member of the Brazos River Authority.
The following transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Samantha Larned: Mr. Gary Boren, running for District 4, Lubbock City Council.
Gary Boren: Yes, ma’am.
Samantha Larned: Please tell us about yourself.
Gary Boren: Well, I'm homegrown, you know, went to Monterey High School, Texas Tech University, and worked my way through college at Pioneer Natural Gas, four to midnight, and went to work with my mom. She had a business, G Boren Services, and we sold that in 2017. Became one of the top seven companies in Lubbock at the time, and we did personnel staffing, human resources, and security.
I worked at Texas Tech Stadium, 25 years, and the arena, from day one, it opened to 2017. And we did concerts. I brought concerts to Lubbock. I've done music promotion, I've worked in prisons, in HR, I've done arenas, facilities management, and I have a lot of expertise in water, and so that's sort of where I've been for my life.
Samantha Larned: What motivated you to run for District 4?
GB: Opportunity for Lubbock to really be a lot more up the ladder, so to speak, a lot more opportunity for Lubbock if it's managed properly. And secondly, I was dismayed by a lot of things that have been going on with the City of Lubbock that I felt were very harmful to Lubbock homeowners and in the community,
SL: You were formerly on the city council, is that correct?
GB: Yes. I was past president of Lubbock Independent School District, and then I served in the city council five years.
I've been appointed by three different governors. A Democratic governor, Mark White appointed me to a vocational technical board, and I was chairman of that, and we had to deal with lots of problems, including the education reform and deal with Ross Perot. And then I was appointed by Rick Perry, Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, to the deal with the appraisal problems we had in Texas, because as appraisals go up, the city, school, county would keep your money and not give it back. But when I was at the city hall, city council, we made sure you got your money back, when they would go up, we'd lower the tax rate, and he appreciated that, and he appointed me to study appraisals throughout the state of Texas. And then in about 2019 Governor Greg Abbott, because of my water background, water expertise, what I learned with the City of Lubbock, and all the crisis we went through here, he appointed me to the largest river board authority in the state of Texas, which is the Brazos River Authority. Lubbock is part of that.
The Brazos Basin starts at around Muleshoe, the Canyon Lakes, that's part of the Brazos Basin, the new lake, Lake Seven, which is the V-8 Ranch Lake, and then you have Buffalo Lake, you have Rasmus Canyon, Allen Henry, and then Possum Kingdom all the way down to the Gulf. We have eight reservoirs, and then we're building a brand new reservoir near Houston. So I have lots of water experience for the last seven years building lakes, watching water, and dealing with all the issues around supply, demand, reserve, distribution,
SL: And as you've been campaigning, what issues have you heard from voters in the district, and what do you see as priorities?
GB: Well, basically, a lot of the priorities our homeowners deal with is utility cost. We have the highest utility cost in the state of Texas, one of the highest. When I was on the city council previously, we had the lowest, plus today we have one of the highest debts in the state of Texas, over two, close to $2 billion. ERCOT is close to a billion of that, and that's bad for us, and had the most debt with ERCOT, and the highest electric rates, and a lot of people on fixed incomes, a lot of people, they budget their, you know, to meet the ends, and all sudden you get jacked up with electric, electric cost, water runoff cost, storm water, all these little fees that the city loves to tack on to you. Somebody needs to step in there and say, 'Whoa, a fee, a three-letter word, F-E-E equals a T-A-X.’ Somebody needs to rein it in, and I'll be the one they'll do that. I've got experience doing that, and so that is one thing I hear from a lot of people.
A lot of them are dismayed about public safety. We're not safe like we used to be. We're short. I don't buy into the reports that the city does, how we're getting safer. No, we're not. That's their spin. I look at the reports the FBI put out, and we're not safer, and we need more troops on the ground. And so, how do you get more troops on the ground? You change your spending and hire more troops, more police officers, you enlarge your classes for troops, patrolmen, and you work toward that end to put more boots on the ground, so to speak. So we're behind there.
And so in Lubbock, Texas today, we have documented over 2,000 gang bangers that they have been able to register in a database, they've caught and they know about. We got three cartels working in Lubbock, Texas. We have a narcotic problem, we have misdemeanor or people breaking into cars and residences, and rob people for drug problems. We have shootouts going on at Seven Elevens and different places. That needs to end. And my goal is to do pretty much what President Trump did with Washington DC. He made a decision, we're not going to tolerate anymore. Well, we need to make a decision, we're not going to tolerate that in Lubbock anymore. And so he just got his troops and got in there, and they just swept the city and rounded up all the criminals and busted them, put them in jail, and that's what you do.
We're short, so I've been able to sit down with DPS, sit down with the sheriff's office, we'll all work together, and let's stop this crime in Central Lubbock, East Lubbock, North Lubbock, South Lubbock, Southwest Lubbock. Let's round them up, let's find them, and let's lock them up and stop it. You have to make a determination that it's going to end, and you end it. And at the same time you're doing that, you also recruit more police to step in. We'd have to have DPS to help us, we don't have enough troops. It's like when we had George Strait here, it was. It was very calm here, you know. Why they brought in like 60-70 troopers to help Lubbock? That tells you right there where we're at. I don't care what they say. And so we're not that safe, and I want to do something about it. And I will do something about it. I did before, and I'll do it this time.
SL: You mentioned the increased law enforcement present, DPS, during that same week as the George Strait concert. That was part of a statewide initiative to bring DPS into these cities. Is that something that you would want to pursue a conversation with the state of Texas–
I would do anything. Everything. Work with the governor, work with our legislative team, Senator Perry, Speaker Dustin Burrows, and State Rep. Carl Tepper, I'll do anything to get us troops in here to blow them out. And you know, we had over 2 million illegals hit Texas, and they settled in cities. They didn't go out there on the farmland and build houses. They settled in the cities, and we got a lot of housecleaning we need to do here to protect our families and things.
So I want to, I want you to regress with me to about April this year. And I, I went down, I moved to my mom's house on South Memphis, 9709 Memphis, and we remodeled it, moved there, and then City Councilman Brayden Rose stepped down. So we're seeing these problems. I thought, ‘Hey, there's two years left on this term, I'm going to hit it.’ So I went down to City Hall, paid my $100 bill, and filled out the application, and then I get contacted by mail, they rejected me. I thought, ‘What? How can I be rejected in my own city?’ And they said, well I hadn't been a resident at 9709 Memphis to fit the criteria. I looked at the charter, I knew I had been. The charter is your constitution for a community. It's how we run our city, and they said what the state law says, you have to be there six months. State law says – they didn't read it, or they did it on purpose. I don't know what they did. – it says, unless you have a home rule city, which we are, and you have residency requirements, which we do, those will take precedent, which it does, but they decided not to honor that. They did not want me there. And so I went down again with my legal theory, called Up Your Nose with the Water Hose, and I refiled, paid another $100 bill, and again they rejected me, so I had to go hire an attorney. I hired the best one to stay at Texas, and we did a writ of mandamus, which means we bypassed the local district court, went to the Seventh Court of Appeals in Amarillo on appeal, and we filed late Tuesday afternoon, on early Wednesday morning, they took our case in about two weeks they ruled unanimously that I did have a right to be on the ballot. We had interpreted right. The city hall was wrong.
City hall doesn't get to decide who gets to be on the ballot. That is a citizen's right. City hall does not get to decide who they want up there. The citizens decide, and so we beat them in court. And so the question I raise is, why don't they want Gary Boren up there? What are they afraid of? What worries them? You know what worries them? I know what it should be, and I know how to do it, and I'll have more experience than anybody else that's running and that is currently elected on how to handle these kinds of problems, and I intend to do it to the benefit of our community.
SL: When you say you know how to do it, are you talking about some of the budget priorities–?
GB: Water, budget, public safety, dealing with infrastructure, roads, dealing with development. Been there, done that. And have a record doing it, and so they know that I know, and I know all this, all this horse pucky that they go through all these gyrations and motions that may impress people, I flush it. It's horse-pucky. We need to get with it. We're on the verge of some great opportunities here in Lubbock, if we have our business straight, and I believe rates will be coming down soon. And when they do, we better be in a position to grow our city. You cannot keep taxes low if you don't build your tax base. We can do that. We can keep taxes low, and we can build our tax base. We need to get with it.
SL: Data centers have been a big concern for many West Texans. There have been proposals in District 1 and 2, but a facility like that would affect the whole city. Have you thought about what you would want to see from a developer for a data center project?
GB: We've already been working on that on the Brazos River Authority, because we sell water to communities, municipalities up and down the Brazos, and if we sell them x amount of water, we certainly don't want to see a data center, a supercharged super cell data center, come in there and take 40% of the water. The reason data centers look at Lubbock, we have a 100-year water supply, well, they're looking for places to go. And they need water, so where are they gonna look? 100-year water supply, bingo. Hello, Lubbock. But the problem is, we're smarter than that, and we're not going to sacrifice our resources for data centers that just swamp our citizens and put us at risk. You know, we've been there. I've been down that road before. I know how to protect the citizens’ right on that, and I will not let us get into a situation that would put in peril our water supply.
Now that being said, also energy – those things suck up a ton of energy. Well, we've already got the highest rates in Texas on a supply from ERCOT. They come in here, and they tap that supply line, and start taking 30-40% of it. Our rates gonna go up. Can't let that happen either. We're already getting tattooed to the wall. Then they have noise. These big engines, sort of like a turbine engine. Those things, they send out noise like you wouldn't believe. So, you got noise pollution. Then you've got, gosh, we don't know what else.
So the thing is, we have to be very judicious in what we're going to allow, not allow. There are some great data centers, they're not the supercharger type, you know, they're smaller ones, and they don't use that much water, and they're internally cooled, and they provide their own generation, and that's what we need. That's what the mayor is looking at, through LEDA, our economic board, and through P&Z, planning and zoning, to make sure that they stay within our lane, that we things we would look at, and to keep the city manager in that track, where they don't go out fishing for the bigger, the bigger whales, just for a quick bang of money, and then all of a sudden put us at risk.
SL: Something else you brought up, roads and infrastructure. Road bonds, like the ones we saw approved by voters in 2022 and 2024 are intended for large scale projects, while road maintenance is intended to come out of the regular budget, that's more of I believe what we're seeing in District 4. What are your thoughts, or what's your approach to handling street issues?
GB: Well, what we need to do right now is we need to reinstitute the bond committee and have them start studying, completing out the road infrastructure: South University, South Indiana, South Quaker, South Slide, Frankford, Milwaukee, Upland, and getting that completed. If you just do those thoroughfares, you attract investment, tax base, okay? And I mean major tax base.
Secondly, you need to work on the northwest of Lubbock and do the same thing. We need to infill, we don't need to spread out more with sprawl. We need to infill these areas. It helps our schools, it helps our community, it helps us control our cost. And we need to get that bond committee, which is a citizen committee, which is voted on by our citizens, they approve it. That's the best democracy you can have, is voting on it. And let them vote, and present to the citizens, this is what we feel we can afford, and just go through the phases. We need to plan ahead right now, because costs will be coming down. We need to move aggressively and be laying out our plans, what we hope to do. We're behind, we should have already had this group going, in my opinion.
So I have experience doing that. We built Milwaukee, six lanes, out of concrete, ran north and south, and we didn't go to the voters, you know how we did that? We looked internally at City Hall and took it out of their little favorite little piggy banks they have down there, and we paid for that and built it in two years. That's how you do it. And today, Milwaukee, the land and investment around it: $1.2 billion, according to the appraisal, $1.2 billion. That's what happens when you get City Hall lined up to work for the citizens instead of us working for City Hall.
SL: You touched on this a little bit in some of your answers. We constantly hear talk about how Lubbock is a growing city, but talking about something and responding to it are two different things. Where are you seeing some of the impacts of the growth, and how do you think the city should be preparing and responding to it?
GB: Well, of course, traffic, you know, Texas Tech grows, we got to have our thoroughfares. You know, then you have demand for housing. And when you take care of the inner city of Lubbock, inside the loop, you got to protect that and do things that makes people want to stay internally and not just run to the outsides. You need to balance that out, and it can be done. It doesn't take rocket scientists to do that.
And also in our water, once again, our utilities, we don't need to get into a situation where they're jumping high and low and high and low. We need to get that under control and figure out what we can do to buy down the cost of high electricity for our citizens, and I know how to do that, and I will work towards doing that.
And then you know, increasing crime, we can stop that. I have a plan I put together. The mayor is behind all this. He wants to see it take place. He just needs the votes to do it. We can get that done. We can protect our neighborhoods. We protect the biggest investment that people in Lubbock have. You know what that is? Their home. The biggest investment they'll ever make in their life, probably would be their house. What do we need to do to protect that big investment? Keep it from being overtaxed, overregulated, over – fees being stuck and stuck to them, and protect them while they're in their home. We can do that and keep those roads fixed. So those are things I see currently.
SL: Budgets are coming up pretty, pretty quick after the District 4 candidate will take office. Have you thought about what you'll be prioritizing?
GB: To me it’s real simple. We don't have to be like playing a black jacket, a Vegas table, the city manager is a dealer, you know, playing Peter against Paul to see who get Mary, get her money. You know, each department has its priorities. Each service that's provided to the community has its priorities.
Number one priority for me is public safety, so that budget's got to be redesigned to fit that, and first, the money to hire the people. That means there's gonna be a lot of differences between wants and needs, between ‘I want this, but we got to have this.’ You know, there'll be a lot of issues like that, where there'll be conflict of interest and people wanting this and that. Well, we can't be all things to all people. So that's a matter of getting in there and fighting and believing for what you are there for: public safety. If I can't defend you, what good am I? That's my number one job. If I can't keep you safe, what good am I really?
And you know, so then secondly is going to be our water supply. I'll jump on that immediately. I know what it's going to take to build a lake. We do it already with the Brazos. I mean, I've already been down that road many times, and then our roads and infrastructures, we need to get these bond committees reinstituted. All these fit in with the Mayor McBrayer's objectives that he wants to see take place, and I will be working with him and the other city council people real closely to see if we can't come to some kind of agreement to do these.
Do you have any final thoughts as we wrap up?
GB: Yeah, I’ll tell you exactly how I feel about this, Samantha. I know what needs to be done, and if I can't get this stuff done in the right direction, where it's going in two years, I ain’t gonna run again, because I mean I'm not going to sit and waste my life chasing birds, and I know what Lubbock needs. I know what's going to take. I've been down this road before. I've been in three state agencies, I'm doing water for the state, for the governor, and everything he asks us to do, and if I can't get significant progress to see that this is taking place, I sure am not going to re-sign up for this, you know. I'll go out into the blues. So, my commitment is I'm not there to be a beauty queen, I'm there to get a job done. I'm there to win, okay? It's sort of like Texas Tech football, you want to win, go get the players, right? Well, I want to win, and I'm a player, I know how to win. I've been down this road before. I have experience.
The whole critical issue of District 4 is we have a lot of smart people, a lot of people have been successful, but who has experience to know how to get inside City Hall, redesign, redirect, handle public safety, handle utilities, handle water, taxes – I never raised taxes in my life on any government board, who knows how to do that? – I've been down that road. Nobody else that's running has that experience. I'm the only one. The keyword here: experience. I have that experience. I intend to use it to your good, and hopefully in no more than two years.
SL: Alright, Gary Boren, running for Lubbock City Council District 4. Thank you so much.
GB: Thank you for the opportunity to be here, and I really appreciate the opportunity to serve my city.
You can find KTTZ's interviews with other candidates in the special election here.
Early voting runs June 15-23 and Election Day is June 27.