Debate over spending priorities and how best to serve residents in need is animating the race for Waco City Council District 1 as early voting in the May 2 local elections draws near.
Four-term incumbent and communications consultant Andrea Barefield is facing a spirited challenge from Rachel Pate, vice president of the Cen-Tex African American Chamber of Commerce.
Early voting begins April 20 for the election, which also includes the contest for Waco mayor and other local school and city races.
District 1 encompasses East Waco as well as the Oakwood, Timbercrest and Cameron Park neighborhoods.
Pate, 45, says Barefield and the council as a whole prioritize development interests over the needs of residents in the district, and she would be a corrective.
Barefield, 49, rejects that critique as a false choice. Waco’s downtown redevelopment project will bring value to all residents, she said. Barefield cites big wins for District 1 during her eight years in office, most recently the Bledsoe-Miller STEAM Center, which grew from her vision for enriching youth.
Each candidate boasts deep roots and long civic experience in Waco.
Barefield is the daughter of Mae Jackson, the former District 1 council member and the first popularly elected Black mayor of Waco.
Barefield lives with her husband in the home her mother built. She has two sons.
Since moving back to Waco from Houston in 2015, Barefield has held positions in area nonprofits, including City Center Waco and the Texas Brazos Trail Region. She works as a communications consultant with her firm, Barefield Impact Strategies.
Pate says at least three generations of her family have lived in East Waco, and her family’s stories braid through the cultural institutions of Elm Avenue, including the Toliver Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, where she still worships today. Pate, the single mother of an 11-year-old son, has been involved in community affairs for years. She has served as a director for Esther’s Closet, a nonprofit supporting Waco women with professional clothing.
She is involved in Lemonade Day, which teaches youth entrepreneurship through the operation of lemonade stands, and she has served on the Rapoport Academy Public School board since 2018.
The candidates spoke last week to The Waco Bridge about their visions for serving District 1, where they stand on data centers and how to promote economic and job growth without displacing existing residents.
Gentrification concerns
Intensive redevelopment along Elm Avenue and the Brazos River corridor is raising concerns about displacement in the district’s historically Black neighborhoods.
Both Pate and Barefield spoke of the need to preserve East Waco’s history and character while safeguarding the livelihood of residents who keep that history alive. They differed on the right means to that end.
Pate argues that the city’s approach to redevelopment on Elm Avenue and elsewhere in the district was undertaken without community buy-in and was geared toward future residents, not longtime East Wacoans.
“There are empty buildings on Elm with a nice, shiny street,” she said. “At Wilbert Austin Park, there’s a nice new bench and a name, but there is no restroom. People feel development is happening around people and not with them.”
She highlighted her engagement with a housing development recently proposed on Elm Avenue as an example of how she would pursue development differently than her opponent.
“I learned that we have an opportunity to speak into the contract and say, ‘Hey, we want you to talk to our neighborhood associations. We want you to partner with our nonprofits. We want you to make a concerted effort to make the community be a part of the decision-making,’” Pate said.
Barefield said her focus on bringing services, businesses and affordable housing was a consistent thread through her four terms. “In my first year, … a lot of people got mad at me because I put a moratorium on selling city-owned properties in District 1,” Barefield said.
“I was like, ‘We can’t just sell off everything on the courthouse steps, because that’s how neighborhoods get gentrified.”
Those properties were then reserved for Waco affordable housing nonprofits, she said. In 2022, Waco increased property tax exemptions from $15,000 to $30,000 for city owned property, because “that’s one way to keep folks from being priced out, is if (you) lower their tax bills.”
Barefield added that she’s involved with ongoing city efforts to establish a land bank and community land trust, which are tools for taking land off the property market in order to create permanent affordable housing.
Downtown development
When it comes to Waco’s identity and the city’s budget, few decisions are likely to be as pivotal as how the city council proceeds with its 100-acre downtown redevelopment project around Jefferson Avenue.
The project’s $213 million first phase, the Barron’s Branch district, is nearing construction and will feature an artificial stream flanked by mixed-use commercial development.
Barron’s Branch is billed as the centerpiece to Waco’s downtown revitalization, which could also include a ballpark district, new city hall, convention center and performing arts center in future phases.
Pate and Barefield diverge on the questions of what comes next and how to use community feedback to guide the process.
Barefield has been a vocal proponent and decision-maker in the project. “When you visit downtowns that are thriving, they’re active,” she said. “I think in order for us to do that, we have to create more active spaces within our downtown.”
Pate generally supports efforts to develop downtown, but she raises the same concerns she has with Elm Avenue redevelopment.
“We need to make sure there’s not a barrier to the cost of living downtown when possible, to businesses having access to spaces to operate,” Pate said.
She wondered how businesses that already struggle to afford rent in downtown Waco would fare in the era of revitalization. Pate pointed to the ballpark district as a phase she would not support without building community consensus first. “I think you’ve got to be able to look at Waco as a place that is for Wacoans right now, and not focus as much on the security of the future,” Pate said.
Data center
Barefield and Pate share concerns about the proposed 520-acre data center that Infrakey is planning north of Waco in partnership with Lacy Lakeview.
The project is within Waco’s utility service area, meaning that the city of Waco may have to provide water and other service to the data center. The project’s rural opponents have pleaded with Waco officials to try to block it but the city has made no decisions.
Barefield is part of the city’s discussions of how to respond to the project and plans to travel to Abilene with Mayor Jim Holmes to see how a new data center is affecting that community. “It would be foolish to not be concerned, because it is something that will affect us indirectly or directly,” Barefield said.
“The unfortunate part is that we as a state have been rolling out red carpets for data centers, so they are coming,” Barefield said. “How they come is what’s important. How are we protecting our neighbors and our residents?” Pate said she also is concerned about the effect of data centers on communities.
“All money ain’t good money,” she said. “I think as city leadership, we can’t allow greed and profit to overwhelm our sensibility about protecting people.” Pate added that AI and data center regulations need to be at the “forefront of the discussion.”
Nonprofit budget cuts
Also at issue in the race are the city of Waco’s recent cuts to social service agencies. Pate said that affects District 1 neighborhoods that struggle with household poverty, food insecurity and an aging population.
In the Carver neighborhood, she said, “Black Wacoans have been stuck at a median income of $31,000 since 2018, whereas greater Waco continues to advance and is over $47,000.”
Pate criticized the city council’s decision in 2025 to begin winding down financial support for many local nonprofits, with plans to end all recurring support within five years.
Pate’s employer, the Cen-Tex African American Chamber of Commerce, was among seven agencies that saw city funding cuts last year.
Barefield said those decisions were necessary given budget pressures.
“The world has had to tighten our belts,” she said. “I find it easier to defend cutting an outside entity or nonprofit, rather than cutting my police, fire or streets budget. I don’t think that there’s any one organization that we decreased funding to that would deliver a harmful blow to District 1.”
Tax lawsuit
In her interview, Pate also criticized Barefield for a past issue with unpaid tax on the family home where she lived and partly owned through a partnership while she was a council member. The city of Waco sued the partnership in 2022 to recover $95,000 in unpaid taxes, dropping it later that year when taxes were paid.
“This is leadership that will tell you to do as I say and not as I do, and when many of us don’t have an opportunity to miss six years of payments on anything … that speaks to being out of touch, that speaks to arrogance,” Pate said. Barefield said Pate’s framing of the lawsuit was a “gross mischaracterization.”
“Because of the delinquency of my mother’s husband, the taxes were in arrears,” she said. “So when (I moved back to Waco) and got stuff settled, we had to get it all together, and it took time.
“People need to be careful about glass houses, because research can show some other things about a lot of people. But that’s not why we’re here,” Barefield added. “We’re here to do the work of the city.”
