Background Information

Many of you may be asking the question, "Who is Sam Martin?"

I was born and raised in Valhalla, New York where I graduated from high school in 1971.  After a year at Windham College in Putney, Vermont my family moved to Houston at which time I joined the Air Force and studied in the field of electronics. While stationed at Bergstrom Air Force base I attended Austin Community College to study business management.  After leaving the service I started the first in a series of entrepreneurial ventures which has spanned more than 30 years and included residential & commercial construction, invention development & marketing, manufacturing & distribution, retail operations, a sports park, software publishing, internet services and real estate development.  During my career in real estate development I also completed courses in Real Estate Practise & Principals and Real Estate Law, receiving my license although never actually using it. See Business Resume.

Now 52 years of age, I continue to work in the field of computer & internet services and do a limited amount of real estate development.  At least half of my time is dedicated to community service in one capasity or another as you will read below.  I am unmarried and do not have any children of my own, however, I emotionally adopted the children from my last relationship and take great pride in their achievements.  Laura Bredeson, 21, is a senior in the McCombs School of Business at UT where she has maintained a 4.0 gpa continuously.   David Bredeson, 19, recently graduated High School in Marble Falls where he was an award winning cross-country runner.

Those who have been here for a dozen years or more will have known my parents, David & Patsy Martin.  From 1978-1989 my father served on the Board of the Lake LBJ MUD.  The last nine years of which he served as Chairman of the Board.  When he died in 1990 the Horseshoe Bay community dedicated a park in his honor (Martin Park) on a 5-acre tract of land donated by Wayne Hurd next to the current MUD district offices.

In 1992, my mother and I founded a 501(c)(3) private charity called, "The Martin Foundation" as the heir to our family's estate.  During the past five years, together with a group of friends and neighbors, including Chris Mulvaney, Jerome & Rosanne Davis, Butch & Toby McClaugherty, Pete & Lisa Sausier, BJ & Penny Lloyd, Ted & Peggy Snailum, Bruce & Marilyn Parker, Paul Buckland and others, we have hosted a variety of fund raising activities within the Foundation which made possible a $10,000 donation to the victims of 911 and established a "Horseshoe Bay Police, Fire & EMS Employee Assistance Fund" with a current fund balance in excess of $25,000.

I moved here in 1997 from Houston to care for my mother, Pat Martin, who was also a highly respected member of this community.  She has also passed on as have many of my parents' close friends from the original generation of residents here.  Horseshoe Bay is now in the hands of a new generation of individuals, whose aspirations may differ slightly from those who founded this community, but whose appreciation of this place, is completely consistent with those founding residents' views.

While residing in NW Houston, I purchased all of the undeveloped property and the developer's rights within a semi-established residential subdivision called, "Waldenwood Estates".  The subdivision was divided into three sections, each of which had its own unique set of deed restrictions.   As the developer, with significant financial investment and risk to protect, I had complete control over all of the roads, the entry, utility easements, the signage, architectual control, the right to expand the subdivision and the right to form a property owners association.  In the course of proceeding with that development, as more and more homes were built, I formed a property owners association and served, by election, as its President for the first five years.  Together with the other property owners we established the by-laws of the POA, which included recognition for my needs as the developer to continue to retain certain rights in order to develop Waldenwood according to my vision for the community.  Over time, I conveyed the roads and easements to the POA and negotiated with Harris County Commissioners Court to dedicate the roads to them, whereupon they were completely upgraded to county standards.  I was also responsible for the writing and passing of a modification to the Declarations and Reservations that merged all three sets of sectional deed restrictions into one comprehensive document.   As time went on and my needs as the developer were met by the continuing sale of property, I migrated various other rights that I had reserved to the POA, including architectual control and the right to expand the subdivision.  Midway through the project, the commercial reserve at the front of our subdivision was posted for auction by the RTC.  To protect Waldenwood I purchased that land and immediately subjected it to the subdivision restrictions as well as some additional restrictions on its commercial use.

From that experience, I am very sensative to the needs of the developer and the importance of the developer's role in insuring the manifestation of the original development goals, growth in property valuation and the protection of the subdivision from potentially negative external impacts.  It has also taught me that it is equally as important for the developer to recognize and respect the rights of the other property owners.  When certain rights and authority, necessarily reserved by the developer in the beginning, are no longer essential to the success of the project, as is the case for many things related to Horseshoe Bay, it is imperative that the developer relinquish those rights and pass on that authority along with the responsibilities for administration to the community.  Not only is this the right thing to do for the good of the whole community, it actually relieves the developer of burdens associated with that administration, which costs money, diminishing the profitability of the developer's primary business.

Until I arrived here from Houston, I was a frequent visitor to Horseshoe Bay for nearly 20 years, participating in virtually every 4th of July parade since the first one. I've been attending the Horseshoe Bay parties since the Deck Party was at Charlie and Susie Keiser's house.  Since moving here I have increased my family's investment here significantly as well as having invested a great deal of my time and energy into encouraging economic development and "Smart Growth" within the entire Burnet & Llano Counties region.

In that regard, I served for five years on the Board of Directors of the Marble Falls/Lake LBJ Chamber of Commerce, was twice honored as "Director of the Year", was Chairman of the By-Laws Committee for three years, Chairman of the Technology Committee for four years and an officer the last two years.

In 2001 I began organizing the Hill Country Economic Development Council as a means for all of the communities in the Burnet and Llano counties region to come together to discuss issues that are common to all of us, provide a platform to improve the regional economy by bringing in the products and services that we need and are currently spending our money for outside of this region. It was important for us to find ways to pool our resources, partner on comprehensive planning, share development information, and bolster the security of every neighborhood.  In organizing the HCEDC I invited professionals from all over the region to join an organizational committee and led that group through the creation and adoption of a set of by-laws to define the organization and its operating policies.   Once the organizational structure was defined, I promoted the concept to the qualified member entities and engaged their participation.  The HCEDC is governed by a Board of Directors made up of appointees from the major cities, the three school districts, the two hospitals, the six chambers of commerce and the two county governments in our region.  I have continued to serve on the Board as Vice Chairman since the inaugural meeting in January 2003.  Our Tourism Committee has been instrumental in enhancing tourism acitivity throughout the region, and has been recognized by other organizations around Texas as a model for small rural communities.  Our Real Estate Committee is in its second year of a workforce housing study, in partnership with the Building Industry Association of the Highland Lakes, which has been supported by a project grant from Texas A&M's Mays School of Business for two years and recently received a $25,000 grant from the National Home Builder's Association who believes our "Blueprint for Workforce Housing" can be a replicable model for use by rural communities nationwide.  The HCEDC has a seat on the Burnet County Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund Committee.  This committee reviews the requests for funding from the Burnet HOT fund to insure compliance with state law and the marketing goals of Burnet County.   I am the Hill Country EDC's representative on that committee.

I served for two years on the LCRA Lake LBJ Advisory Panel during which time I was involved in the review and recommendations for the updating of the ordinances related to private docks.  Due to my involvement in an effort to stop the development of a rock crushing plant and quarry on 281 between Marble Falls and Burnet, the repercussions of which were for LCRA to place a moratorium on the issuance of any new permits for quarries related to their Non-Point Source Pollution Ordinance, I was invited by the LCRA to serve on their Upper Highland Lakes NPS Stakeholders Committee to help revise that ordinance.  This is something I am still involved in as there will be addition reviews and recommendations made to the LCRA Board in November.

Earlier this year I was elected as a representative of Llano County to the Board of Directors of the Capital Area Economic Development District.  The CAEDD encompasses a 10-county region surrounding Austin.   In the past nine months, I have served on the CEDS (Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy) Committee tasked with drafting our Five Year Regional Economic Development Strategy which is submitted to the federal Economic Development Administration to insure that we qualify for certain federal assistance.  As such, I endeavored to make sure that our needs in that regard were an integral part of that broader regional strategy.

In 2003 I began advocating the incorporation of Horseshoe Bay.  From my perspective, as someone heavily involved in studying and implementing economic development activities at the regional level, through my founding and serving on the Hill Country Economic Development Council, it was my carefully considered opinion that a confluence of events occurring outside of Horseshoe Bay, based on existing trends, would overwhelm Horseshoe Bay if we failed to act within a fairly narrow window of opportunity.

Throughout 2004 I continued to discuss the idea with other members of the community and elaborate on my position within my website, as the tide of outside influences began to swell.  The POA was still holding the position that there was no need to rush into incorporation.  Believing ever more strongly that our window of opportunity was slipping away from us, in January of this year I drafted a petition for incorporation and began circulating it to gather the necessary signatures.  Learning of this, I was asked to come to a meeting with Ron Mitchell on February 28th and a meeting with the Board of Directors of the POA on March 10th.  In both meetings I expressed my intentions as being: "To bring the discussions about incorporation out into the open and putting the need to make a decision about incorporation on everybody's radar scope".  The POA Board acknowledged that the time had come to call the question and proceeded with the process to bring Incorporation to a vote.

Due to concerns that incorporation was being promoted for the WRONG reasons, I began diseminating my personal opinion about what I believed the reasons to incorporation were and advocating the need for restraint in the city's organizational processes to insure that we continue to recognize the needs of the developer as we transition various rights, authority and responsibility to the community at large.  My Talking Points memo, along with various other postion papers were relied upon heavily by voters in the incorporation election to formulate their personal opinion.  So I believe that the majority of voters who supported incorporation share my views related to what our Village of Horseshoe Bay should do and what it should not do.  The survey that I posted immediately after incorporation has reinforced my belief that people supported incorporation for the right reasons.  View the Survey Results.

My depth of knowledge regarding the interrelationships of the various interests in Horseshoe Bay, my experience in organizing new entities including a dozen or more businesses, a property owner's association and a regional economic development council, together with my extensive research into the mechanics of operating as a municipality make me ideally suited to serve the people of Horseshoe Bay as your first Mayor.  I would very much appreciate your vote of confidence in November and your continued support thereafter.

As a side note, I am related through my father's cousin, to the gentleman named, John Clary, who authored the publication from the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs titled, "The Advantages and Disadvantages of Incorporation of a City".   This guide was referenced often by the members of the POA serving on the incorporation committee.  Unlike them, I have had extended consultations with John about that subject and how it relates to Horseshoe Bay.  He has also referred me to a variety of other experts who provide consulting services to municipalities.  He continues to be a personal consultant on matters related to the organization and operation of a municipality.  He has offered to conduct a free workshop for our initial city council members, something that he does frequently on a fee basis.  It is my intention to take him up on his offer if I am elected.

If you have a question or a comment, please E-Mail Me.

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