Meet the Candidates: College Station City Council Place 2

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) - On the ballot for College Station City Council Place 2, to serve a four-year term, David Levine and William Wright are going head to head for the position.

David Levine moved to the Bryan-College Station area back in 2008 from Houston and is now the general manager of Mercedes Benz of College Station.

“I bring my experience with operating businesses and being a job creator here in College Station, and seeing the development challenges of turning rural land into retail space,” Levine said.

It was during the pandemic that he decided to run for city council.

“You start to watch some turmoil, some turnover, some churn, and at that point, I made the decision. I said ‘how do I give back, how do I help everybody else and myself with the skills and abilities that have been given to me by being here?’” Levine said.

William Wright grew up in College Station, is a Texas A&M graduate, and works at Reynolds and Reynolds.

“I’m on the Planning and Zoning Commission, I’m on the College Station Historic Preservation Committee, I volunteer through the community action response team,” Wright said.

He wants to give back to the community where he has lived his entire life and where his son will grow up.

“I think it’s part of civil engagement and civic duty to run for these positions, especially volunteer ones such as city council positions to try and make a difference,” Wright said. “In addition, my son, he’ll be 11 soon and he wants to go to Texas A&M and so he’ll be here at least another decade, and so a lot of the decisions I’ll make in being young and having a young family, I’ll see these decisions carried out.”

Both Levine and Wright are focusing on the growth of the city.

Levine says his top priority is safety.

“I know there are some needs in talking to both the police and fire departments, whether it comes from staffing, commensurate pay for cities of our size,” Levine said. “As we grow, we’re going to need to work on fire staffing and the new fire codes from the federal level. I know we have a need for ambulance, at least one station. I would love to bring back the ability to have all of our firefighters trained as paramedics.”

Wright says his top priority is housing.

“I can always make sure that we are pushing forward development that helps people find housing and that’ll be all sorts of different kinds of housing,” Wright said. “While I’ve been on Planning and Zoning, I’ve tried to do everything I can to vote in favor of different ordinances, shared housing ordinance, or the proposed middle housing zoning that will allow different styles of homes to come into the area and make it a little bit easier for developers to build those.”

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