JP Listowski for Mayor
NAACP District 1 Forum — Written Responses
I missed the NAACP District 1 candidate forum. The forum was scheduled with only a couple of days’ notice, and I was already committed to attending an event that residents had been planning in their home for months — a commitment I had made personally and could not back out of with that kind of warning.
It was an impossible choice. There was no version of it that didn’t disappoint someone. I chose to honor the commitment I had already made. But that choice meant missing a room full of NAACP members and District 1 residents who had real questions for the candidates running for mayor. That matters to me — and so does answering those questions.
The responses below are my answers to the six questions raised at the forum. As Mayor, I’ll keep my commitments — including the commitment to come back with answers when I can’t be there in person.
— JP Listowski
Question 1
How would you assist our neighborhoods with the increase in the number of homeless population that approach residents on their property?
This is a real concern, and it deserves a real answer. Homelessness is a public health issue and a public safety issue at the same time — and the people experiencing it are still our neighbors.
Part of the truth is that Galveston is carrying a county-wide problem. The county jail is on the island. UTMB is on the island. People get released from both with nowhere else to go, and getting off the island isn’t easy — there’s no quick way to the mainland for someone with no car and no money. So the homelessness residents are seeing isn’t only Galveston’s — it’s the county’s, concentrated here by geography. Any honest plan has to be a county-wide plan, and as mayor I’ll push hard for that conversation at the county level.
Galveston isn’t waiting. Mayor Craig Brown launched the COAST program — Compassionate Open Access to Services & Treatment — in 2023, pairing a Galveston police officer, a fire department paramedic, and a Gulf Coast Center clinician on mental health and crisis calls. It works. As mayor, I’ll be asking the hard questions about whether COAST has the capacity to match the demand — these calls don’t stop at sundown, and the city needs to be honest with itself about whether what we built three years ago still fits what we’re facing today.
The other piece is infrastructure we can act on right here. Street lighting matters — lit streets, lit alleys, and lit pathways change the dynamic of who approaches whose property after dark. There are neighborhoods across this island, including parts of District 1, where the lighting hasn’t kept up with what residents need. As mayor, that’s a citywide infrastructure priority I’ll push the council to deliver on.
Compassion and accountability aren’t opposites. We need both — and we need partners at the county level to make either one work.
Question 2
What makes you different from other candidates to effectuate change in District 1 and the City?
The question deserves a direct answer, not a campaign slogan.
What I bring to this race is a track record of working with people on this council, not against them. I’ve sat at that table before. I know how the city operates, I know who to call to get something moved, and I know that nothing meaningful gets done in Galveston without coalition.
Three things make the difference.
First, listening that turns into a response. Not just hearing what residents say — coming back with answers, even when those answers take work. These written responses are part of that. You asked questions. You deserve answers.
Second, coalition over personality. I’ve worked with this council before. I know how to build the votes to actually move something forward, and I know it doesn’t happen by going it alone.
Third, working with your council member, not around her. Sharon Lewis has been advocating for District 1 for years. The mayor’s job is to amplify that work, not to compete with it.
Effectuating change in District 1 means hearing residents, responding to them, and doing the unglamorous coordination work that actually moves things forward. That’s not glamorous — it’s just the work. And I’m ready to do it — for District 1 and for every other neighborhood on this island.
Question 3
Large commercial trucks should travel on Port Industrial and not on Broadway. How would you help?
You’re right, and the city has had a truck route ordinance on the books for years designed to keep heavy commercial traffic on Port Industrial, not Broadway. The problem isn’t the rule — it’s enforcement, signage, and coordination with the people moving those trucks.
Here’s how the mayor’s office can help.
First, sit down with the Port of Galveston and the Wharves Board and make this a shared priority. A lot of the truck traffic on Broadway starts at the port. If port tenants are routing through Port Industrial — and held accountable when they don’t — the volume on Broadway drops.
Second, work with the police department on enforcement. When residents see these trucks day after day on Broadway, it’s a sign that enforcement isn’t happening at the level it needs to. That can change without writing a new ordinance — it just takes making it a priority.
Third, Broadway falls under state jurisdiction, so the mayor’s job is to make sure the right phone calls to TxDOT and the right meetings with public works happen — to fix the signage and engineering at the points where trucks make the wrong turn.
This is the kind of issue where coordination matters more than any single action. Residents on Broadway shouldn’t be carrying the noise, the wear, and the safety risk of traffic that has a designated route somewhere else.
Question 4
The North side of Broadway includes parts of District 1 and has tremendous opportunities for Economic Development. How will you work to bring more businesses and jobs to District 1?
The opportunity is real. So is the history of promises this district has heard before. I’m going to be careful with my language, because the last thing District 1 needs is another candidate making promises he can’t keep.
Here’s what I can honestly commit to.
The Opportunity Zones drawn under the federal program skipped District 1 in favor of the east end and the seawall — the parts of the city that were already attracting capital. Getting those lines redrawn is the kind of fight the mayor’s office should be picking up. I can’t promise Washington will redraw them. I can promise to put the weight of the office behind the effort.
On tools, the city has real ones — Chapter 380 agreements, reinvestment zones, tax incentives tied to real conditions like local hire and infrastructure improvements. The mayor’s job is to use them honestly, in coordination with the council member, the residents who live in the neighborhood, and the small business owners already trying to make a go of it. Not to drop a project from above and call it development.
Jobs in District 1 have to be jobs for District 1 residents. Galveston College and Vision Galveston are already doing workforce and entrepreneurship work — the mayor’s role should be helping them scale what’s working, not reinventing it for a press release.
Boarded-up properties have sat in D1 for years while other parts of the island moved forward. That’s not just an economic issue — it’s a question of whose neighborhoods get treated like they matter. I don’t want to just make promises about that. I want to do the work.
Question 5
If you are elected, what is your first order of business for your district?
My first order of business as mayor is to do something the office doesn’t always do: listen first, in every district, before I propose anything.
That means a real district-by-district listening tour in the first weeks — not a campaign-style rally, not a one-off visit. Sitting down with each council member, with residents, and with the institutions on the ground in each neighborhood, including the NAACP. I want to hear what each district has been telling City Hall and what hasn’t been heard. That’s the only honest way to set priorities for the city.
For District 1 specifically, that means showing up — formally, with your District 1 council member at the table — to put a real working list on paper. Not a campaign promise. Some of what would be on that list is already on it from these questions: the Opportunity Zone fight, truck traffic on Broadway, lighting on streets that have waited too long, the right scale of mental health response. Those are the threads I’d pull first. But the residents tell me what comes first, not the other way around.
The city’s first order of business and District 1’s first order of business shouldn’t be different conversations. They should be the same conversation, with everyone at the table.
Question 6
The Juneteenth Museum has been a hot topic for over four years. Other cities like Fort Worth have pledged financial support for their National Juneteenth Museum. We have received $7 million from the State of Texas. What are your plans, if any, to help move things forward with financial support from the city regarding a Juneteenth Museum?
A Juneteenth Museum in Galveston matters — not just to this neighborhood, not just to this district, but to the city and to the country. Galveston is where Juneteenth started. The story belongs here, and it deserves to be told here at a level that matches the history.
The community has been carrying this effort for years. The state has put $7 million behind it. The city council, on the record, has stood with the museum effort at multiple points along the way. None of that is small.
Getting from here to a built museum has not been simple. There have been real, hard tradeoffs along the way — about sites, about competing needs in District 1, about how to make sure investment in one priority doesn’t come at the cost of another. Those concerns have been raised in good faith by people who care about this community. The mayor’s job is to take them seriously while keeping the museum effort on track.
What I can commit to as mayor is this: the city will be a credible partner — not a referee, not a gatekeeper. That means staff time on the state grant process, help finding and securing the right site, and consistent advocacy at the county and state level. It means treating the museum as a city priority that crosses council terms and political seasons, not a campaign topic that goes quiet between elections.
I’m not going to promise a city dollar figure that I can’t back up at the budget table. What I can promise is that the museum effort will have a seat at the city’s table, and that when the city’s role in the financing comes up — and it will come up — the conversation will start from “yes, how do we get this done” instead of “no, here’s why we can’t.”
This is one of those efforts where the city should be running toward, not away.
Submitted by JP Listowski, Candidate for Mayor of Galveston