11/12/2025
Wake up, Waxahachie: accountability before expansion
By MARVIN E. “MARK” SINGLETON III
Good government isn’t built in back rooms or by adding more chairs around the table; it’s built by leaders willing to tell the truth in public view.
For more than a century, Waxahachie’s strength hasn’t come from the size of its council but from the size of its character. There was a time when running for city council wasn’t a political act; it was a calling. You didn’t need a campaign manager, a logo, or a slogan. You just needed to care about your town, your neighbors, and the place your children would one day call home.
And often, it wasn’t even your idea. It happened when trusted leaders, business owners, pastors, teachers, and longtime residents reached out and said, “It’s your turn to serve.” That kind of leadership wasn’t about ambition; it was about trust. You didn’t run to be seen. You ran because others believed you could help.
Today, something feels different. More citizens are asking whether their city government truly serves them or serves itself. There’s a growing sense that decisions are made before they’re discussed, that meetings are a formality rather than a forum. People want daylight between ideas and actions. They want a city hall that answers to them, not one that manages them.
That perception, fair or not, is dangerous because once trust slips, unity follows. And without unity, even good ideas lose credibility. Across the country, people already know they can’t trust politicians to spend wisely. In Washington and Austin alike, budgets are balanced on borrowed time, and taxpayer money is treated like play money. If local government can’t prove it’s different, disciplined, transparent, and accountable, then we become just another part of the same problem.
Now, the city is proposing to expand the council from five to seven members and create a directly elected mayor, a sweeping change to Waxahachie’s City Charter that will shape how our government functions for decades. To some, it sounds like progress: more representation, more voices. But if we’re honest, it risks diluting accountability and doubling the politics. You don’t fix civic trust by rearranging the furniture; you fix it by restoring honesty, humility, and fiscal restraint.
If the charter is truly being opened, then citizens deserve a full voice in that process, not just a ballot question after the deal is done. Because once that door opens, it swings both ways.
Before we make structural changes, we must first restore accountability, the foundation of trust. Every ordinance, every budget, and every long-term commitment of taxpayer dollars should stand up to public scrutiny and the test of time. Waxahachie should adopt a sunset provision for every ordinance with a built-in expiration date requiring future councils to renew, revise, or repeal outdated rules. That keeps government lean, not layered.
Before new programs or hires are added, we also need a DOGE, a Department of Government Efficiency, to look at everything in city government and expose waste, abuse, and duplication. Every department, contract, and capital project should be reviewed, audited, and justified in the open. If taxpayer dollars are being wasted, the people deserve to know. If programs work, they should be strengthened. That’s not politics, that’s stewardship.
Next, the city should establish a Citizens’ Budget Review Commission, a panel of experienced residents empowered to examine spending, question priorities, and shed light on where the money really goes. Voters don’t expect perfection; they expect prudence. They want a seat at the table before their money is spent. And that table should never be behind closed doors. Right now, regular council meetings are streamed, but most city workshops, the sessions where key decisions are shaped, are not. Every workshop and briefing should be recorded and posted online for citizens to see. If council members can deliberate in private, taxpayers lose their voice in real time. Sunlight isn’t a burden; it’s the price of trust.
City employees should live under the same retirement systems as the taxpayers who fund them. That’s fairness and real stewardship. Yet the truth is brutal: Waxahachie’s employee pensions are deeply underfunded. The Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement Fund has bounced between 70% and 63% funded in recent years and sits at only 74% today, roughly $11 million short. The broader TMRS plan isn’t much better, at 87% funded, leaving another $16 million gap. Together, that’s more than $25 million in promises without the money to keep them. Still, this council keeps spending like nothing’s wrong, asking voters to trust their judgment while ignoring the numbers staring them in the face.
Let’s tell the truth: it’s already hard enough to get good people to run for office. The problem isn’t a lack of interest in the city; it’s a lack of trust in the system. Too many good men and women don’t want to be part of something that looks and feels like politics. They see government at every level spending recklessly, dodging responsibility, and using taxpayer dollars like Monopoly money, and they want no part of it.
When I first ran for city council, Waxahachie didn’t elect a politician; it elected a manager. I had no interest in politics; my only goal was to restore accountability and bring the same discipline to City Hall that I demanded in business and at the bank. I believed then, and still believe now, that the city should be managed like any sound enterprise: budgets must balance, people must perform, and truth must never be optional.
When the city and school board voted to move to place elections, everything changed. Well-intended but uninformed council and school board members believed they were modernizing local politics, bringing structure, fairness, and progress. What they didn’t see was that they were building a system that rewarded conflict over cooperation. Instead of running for Waxahachie, candidates now run against someone. What used to be a neighbor’s handshake now feels like a campaign pitch. The change didn’t unify the process; it propagated the fight, turning community service into a contest of personalities. And in doing so, it’s discouraged the very people we most need to serve those who care more about the city’s future than about winning an argument. That’s not leadership, it’s loss.
And while our place system isn’t technically divided by precincts, it acts a lot like one. Each council seat becomes its own turf, and candidates begin to feel obligated to serve their slice rather than the city as a whole. That kind of thinking leads to fractured politics and bad spending. Waxahachie isn’t Dallas, and it shouldn’t behave like it.
Lately, something else has crept in, a touch of big-town theater. What used to feel like a front-porch conversation between neighbors now feels like a scripted performance. The same council that once prided itself on open dialogue is reportedly considering reducing the time citizens can speak at meetings. Think about that: at a time when people are hungry to be heard, local government is looking for ways to shorten the conversation. That’s not efficiency; that’s control.
Small towns stay strong when people can walk into City Hall, look their leaders in the eye, and finish a sentence without being cut off by a stopwatch. The day we trade that kind of access for managed optics is the day we stop being a community and start becoming an audience.
For decades, Waxahachie’s five-member council worked because it was balanced and focused, with steady hands, shared trust, and an understanding that service meant stewardship. The system worked because the people in it understood their responsibility to the whole city, not to factions.
Now, by adding two more seats and electing a mayor while keeping the place system, we risk creating confusion where there once was clarity, more voices but less vision, more members but less movement. You don’t make an engine run better by bolting on more cylinders; you make it better by tuning what you already have.
We need capable, proven leaders on our city council. No one should be excluded from running, but good intentions alone aren’t enough. Serving on the council isn’t about attending meetings; it’s about understanding infrastructure, finance, zoning, and the limits of taxpayer patience. It’s about making decisions that may not be popular but are necessary.
Well-intended citizens deserve respect, but without preparation, they risk being overwhelmed or influenced by those who don’t share Waxahachie’s long-term interests. Leadership without readiness can do more harm than good.
And the truth is, more uninformed but well-intentioned individuals on a city council don’t strengthen representative government; they weaken it. When elected office becomes a classroom for people still learning how government works, the city itself becomes the experiment. Decisions that shape roads, budgets, and public safety shouldn’t be made by those still figuring out their role. Representative government only works when leaders understand both the limits of their power and the weight of their oath.
And when they don’t, they often fall prey to personal vendettas, mistaking emotion for principle or popularity for wisdom. A council member’s duty is to the whole city, not to the loudest voices in the room. Ten, or even a hundred, angry residents don’t represent the thirty thousand quiet taxpayers who are working, raising families, and trusting their leaders to act responsibly. Councils that confuse noise with consensus or passion with truth end up governing for the moment instead of for the mission.
That harm isn’t hypothetical; taxpayers are already paying for it. One example is the decision to chase an ISO rating of 1 instead of maintaining the 2 we held for three decades, a change that ballooned staffing, equipment, and costs without lowering a single homeowner’s insurance bill. That’s not fiscal discipline; that’s vanity spending. And it’s part of a larger pattern I wrote about in my October 22, 2025, Wake Up America column, “Waxahachie: When Power Becomes Extortion.” Too often, city processes that claim to protect the public become tools of control. Permits, inspections, and “studies” turn into toll gates on the road to progress, forcing citizens to buy back the very freedoms they already own. When the government treats compliance as revenue and paperwork as power, it stops serving the public and starts exploiting it.
Public service shouldn’t be a sparring match; it should be an act of stewardship. Waxahachie doesn’t need more politicians; it needs more servants.
We need leaders who will stand up not because it’s easy, but because it’s right, people who will put down their phones, shake hands with their neighbors, and remember that this town was built by those who worked together, not against each other.
And once we restore accountability, fiscal discipline, and trust, we can finally have the honest conversation about Civil Service. What began decades ago as protection against favoritism has hardened into bureaucracy. It too often shields underperformance, frustrates leadership, and burdens taxpayers with inefficiency. If Waxahachie truly wants fairness, it must pair it with responsibility. Civil Service should serve the people, not the process.
If we want to fix our politics, we don’t need more chairs at the table. We need more courage in the ones already filled.
Wake up, Waxahachie. Before we expand our council or elect a mayor, let’s prove we can govern with restraint, integrity, and respect for every taxpayer dollar. What happens next will depend on how awake this community truly is.
Author’s Note: The Wake Up America Series is dedicated in grateful remembrance of Charlie Kirk, whose faith and courage inspired me to write, lead, and act.
About the Author: Marvin E. “Mark” Singleton III is the fourth-generation President and CEO of Citizens National Bank of Texas, the oldest independent community bank in the state, and a fifth-generation Texan whose family has served Ellis County since 1832. A lifelong community banker, entrepreneur, and civic leader, Singleton writes the Wake Up America Series to challenge citizens and institutions to exchange comfort for courage, illusion for truth, and busyness for purpose, aiming to restore faith, accountability, and common sense in American life.
