Why Marty McVey wants to be Houston's next mayor
HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Marty McVey is a private equity executive and served as director of the Untied States Agency for International Development. He has never run for public office and says not being a career politician is his advantage.
"The city of Houston is losing to other cities in Texas, like San Antonio and Dallas, in economic development. Quite frankly, we are also losing to the suburbs, Sugar Land, The Woodlands, Pearland," McVey said, "so I want to be very aggressive in recruiting technology and manufacturing businesses to come directly to Houston."
McVey's next issue to tackle is the city's unsustainable pensions.
"This system cannot be saved quite frankly. I think we need to fund it fully, by bonding the debt. It is debt for debt, but quite frankly, we don't have a choice. And then make a new deal moving forward with the pensioners, the city employees, the firefighters and police officers," he said.
The 41-year-old also says Houston's street and drainage program, Rebuild Houston, has been mismanaged.
"I believe that 30 percent of the funds that are collected should be returned to the neighborhoods. The neighborhoods should be improved in a way that makes people want to live in our city, because they have good streets and good infrastructure," he said.
You can watch the full Marty McVey interview online below. We will profile the mayoral candidates leading up to the first televised mayoral debate. ABC-13 is co-hosting the debate with Univision on September 10. We will live stream the debate on our website at 6pm that evening and broadcast it on ABC-13 at 10:35pm that same night.
If you have a specific question for a candidate, send us a video of you asking the question and we may use it during the debate. Simply mail it to news@abc13.com.
