Meeker vows to serve as citizens’ ‘insider’ at City Hall

Jason Meeker was joined by a handful of supporters Wednesday morning as he launched his campaign for Place 1 on the City Council. Meeker said he is running to represent Austin’s neighborhoods and serve as the “insider” for citizens and small business owners at City Hall.

 

“I’m not running because of what Wal-Mart wants to do to my neighborhood. I’m not running just because of that,” said Meeker, who has been involved with the group Responsible Growth for Northcross since its inception. “I’m running because these kinds of things are going to keep happening in neighborhoods all over Austin.”

 

Meeker said he would eventually address issues other than battling the proposed new Wal-Mart at Northcross Mall. He did raise one other issue on Wednesday that he said illustrated the differences between himself and incumbent Place 1 Council Member Lee Leffingwell, which was nuclear power. Meeker reiterated his claim that Leffingwell “came out in favor of nuclear power in the Austin American-Statesman in September,” and said that he would oppose nuclear power.

 

“I’ve already heard that since I brought this issue up, Lee Leffingwell, who was in an editorial that it was stated ‘Austin needs to consider having nuclear power’,  has now come out and back-tracked from that,” Meeker said. “So, which one is it? Is it just that…now that I’ve exposed some political heat on it, he has to go run away from the issue?”

 

When asked about the difference between the meanings of the words “consider” and “support”, Meeker said, “You’ll have to ask Lee to specify his position. It sounded like to me in that article that he was in favor of considering nuclear power for Austin.”

 

Leffingwell, as reported in Wednesday’s In Fact Daily, has said he will oppose a request from the NRG Energy company for Austin Energy to participate in the construction of two new generating units at the South Texas Nuclear Project.