By George Slaughter
Ward A Council Member Frank Carroll resigned his position Friday after selling his house and moving to a family farm in Waller County.
“Our house closed, and we had to make a decision as to whether to save the family farm or let it be sold to someone else, and we decided it was important to preserve that legacy,” Carroll said.
After the council accepts Carroll’s resignation, it will have 20 days to find a replacement. Mayor Bill Hastings will nominate a candidate for council approval. The appointed council member would serve the remainder of Carroll’s term, which runs through May.
Being appointed is a process Carroll himself knows. Then-Mayor Chuck Brawner appointed Carroll in September 2018 to the Ward A seat formerly held by Gary Jones, who resigned that post for personal reasons. Carroll was elected to a term in his own right in May 2019, along with Hastings and Ward B Council Member Jenifer Jordan Stockdick.
As for his proudest accomplishments as a council member, Carroll said he didn’t think that any individual had accomplishments. But he said the council members, working together, had several significant accomplishments. The city rebuilt its drainage infrastructure after Hurricane Harvey, achieved a Class 1 rating for the fire department, built a police substation at Katy Mills Mall, and increased overall public service funding while bringing local property taxes down.
“We have had a historic two years for Katy, and I’m glad to have been a part of that,” Carroll said. “I’ve worked with two mayors and a great city council that has worked very well together.”
Carroll said he thought Katy’s biggest challenge going forward is finding cohesiveness between residents in the newer and older sections of katy. Residents should be “finding a way to create a shared legacy going forward of honoring competing legacies or ideals about what Katy is and should be.”
It’s important that Katy residents do this for the city to move forward, he said.
“If the city wants to continue to thrive, they’re going to have to meld those legacies together,” Carroll said, adding that Katy will “never go back to being rice fields laced with geese.”
Carroll, an attorney, recently joined Winstead PC, a Houston law firm. He was previously a partner at Roberts Markel Weinberg Butler Hailey, where he headed the firm’s appellate law group. He earned his law degree from the University of Houston. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California-San Diego.
The appointed council member will serve alongside Ward A Council Member Janet Corte, who won reelection earlier this month.