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Candidate Q&A series | Wallace Mayor
Incumbent Jason Wells
As Wallace continues to grow, so do the challenges and opportunities facing its leadership. In this Q&A, MayorJason Wells discusses the town’s biggest accomplishments to date, including new business development, park openings, and critical infrastructure projects.
Looking ahead, he outlines his priorities for the next four years, with a focus on managing growth, expanding public services, and ensuring that Wallace remains a place where families, seniors, and essential workers can afford to live and thrive.
Looking back on your time as Mayor of Wallace, what achievement stands out most to you, and how has it made a measurable impact on the community?
During my time as mayor, we have been able to recruit new businesses and development to town, open up Farrior Park, and starting construction of a new fire station. All of these things add to the quality of life in our town and will be vital as we continue to see more and more residential development come to town.
Looking ahead to your next term, what are your top three priorities for Wallace, and how were they shaped by the concerns you’ve heard from residents?
Our priority over my next term will to be to continue to improve the town’s infrastructure. With new growth comes increased demand on our waste water treatment plant so we need to ensure the longevity and plan for additional capacity in the future. We will continue to replace aging water and sewer lines. Increased traffic in the tin city area will mean working with the state to widen Hwy 41 in the future but must start planning now.
Wallace is seeing rapid residential and commercial growth. How will your administration ensure that infrastructure like roads, water and public services keeps pace without falling behind?
As I mentioned with the rapidly growing Tin City area of town, we must work to get that road widened and also provide safe walking paths up and down that corridor for increased foot traffic in the area. Our water and wastewater treatment plants are the number 1 priority to maintain and plan for expansion as we grow. Those plans have to start now to ensure continued future growth.
As property values and taxes rise, housing affordability is becoming a concern. What steps is the town taking to ensure that young families, seniors, and essential workers can continue to afford to live and thrive in Wallace?
As we gain more and more interest in home construction in the Wallace area, we are constantly working closely with multiple developers to ensure we offer a variety of housing at every price point to ensure that everyone is able to make Wallace their home.
Growth brings funding demands. How do you plan to finance new infrastructure projects in a way that’s fair to current taxpayers?
We continue to look at all funding available at both a local, state, and federal level and have been successful for securing grants for infra structure, the repurposing of our Clement School Building, park, airport development. We will continue to explore all of these avenues and ensure that increased revenues from growth are invested back into our town to improve all services provided by the town.
Many residents are calling for higher pay for frontline staff. Do you support wage increases across departments? If so, how would you fund them?
In regard to wages for frontline staff, we evaluate our pay scale annually for all employees to ensure that we are providing adequate and competitive pay. Our people are our most valuable asset.
As Mayor, how do you strike a balance in the town budget between critical services like fire protection and sewer systems, and quality-of-life investments, such as parks, greenways, and bike infrastructure?
I work closely with department heads, the town council, our town manager, budget committee and also evaluate citizen input when a annual town budget is implemented to ensure that town services are as adequately funded as possible. There will always be more needs than we can afford, but we do our best to take input from all those listed above to ensure that we provide the services needed to both grow and keep our community safe.
