Monday, April 7, 2008

Irving Mayor Herbert Gears rises above many trials

By Minnie Payne

Irving Mayor Herbert Gears

IRVING — Herbert Gears, 45-year-old mayor of Irving, attended 16 different elementary schools before entering fifth grade in Huffman, Texas and had to leave a physics scholarship at the University of Houston after two years, but he didn’t let it get him down.

“My mother married at age 17 and quickly had three children, me being the middle child,” Gears said. “She lost the children to my father, because she was a drug addict.”

The saga goes, as Gears tells the story, that after his mother’s and father’s divorce they both quickly remarried and six months after his mother’s marriage, her second husband fell asleep on the sofa while smoking and burned the house down, killing him. Six weeks later Gears’ father and stepmother were killed by a drunken driver. Gears was four years old, and he and his two sisters were taken to live with his paternal grandparents.

“Two weeks after dad’s funeral, mom showed up with a gun and took us away,” Gears said. “We didn’t see our grandparents again for 27 years.”

Gears said that his mom married six more times before he left high school and for the remainder of her life abused drugs, finally committing suicide at age 63.

“There was one saving grace,” he said. “Mom was very strict and insisted that we make good grades and that saved my life.”

Gears graduated from Hargrave High School in Huffman in 1980. He attended the University of Houston for two years on a physics scholarship, supporting himself by working for Automatic Data Processing, Inc.

“In 1983, I had to leave school, because Automatic Data Processing transferred me to Dallas,” he said. “In 1990, my wife and I started our own financial planning business, Creating & Managing Wealth [CMW], in Las Colinas.”

Gears states that about 90 percent of his time is spent on mayoral duties and that if it weren’t for his wife’s involvement in their business, he couldn’t handle it.

“Occasionally, there are conflicts for my time and if that occurs, usually Mayor Pro Tem Allan Meagher goes in my place,” he said.

Gears said that he makes $600 a month for being mayor and donates that to Calvary Church, an Assembly of God church.

“I decided to run for elected office in the sixth grade when my class was required to read the Warren Commission Report, and I was so enraged that I wanted to be a political activist,” he said. “I wanted to be a college student standing on the street protesting what I disliked about society, but unfortunately that never came to pass.”

He said that in 1993, he accidentally saw a school board meeting on local cable and they were arguing, and he said to himself that he could do that, so he decided to pursue an elected position.

“I started getting involved in the community and got myself appointed to the [Irving] Planning and Zoning Commission where I served for one year and then resigned to run for city council,” he said. “I lost, but ran again two years later and lost again.

“I ran again two years later and even though I wasn’t supposed to, I barely won in a runoff election against a very popular person.”

Gears served on the Irving City Council for six years, but lost his reelection campaign at the end of his term.

“I was gone for one dark year and returned the next year, 2005, and participated in a seven-man mayoral race and easily won,” he said.

Gears is proud of several different accomplishments that have occurred during his term as mayor.

“Clearly my greatest success during my term as mayor has been the lowest crime rate in the history of Irving,” he said. “We also demolished over 1,000 substandard apartment and hotel units in the last three years.

“We opened Irving Health Center, a 40,000 square foot Parkland Hospital satellite clinic that serves seniors and children who have no insurance, on which I worked 10 years.”

He commented that he convinced the competing hospital, Baylor, to contribute $500,000 to help pay for the construction of the hospital; got the government to give $5.7 million; the City of Irving contributed $3.5 million, and Parkland Hospital system put in the remaining $7.1 million. Parkland Hospital system now pays over $3 million annually to operate the clinic.

Gears is up for reelection on May 10, and has two challengers, Rigoberto Reza and Roland Jeter, running against him.

“If reelected mayor, I’ll continue to help bring down crime rates; continue to grow the tax base which has grown over 30 percent in the last three years, and continue to lower taxes,” he said. “We have lowered the burden on homeowners over 16 percent.”

Gears said that he likes serving and helping others most about his job and dislikes dealing with people who are racists.

“I have known Herbert and his wife for a long time and had the privilege of proposing him for his first political appointment as Planning and Zoning Commissioner,” said Sharon Barbosa, a retired council woman. “He’s a person of great interest and compassion toward people, one who does a lot for people quietly without other folks knowing about it.

“He’s a generous and charitable person and as a mayor he has shown us that he can approach his job with enthusiasm and a positive attitude about the city’s future.”

Gears has been married 17 years to his wife, Christina.

Related stories

• Overview of Irving mayoral and city council candidate contributions (May 7, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Politics and Government > City Government > Irving
• Politics and Government > Texas > Local Elections