Purcell busy as Houston mayor

HOUSTON — Houston’s new mayor said he wasted no time getting down to business.

Houston City Council elected Purcell from among its ranks to serve as mayor during its regular meeting Monday. At the same meeting, the council chose recently elected councilman Lance Wilson as deputy mayor.

Wilson said Purcell was the only councilmember who expressed an interest in being mayor. Still, the vote came down 5-2.

“Five for Roger and two for me,” Wilson said, adding he was surprised there were dissenting votes despite the fact he said flat-out that he didn’t want to be mayor.

Purcell wrested his council seat last year from then-mayor Dale Adams with the stated intention of becoming mayor. Wednesday he said he’d just finished a meeting outlining his goals and priorities to the city’s various department heads.

The day before that, his first as mayor, Purcell implemented a plan to revamp the city’s system for plowing roads, he said. Road plowing is a perennial issue in Houston, one Purcell has been talking about for some time. But Purcell said he had extra motivation.

“I took over right in the middle of a snowstorm,” he said.

With the new plan, Purcell said he’s confident the major roads and arteries for which the city is responsible can be cleared in four hours, so long as everything goes according to plan.

“As long as everybody wakes up at 4 o’clock in the morning and, if not, I told them, I’ll be up at 4 o’clock in the morning on my cell phone,” he said. And if that fails, “I’ll have my tail inside a city vehicle plowing the snow.”

Other priorities are to get together a comprehensive list of projects for which the city will seek state and federal funding, and give city department heads more of a leadership role in their various departments, Purcell said.

“Previous mayors didn’t rely on their department heads enough,” he said.

At least one city employee said the meeting with department heads was productive and she loves the way the city is running these days.

“It looks like we’re going forward in a cooperative mode,” said Carolyn Grabowski, the city’s recently installed treasurer.

Wilson, a retired U.S. Army officer and relative newcomer to city politics, who started his first term on the council Monday, said he’d had no great desire to be deputy mayor. But support from other council members urging him to try for the spot changed his mind.

“I asked my wife and she said, ‘OK, you can be the deputy but not the mayor,’” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.