I sit in the middle of a group of about 50 people who are all very angry at the government. The issue at hand is the pay raise for the five men sitting on the city council in the next room.

Each resident has their name called and one by one they slowly make their way to the podium in the next room to vent their ire at the city. We watch it all on the big TV in our room. Lots of math is used to describe how terrible the city council is. Here in the cheap seats, big numbers and dramatic statements get applause. Jokes at the council’s expense get bigger applause.

During the short intermission, the group of people quickly becomes chatty. The noise of a well-connected group swirls around me as I sit picking up snippets of conversation here and there. The talk is of grandchildren and baseball and the other day-to-day details of life in a small town. When the city council comes back they return to the parade of angry yelling people.

One resident notes that the city budget is high for a town this size, before complaining about the poor condition of the streets. (FYI – the city budget is very detailed and has a lovely Pareto analysis of street repair priority. It’s great bedtime reading, and it’s getting voted on next week, so you should be reading it.)

These people are angry about $1000 per month per council member. That’s enough money to rent a very small apartment and maybe cover utilities. For the work of having to sit there and listen to a stream of abuse for two hours, the city council votes to increase their pay to cover room but not board. Room and board are old concepts but they remain a good measure of cost of living. Here in Taylor, I’d estimate room and board to be about $2000 a month per person. (When I lived in downtown Austin the cost of room and board was closer to $4000 a month per person, which is why I don’t live there any more.)

One older woman talks about how her social security is $1300 a month. There is no applause. I worry for her.

It’s important to understand what city government does: it manages the built environment. That’s a fancy way of saying that it manages the land and what gets built on it. County, State, and Federal governments have broader powers, but the City of Taylor’s main function is to manage what the city looks like. The majority of the city budget is managing infrastructure: water and wastewater, roads and parks. The majority of the meetings are about zoning and what people are allowed to do on their respective properties. The city cannot change the price of food or gas, and housing costs have far more to do with land value speculation and supply chain costs than any particular city council policies.

In the parking lot after the meeting a woman is yelling “Taylor is ruined” over and over. These people are scared. They see themselves being left behind as Taylor changes, so they try to hold back the change as much as possible for as long as possible.

Holding back the changes does not solve the problems. Samsung is not going away. Money is coming here, and Taylor should be making the best possible use of that money to create a good place to live. The last five years have seen an incredible change in Taylor’s built environment with major improvements across the city. Drainage, water and wastewater systems, a complete redesign of our city plan, and even street repairs are all being made at a faster rate than at any point in Taylor’s history. These investments will pay big dividends over the next 30 years as Taylor grows, and can help to keep the cost of living manageable.

If you are scared for the future of Taylor then I completely understand – and I agree. I recommend you use that energy to learn about how cities are built. The last 50 years has taught us a lot about city building and how cities grow. The last decade has been even more exciting as we’ve rapidly increased our understanding of what people’s real needs are. Rather than leaving the design of our cities to the random chance of the marketplace, we can make better choices about the environment we want to live in – and that’s exactly what the city government is for.

Central Texas is a beautiful land, and Taylor is a gem of a city within it. I don’t want Taylor to turn into Austin, Round Rock, or Hutto, but if we don’t have smart growth then we’ll end up looking just like those places – giant tracts of suburb separated by dull gray highways filled with luxury cars. We have an amazing opportunity to do better here, if we can overcome our fear.

Every day is your chance to make this city a little better. Make it a good one.