John Ryan, who was the District 2 council member in 2014, has just won the District 4 City Council seat.

Ryan moved to Denton County in 1983 and has lived in the city of Denton since 1993. He said he worked in food service after college, then worked as a project manager for Walker Engineering until 2002, and is now self-employed. He also served on the Planning and Zoning Commission from 2009 to 2011.

 “All of my life experiences have been sort of a combination of analytical and creative,” Ryan said. “It definitely helps while on the council.”

Since leaving the council, he said he began to focus on water conservation efforts.

 “We have started making some changes but there are some new things that could be done that are currently not allowed by code.”

Denton currently allows rainwater recovery for irrigation. Ryan said greywater, which comes from a home’s sinks, showers, tubs, and washing machine, is another possible source.

“You can only do that if you allow it on new homes because you have to plumb the house differently,” Ryan said.

He’d also like to see the council incentivize people to use drip irrigation as opposed to pop-up sprinklers.

“Drip irrigation is a much more efficient way of doing things.” Ryan said. “There’s numerous other places in the code we can adjust to encourage water conservation. I’m not saying we need to make people use greywater, I’m just saying we need to allow it to happen.”

Like many candidates, Ryan said he thinks the council should change building codes to make it easier for new businesses to come to Denton.

“When you send in a revision, you’re supposed to check to make sure they revised what was wrong with the original,” Ryan said. “Instead, the city will come back on the second revision and find something they missed on the first one.”

He gave Beth Marie’s Unicorn Lake location as an example of a business that got caught in that cycle.

“That’s also costing the city, because you’re not getting that sales tax revenue,” Ryan said. “There’s some delays on our system that are more because of the change of culture in combination with the code.”

Ryan also said the state of Denton’s roads is always an issue, but District 4 in particular will be greatly affected.

“In district 4…most of the north-south roads are TxDOT roads,” Ryan said. “They’re all either under construction or about to be under construction, and that will cause major headaches in the next couple years.”

Header Image Design by Christopher Rodgers

Header Image courtesy of John Ryan's Facebook Page