Deputy City Manager Bill Howerton (City of Lubbock)
By Shania Jackson
In Jan. 2019, Citizens Tower became the base office for the City of Lubbock’s key officials including Mayor Dan Pope, his assistant Abby Dye and Deputy City Manager Bill Howerton.
Howerton has been with the City of Lubbock for 20 years now but was recently named deputy city manager.
“The biggest project the city has going right now is the public safety aspect under the Lubbock Police Department,” Howerton said.“We are setting up three regional offices and a headquarters downtown for the police department, so we have one in East Lubbock, South Lubbock, and North West Lubbock.”
The City of Lubbock announced a comprehensive 2040 plan on May 22, 2017. According to the 2040 document, the plan will allow flexibility for political, economic, physical, technological, and social conditions.
“We are working on a unified development code to help us fix and make following codes in this area easier for staff and citizens,” Howerton said.
The goal of the unified development code is to update all past codes and make them simple, Howerton said. For two years, Dye worked as Pope’s assistant helping keep him on track throughout the day.
Lubbock police and city officials breaking ground on a police substation in June. (Lubbock Police Department/Facebook)
“I never want to answer on behalf of the mayor, but a big issue the city will have to face soon is homelessness,” Dye said.
Dye said the city is an economic decline right now because of COVID-19 meaning everything they planned for the future will be tough to get done, but not impossible.
“Since this is a presidential election year, there was a lot more publicity around local elections,” Dye said. “Twenty-thousand people voted in 2018 for the mayoral election and this year 80,000 voted.”
In order to keep citizens engaged, the city launched an app called “MyLBK,” which allows people to report missing dogs, code violations, and other issues.
“A lot of times when I am answering the phone, its people calling about things like overgrown lawns or trash issues,” Dye said. “Instead of calling, the app allows you to file your request there.”
Keeping Lubbock moving forward, Dye said the app and future implementation of a city planner position are just ways that highlight the city’s growth.
“This is from 2018 when they finalized the 2040 plan, the planning position is meant to help neighborhoods develop and allow citizens to express what they would like to see within their neighborhoods,” Dye said.
The app and the city planner position will provide more citizen engagement for Lubbock, she said.
“I think that is the most important thing, citizen engagement and for people our age to get involved,” Dye said.
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