PALLADINO
By WES FERGUSON
The well-manicured woman was not expecting to find voting machines.
She marched into Kyle City Hall on Tuesday morning, noticed the row of booths lining the back wall of a side room, and froze.
“Are you guys voting today?” she asked. “Wow, I didn’t know anything about that.”
Elections administrators had more luck when Kyle resident Michael Houston stopped by a few minutes later. Houston never misses an election, he said. It’s his constitutional right.
On Tuesday he brought along his toddler, Paige, for what amounted to an early civics lesson.
“People complain things aren’t being run right, and then they won’t show up to vote,” he said.
In Buda, meanwhile, Courtney Palladino and her husband Jim were headed to breakfast when Jim convinced his wife they should swing by City Hall and cast their ballots.
“He said we need to be more aware of where our taxes are going,” Courtney said. “It’s my responsibility to make decisions. Otherwise we let others make them for us.”
As the Palladinos left City Hall, dark rain clouds were rolling in from the west. The two candidates for Buda’s open City Council seat were milling around by the street corner.
The driver of a red pickup truck stopped in the middle of the road, rolled down his window and called out:
“Hey Bobby, you got an umbrella?”
“No sir,” replied former mayor and current council candidate Bobby Lane.
“You’re gonna suffer, baby,” the driver yelled back. He laughed, and he drove on down Main Street.
