Carrollton mayor up against fellow City Council members in bid for reelection

Polter, a Dallas native who moved to Carrollton in 2002 and works in IT, was elected to the Carrollton City Council in November 2020, previously serving on Carrollton’s Parks and Recreation Board.

Sung, a real estate broker, was elected to the council in May 2017 following his service in various community roles, including the board of directors for the Carrollton/Farmers Branch Rotary Club and the City Capital Improvements Plan Advisory Committee.

The Denton Record-Chronicle caught up with the candidates to ask them to share a little more about their vision for the city ahead of voting May 6. Their responses are included below in alphabetical order and have been edited lightly for brevity and clarity.

Steve Babick

AGE:  56

BIRTHPLACE:  Los Angeles County, California

EDUCATION (university, year graduated, degree): Bachelor of Science in finance, Florida State University, 1988; MBA, Amber University, 1993; Leadership Certificate, Harvard University, 2022

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:  Chief Financial Officer (35-year seasoned finance and operations executive with large public and small/mid-cap private entities, including Texas Instruments 

WEBSITE: www.Babick4Carrollton.com

What will your top priorities as mayor be, if elected?

My #CarrolltonPRIDE campaign is grounded on fiscal transparency and accountability to be the community that families and businesses want to call home.  Priority details include:

P – Public Safety:  To keep our people, places and things safe and secure through investment in police and fire to ensure our first responders have the tools of the trade to keep us safe and to ensure we have their back to keep them safe.

R – Redevelopment Renaissance:  Turning what was “old” new again and fueling our renaissance to bring vibrancy back to Carrollton with bustling, cosmopolitan shopping and commercial spaces and quiet, safe neighborhoods.

I – Infrastructure:  Ensuring care, maintenance and rehabilitation of infrastructure that is seen and unseen, including streets, alley, walks, sewage, water, facilities and cyber networks to ensure a sustainable community that can support a thriving local economy as an asset vs. liability.

D – Diversity:  Leveraging our diverse community as an asset to attract investment catering to our broad ethnic population and allowing all to live in harmony with one another.

E – Economic Development:  Leverage ROI-Based AAA policies and fiscal budgets to ensure we attract investment, to grow the tax base, fuel sales & use tax and keep the tax burden on residents low.  

What do you think is the biggest issue facing Carrollton residents today?

Managing growth in a landlocked city is among the biggest challenges facing Carrollton, including infrastructure, public safety and homeless sprawl from Dallas.   The fundamental levers to manager growth and the challenges that come with it require a robust tool chest of resources to ensure our public works and public safety organizations have the tools to keep atop maintenance, crime (including fentanyl awareness) and our Economic Development organization leverages AAA-rated tools to bring forth investment, jobs and a strong local economy to balance the sources and uses.   

DART and urban sprawl have brought outside influences into Carrollton that we must continue to work to ensure fair enforcement to avoid displacement of homeless from Dallas, where resources exist into the suburbs where they find themselves in encampments and public spaces without the resources of shelter.  We will continue to work with Metrocrest Services and the county shelters to ensure a compassionate response for these families and individuals to find the help, short-term and long-term housing and food resources they need, while encouraging upskilling and training to become viable residents.  Metrocrest Services as our core partner does a wonderful job here, and we will continue to support their mission.  

Why are you the best person to lead Carrollton? 

As the current mayor, I bring the results-oriented experience, the proven expertise to navigate the budget to optimize results and proven leadership and network to keep my finger on the pulse of local issues.

Seeking re-election, I will build on the success, to ensure we deliver against the strategic goals and priorities.   The highlights of my current mayor term and the momentum we will continue to build upon, include:

• Largest tax rate decrease in a nine-year series since first being elected — CPI adjusted tax cut on average.
• Increased homestead exemption for senior citizens and disabled households, resulting in a true reduction to property tax bill.
• Largest investment in infrastructure in 20+ years at 3X 10-year average and 2X the prior year.
• Funded largest wage increase for our city employees, ensuring we attract and retain a qualified, motivated team to serve the community.
• Funded additional first-responder positions and fleet redundancy — the people and tools to keep us and them safe.
• Incentivized the $1 billion private  www.TrinityMillsStation.com front-door Renaissance Development (IH35-PGBT) via a DART agreement and a small-city incentive that will generate $17 million annually in full-build property tax — reducing burden on residents, generating 3,500-5,000 new, high-wage jobs to Carrollton.

Adam Polter

AGE: 55 

BIRTHPLACE: Dallas 

EDUCATION (university, year graduated, degree): Devry University, BS in Technical Management 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:  Army combat veteran (1987–91) 

More than two decades of enterprise information technology expertise focused on IT Infrastructure, IT operations and cybersecurity. Most recently as the director of IT infrastructure for a multi-state bank. 

WEBSITE: adampolter.com 

What will your top priorities as mayor be, if elected? 

My top priority is kicking fentanyl out of Carrollton as this drug, and other opioids, have taken the lives of too many of Carrollton’s children. This is also part of my public safety priority. We need to right-size our police department, address those issues that are limiting our ability to recruit and retain officers, and better leverage available technology to keep Carrollton safe. 

Another top priority is combatting the rising cost of living in Carrollton. This includes addressing Carrollton’s failure to create new affordable housing units when opportunities have arisen. This includes maximizing the value of Carrollton’s public transportation partnership with DART and reviewing new options with DCTA. This also requires establishing a property valuation cap for seniors and those on fixed incomes so that we are not taxing them out of the homes that they have lived in for one or more generations. 

Finally, Carrollton needs to modernize and shake itself free of the stagnation and status quo! We’re surviving when we should be thriving. In these competitive times, we need to take bolder, more innovative steps when it comes to economic development, redevelopment, diversity and inclusion, arts and culture, and curating an identity that will help Carrollton compete. 

What do you think is the biggest issue facing Carrollton residents today? 

This is too important to guess at, thus my team has actually polled Carrollton’s voters regarding their top concerns. Their top issue, consistently, is public safety. As is the case in most cities, public safety is the single largest budgetary item, which tells you that this has to be the number one priority for most cities, Carrollton included. For starters, Carrollton has been short-handed by more than 20 officers for years, and we are operating at a level of 11.1 officers per 10K resident when, according to the FBI, a city of our size averages 15.9 officers per 10K residents. 

To get us where we need to be staffing wise, we need to retain our trained officers by reviewing our pay scales and benefits packages, and we need to become more innovative in our approach to recruiting. Put bluntly, the concept of trying to do more with less simply cannot be applied to public safety. We need greater redundancy, overlapping beats, officers available to patrol our parks and our streets, and we need to maximize the benefits of technology such as the Flock cameras to help us detect, deter and to solve crimes and keep Carrollton safe. 

Why are you the best person to lead Carrollton?  

Courage. Courage, sadly, is something I’ve seen missing from the Carrollton City Council for the two-and-a-half years that I have been serving. I’ve very rarely seen council members, or the mayor, stand up for what they believed was right for the city, when doing so meant they might end up in the minority. I’m proud that in my time on council, I’ve registered more votes in the minority than any former or current council member. As mayor, I would encourage this level of autonomy and zealous advocacy from our council members. I would make it safe for them to vote in opposition and vote their conscience.  

I also bring a history of service, volunteering hundreds of hours with Metrocrest Services, Denton County COVID vaccine clinics, Denton County disaster response, with the Children’s Advocacy Center, and others. Unlike my opponent, I have learned directly about the issues that matter to Carrollton’s residents because that is what is required to best serve our city. If this resembles what you expect from your elected leaders, please go to https://adampolter.com and support this campaign as the results of this election will have ramifications throughout Denton County. Don’t sit this one out! Thank you! 

Young Sung

Sung did not respond to multiple inquiries from the Denton Record-Chronicle. This data is pulled from public records and Sung’s campaign website.

EDUCATION (university, year graduated, degree): Bachelor’s degree in business management at Tennessee's Maryville College, MBA from LeTourneau University. Sung pursued legal studies at USC. 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:  Sung is a licensed real estate broker and certified court interpreter and mediator.

WEBSITE: youngsungformayor.com