10 Houston mayoral hopefuls pledge to improve City of Houston services in Seabrook area

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10 candidates hoping to be Houston’s next mayor gathered on stage in Seabrook Thursday.  They seemed to all agree on one thing: areas like Seabrook and Clear Lake are getting a raw deal from the City of Houston.

Bill King said “People here are asking ‘what are we getting for our tax money’? Clear Lake residents pay 40 or 50 million dollars in property taxes to the city of Houston, so what are we getting for that money? If Clear Lake City were its own city, it would be the 25th largest city in the state.”

The city pockets those tax dollars, but candidates say it doesn't pave enough of their streets, provide them with enough fire and police protection, or work with their greatest assets. 

Marty McVeigh says NASA is one of those assets. 

“There's a program where NASA is sharing information with the medical center.  The city needs to foster that, and make sure that we are getting more technology out of NASA, from the space industry, to downtown and the medical center.  We can look to NASA for solutions to problems.”

Ben Hall said “We are not pushing this part of the city as much as we should be, or addressing the mobility issues.”  Steve Costello seemed to agree, saying, “I would think that what they want is more road construction so that's a challenge that we'll have.”

State Rep. Sylvester Turner says transportation, hurricane preparedness, and economic development could all be improved, and summed up the relationship between the next mayor and the area with this analogy: 

“The city annexed them and now we need to treat them not as step kids, but as Houstonians in every sense of the word.”