With Gratitude
Meet John
My West U story begins with my grandparents, Marvin and Josephine Allen, who purchased a small, one-story red brick house on Plumb Street in 1941. Following my grandfather’s untimely passing, my grandmother worked to provide for herself and my mother, Georganna, allowing them to remain in West U. That Plumb Street house is the one that my father went to when courting my mother, where I spent countless happy hours as child and which became my home in 2003. Though the original house is now gone, that property, and the community that surrounds it, have been home to me and my family for the past 80 years and West U will always be a fundamental part of who I am.
The examples of my grandmother, my mother, my wife Susan, and other members of my family are what led me into public service, first as an attorney, then through volunteerism with organizations such as Leadership Houston, the Rotary Club of West U (serving as both a Director and the Chair of the Club’s efforts in support of West U Little League’s Challenger Baseball program), the Good Neighbor Team, the West U Garden Club and as a two-term member of your City Council from 2019 - 2023. I am also honored to serve as President of the Sentinel Club, a 40-year-old organization that raises funds to support the police officers, firefighters and emergency medical services personnel of West U, as well as their families.
My own family history has also given me an understanding of the impact that the growth of our City has had on residents, both old and new. While our City has many citizens who are in the upper echelon of income earners, we have just as many who live on fixed incomes, are single parents, are small business owners, have expensive health issues, or are paying off student loans. And, as with the rest of the country, we have residents who have lost employment or found their incomes curtailed in the past year and may wonder what the future holds for them. Though high property values fund the excellent services and amenities that our City provides, the arrival of the annual tax bill forces a good number of our residents to wonder just how much longer they will be able to continue to live here. As such, the funds taken from our taxpayers are not a “bucket of money” to be used at will to fund special interests, but rather a sacred public trust, of which the City’s elected officials must ever be watchful guardians.
