Texas town receives multiple awards

Officials in Westlake, Texas must be doing something right. This year, the Fort Worth suburb won four major awards for good governance, according to the Star-Telegram.

First up: The Westlake city council was named the 2012 City Council of the Year by the Texas City Management Association. The association recognized the council’s financial management, outreach efforts and ability to work together to make “difficult decisions,” according to town manager Tom Brymer.

The award recognized “a number of the initiatives we’ve undertaken for a municipality our size,” Brymer told the council during a recent meeting, “including our citizen engagement efforts and transparency, as we grappled with the difficult decision to put an ad valorem tax in place.”

Brymer himself, meanwhile, got the nod as Public Administrator of the Year by the North Texas Chapter of the American Society of Public Administrators. The organization’s president praised Brymer’s willingness to tackle difficult issues, such as successfully pushing for the town’s first-ever property tax. Brymer is also superintendent of Texas’ only municipally-owned charter school.

In another honor, Westlake received the Texas Economic Development Council’s 2012 Community Economic Development Award. The award from the state’s department of Economic Development and Tourism recognizes communities that complete economic development projects.

Westlake was selected as the recipient for cities with under 5,000 population. The award cited Westlake for completing its Deloitte University project.

A fourth honor this year came from the International City/County Management Association, which gave Westlake a Community Sustainability Award for a government transparency program. The program used a newsletter, citizen surveys, email blasts, Web-based videos and other measures to maintain communication with residents.