Mayor

Continued from Page #3 chew on the idea of whether or not it would affect his engineering firm With the life expectancy now going up, it was a major consideration and factor of whether or not this would affect his life beyond the mayor's office

"I'm not interested in making a career out of being mayor" said Williams. "I want to come in and help my community and get us moved to another level."

Williams says that Arlington is not in bad shape, but is not to the high level that they need to be and want to be in his opinion that year that eventually became his wife

Soon after college, he was recruited by several engineering firms and while wanting to get married, took a job and fell in love with engineering and the building communities

Williams had his civil engineering fingerprints on projects such as The Ballpark in Arlington (now Globe Life Park) and Cowboys Stadium (now AT&T Stadium), Southlake Town Square, Park Central at US75 and 635, Parks Mall in Arlington. He's also done parks projects such as River Legacy Park in Arlington and numerous others.

"I just really enjoyed it and enjoyed working with the communities and design things " said Williams who decided not to go to law school and instead focus on his engineering career

That career began with the Arlington based company called Graham Associates in 1984, which he later purchased in 1988 Williams has expanded locations to Frisco and Fort Worth as well as Arlington where he still gives strategic direction even while serving his term as mayor of Arlington

It is most common for a mayor to be elsewhere employed while holding office Former mayor of Arlington, Richard Greene, was the manager of Vandergriff Acura while serving as mayor from 1987-1997 It was Greene who reached out to Williams to recruit him along with dozen community leaders to provoke him to run for mayor of Arlington

Williams took a few weeks to greatest special events center anywhere in AT&T Stadium " said Williams "But yet we have not attracted other entertainment venues or other businesses so to speak of to add to that and that's been very frustrating to the leadership in Arlington I think they thought that when AT&T Stadium was built, that they would come And you just can't sit back and wait on that. Other cities are too aggressive.

Williams as an engineer with a leading engineer firm, has been asked to recruit businesses from other large cities One of those that he just finished was Nebraska Furniture Mart in The Colony He says it will be the largest retail

"We have incredible attractions nd venues here in Arlington with Six Flags, Globe Life Park and then the Continued on Page #10 flood the southwest salsa market They currently offer sweet hot or sweet mild salsa, both of which are going on the shelves in the Kroger locations Summit Salsa Company products were originally on the shelves at Diamond Food Stores and then Green Market stores

With Savage using Renfro Foods as a copacker, he does have a nondisclosure agreement with them that protects him from anyone else copying his ratios of ingredients for the salsa.

In a unique industry, Summit Salsa Company's customer is the distributor (which is Jake's Finer Foods of Houston) and not the grocery store although they want to interact with them as they are

"We sell at wholesale price and they cut us a check " said Savage "As far as receiving revenue, that's where it ends for us "

The distributor will put a 13 percent markup on it and sell it to the grocery store, who will put their markup on it to sell it off of the shelf stores to do coupon runs and in-store price reductions "

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"We will work with the grocery stores " said Savage ""We have to pay for all of that "

When asked whether this is a highly profitable business, Savage laughingly said that he would highly discourage anyone from getting in to it

"When I got in this, I just thought you dropped off big quantities at grocery stores and everyone is happy." said Savage. "It's not like that at all, but we will become profitable with this. Maybe not in the first six months to a year, because any profits made will go back into the in-store marketing, but probably starting next year, we will be profitable "

While the salsa is exactly the same lucky mixture that was served at the Howe Church of Christ back in 2011, everything is now outsourced Savage does however do some store deliveries to local Diamonds and Green Market stores, but for the product that will be going to Kroger shelves, he won't see the salsa made or hauled out of the warehouse to the continued from Page #14