Susan O'Connell Gragg Photo by Mary Candee

(Three candidates – Susan Gragg, Jeff Judson and Dorothy Jo Weiss – are vying for a pair of open seats on the Olmos Park City Council. Councilman Ron Tefteller’s seat will open up after his ascension to the mayoral post following Gerald Dubinski’s retirement. Also up for grabs is the seat occupied by incumbent Judson, who was appointed last year after his predecessor’s mid-term resignation. The election is scheduled for May 10. The North San Antonio Times will spotlight each candidate over the coming weeks.)

Behind the scenes, longtime Olmos Park resident Susan Gragg has immersed herself in community civic affairs. Now, she wants to achieve more official status as a city council member.

“The reason I want to run is I love this city, where I’ve lived for more than 20 years,” she said. She’s resolved to knock on every door in announcing her candidacy. “I’m going to try to cover the city and meet neighbors I haven’t met yet. We have 800 families in Olmos Park, but I think it’s possible to do that.”

Gragg exhibits equal enthusiasm in her volunteer work, twice chairing planning committees for the annual Fourth of July parade and Fiesta Family Frolic, and now building a municipal advisory group to revitalize the central business district. An active parent, she is involved in the Alamo Heights Schools Foundation board and the Alamo Heights High School Parent Teacher Organization.

In her envisioned council role, she’s identified potential initiatives: long-term goal-setting, sped-up progress on municipal initiatives and improvement of dialogue between city government and the citizenry.

“I’d like to see more long-range planning for the city,” she said. “There’s a need for better street lighting, an improved business district, more beautification of public spaces. We can accomplish all this if we plan ahead. But if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

She adopts that mantra in helping revitalize the business corridor stretching along McCullough Avenue, helping galvanize members of the once-dormant Olmos Park Business Association pushing for municipal improvements.

Gragg also wants to quicken City Hall’s decision-making pace, citing the decade-long effort to beautify the McCullough traffic roundabout as example. The highly visible circular traffic-slowing device finally due for makeover with a fountain and landscaping thanks largely to current councilman Sean McNelis, who chaired a committee on the initiative.

“Current council members are starting to build momentum,” she said of such dynamics. “I am a team player, and feel I can bring that to the council.”

She also singled out Councilman Jeff Judson for pushing to create railroad quiet zones toward improving quality of life. With her Paseo Encinal home dead-ending at such a crossing, she can attest to the need for those zones and would contribute to the effort, she said.

Gragg suggested such grass-roots issues resonate with her goal of making City Hall more accessible. She pointed to Councilman Joe Izbrand’s e-mail blasts to constituents as an effective tool, saying the approach should be adopted citywide with hard-copy version for traditionalists. While city staff prepares a gazette, the information sometimes is dated by its release: “By the time you get it, it’s old news.”

Her solutions would involve connecting with neighborhood associations and pushing for a marquee on a planned municipal complex, providing headlines to motorists on city goings-on: “I think our city could be more proactive on letting people know what’s happening. Some people are unable to sit for two hours at council meetings to find out what’s going on.”

While she remained palpably enthusiastic for her community, Gragg nonetheless called for some fine-tuning: “We’re going in a positive direction, but I think there’s room for improvement. I like the direction we’re moving in but we need to build on that momentum.”