Candidates for Lufkin’s Ward 3 City Council seat discussed their priorities and approaches to leadership Tuesday night during a public forum hosted by the Lufkin/Angelina County Chamber of Commerce.

The event opened with Chamber president and CEO Tara Watson-Watkins welcoming guests and thanking candidates for their willingness to serve. She told the audience that the Chamber’s goal in hosting the forum was to keep the public informed and help voters get to know the people seeking to represent them.

Outgoing Ward 3 Councilman Brent Watkins, who is vacating his seat to prepare for a mayoral run in 2027, reflected on his time in office and thanked residents for the opportunity to serve. He highlighted accomplishments such as keeping taxes low, expanding partnerships with Angelina College and Stephen F. Austin State University and supporting the city’s downtown revitalization.

Each of the three candidates — Kimberly Abeldt, Misty Ledesma and Linford Lentz — was given two minutes to introduce themselves before answering preselected questions. Before the introductions began, the candidates drew numbers to determine the order in which they would speak.

Lentz, who drew the first slot, has lived in Lufkin for 18 years and works with the Christian Information and Service Center and Carroway Funeral Home. He spoke about his community involvement and volunteer work with several organizations, including the Angelina Arts Alliance and the Kiwanis Club, and said he is running to help improve the community for both current and future residents.

“Everything I do is based on making this a better community — not just for the current residents, but for the future residents, as well,” Lentz said.

Ledesma, who drew second, described herself as a “proud community member” and a master’s candidate in social work. She said her campaign is rooted in community service and her belief in empowering others to lead and create change. She said she hopes to be a voice for residents who often feel unseen, with a focus on safe neighborhoods, opportunities for the youth and the well-being of seniors.

“I’m here to be the voice of those individuals who feel that they’re a little bit unseen. I’m here to be the advocate because their voice is meaningful when decisions are made that impact them,” Ledesma said.

Abeldt, who followed third, is a business owner with 25 years of experience in pharmacy operations and eight years in manufacturing procurement. She spoke about the importance of accountability, process and policy in city government and highlighted her work in philanthropy and education.

“Process and policy are important, and accountability is non-negotiable because we have to ensure the safety, the health and the welfare of our community,” Abeldlt said.

After introductions, each candidate drew three questions at random from a list prepared by the organizers. They were given one minute to respond to each, with no rebuttals allowed. The topics ranged from public safety and infrastructure to economic development and budgeting.

The Full Q&A appears below.

Linford Lentz:
Question 1: How will you work to reduce crime and improve public safety in our neighborhoods?

Lentz: “One of the biggest challenges with any neighborhood is making sure that we have awareness. I’ve really come to understand that I live in a community — and I know just about all of my neighbors, the people who live on either side of me. As a group, we kind of know when we’re going to be there and when we’re not, and we look out for each other. As the city tries to address any problems with crime, it’s important that we listen to the residents in that area. Tell us what it is that you see because they can’t be everywhere all the time. It’s important that those residents aren’t afraid to pick up the phone and call their representatives on the city council and say, ‘This is something that we see as a problem,’ or ‘This is going on in that area or this part.’ We need all of those eyes, and we need everybody’s input to address that.”

Question 2: How will you ensure transparency and communication between the city council and the residents that you serve?

Lentz: "Well, As somebody mentioned earlier, transparency is very important. And in this day and age of social media, nothing is really more important than that you present yourself as exactly who you are. And I think that transparency also boils down to community involvement. It has to do with holding our leaders accountable for the decisions they make. I know at a recent city council meeting they were talking about tax rates and what they wanted to do, and what didn’t get discussed a lot was, ‘OK, we want to do this to the taxes, and here’s what we want to do with that.’ So, I think that it’s important that as we look at those tax dollars, as we look at the budget, and as we look at those things, that we are incredibly transparent about everything and our motivation for why we want to do those things — we want to raise taxes? Well, why do you want to raise taxes?"

Question 3: How do you plan to address issues related to water, sewage and other essential public utilities to ensure long-term sustainability?

Lentz: “How many people survived Snowmageddon? There is so much infrastructure, that when you look at a city of this size, there are so many moving parts — and I’m not an expert on any of those. So what I’m going to do if I’m on the city council is I’m going to listen to the experts. I’m going to listen to the people in the ward that say, ‘Here’s my concern about our water pressure, here’s my concern about the sewage plant.’ I’m going to listen to their concerns, and I’m going to go to the city council and those people that have experts that work for them, and I’m going to say, ‘How do we address these needs?’ ‘What can we do to make this better?’ We saw during Snowmageddon that there were some things that just simply failed. Now, that was a once-in-a-hundred-years experience, but it showed us that there’s things that we need to do to prepare our infrastructure, and that’s all of our infrastructure.”

Misty Ledesma:
Question 1: How do you balance economic growth with preserving the character and charm of our community?

Ledesma: "Well, this one is kind of simple to answer because our city council is already doing that. We are building upon what we have here instead of outsourcing — build what we have, build upon the strengths of our community. That could be going out, setting up some booths, collecting some community data at our many local community events like the Spring Fest or the Bistro, and have a simple three-questionnaire: What would you want to see? And then we could build upon that.”

Question 2: What steps will you take to improve roads, traffic congestion and overall infrastructure for our city?

Ledesma: "Well, number one, I am no expert on roads, but if I don’t know the answer, I will go to somebody that does. So I will do my due diligence and reach out to other council members or even some more educated community members and be like, ‘Where do we need to go? Do I need to go to the city manager? Do I need to speak to the safety department? Do I need to speak to DETCOG? What do I need to do?’ And we just keep that ball rolling and follow up so we can see it done.”

Question 3: What is your stance on funding and supporting local law enforcement, fire and emergency services?

Ledesma: Funding law enforcement is vital, but not in the sense of maybe providing more firearms or more tactical, but we need to focus on their mental health. Because law enforcement goes out and it’s very stressful, and I feel like we kind of see them as superheroes, but we need to invest in them in a holistic manner. So if that is doing some more mental health benefits, something, but I feel like that is a part that we never really talk about, and I think that is very important.

Kimberly Abeldt:
Question 1: How will you ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, and what are your top budget priorities?

Abeldt: "Great question — well formed. The budget — in fact, I spent hours and hours today reviewing it yet again —the city has a great budget; they’ve worked really hard on it, and they’ve each given a lot of great input. The budget itself is really good, but when you look at the budget, there’s a lot of unapplied funds that were budgeted for certain projects that we just didn’t get to. We have a massive turnover rate — and a lot of that comes to pay, which they addressed for the upcoming budget year — so I think we’re going to see improvements on that. But as far as the budget for me, if we left $40,000 in the lot of that budget line item at the end of the year, why did we not get it addressed? We really need to dig and ask those questions so that in the next year we can work ahead of schedule, and we can pursue things that were left undone. For us in Ward 3, it’s about parks, cleanup, medians and their easements.”

Question 2: What are your plans to attract new businesses and industries while supporting existing local businesses?

Abeldt: "Perfect question. I believe very strongly, yes, we need to bring business in, but we also need to accept and help grow the businesses that are here. We have a lot of great businesses. There’s actually available to us — through Angelina College and the Texas Workforce — 374 grants that can help educate and provide opportunities within businesses for them to grow and to learn. I’ll make that, you know, aware of that. And then I would pursue these companies. I told you I work for the largest awards manufacturer. One of the things we manufactured our wood was in Mexico. They’re paying tariffs on that. Who do you think I’m calling? Like, ‘Hey, I’ve got wood mills that are sitting empty. You want to talk about it?’ And so, here nor there, I’m going to pass that information on to the powers that be, because I think there’s a really good opportunity — we’ve got to get outside the box. What we’ve always been is great, but we’re not dead yet. And so, we can pursue our next thing and keep pursuing new business. Get outside of our own boxes and discover what’s out there."

Question 3: Do you support any changes to local taxes or fees? And if so, how would those impact residents and businesses?

Abeldt: "I love that question. The taxes are important. You hear conversations that are like, they’re afraid that Texas is going to take away the right of the communities to adjust taxes. But what I want to tell you is that `% of Lufkin is labeled as underprivileged. 15% of Lufkin is labeled as disabled but not in a facility structure — they’re living on their own; they’re disabled. 25% are 65 and over. Why do I tell you that? Disabled 65 and over taxes are frozen, so that leaves you 60-something percent, right? But then 20% of that is underprivileged, so 40% is going to carry the weight. That doesn’t gel well. And even if your 20% are not property owners, you don’t think that property owner isn’t going to pass down that rent cost? They will feel it, as well."

The forum concluded with an appeal from organizers for residents to vote during the early voting period, which runs Oct. 20-Nov.1, or on Election Day, Nov. 4.

Ruben Ibarra Jr.'s email address is ruben.ibarra@lufkindailynews.com.