Ferrell, who worked in municipal government for more than a decade before joining The Bush School of Government and Public Service faculty as an associate professor of practice, wants to produce skilled administrators to improve local government service across Texas – and train students to have the kind of meaningful experiences the Bush School prepared him for
BRYAN/COLLEGE STATION, TX – Darrek Ferrell can wax philosophical about the nobility of a career in local government, but his pitch often hinges on things you can see, hear and touch.
He might evoke San Antonio’s Magik Theatre, the children’s venue with the purple sign on the edge of HemisFair Park that was renovated as part of a bond package that he helped coordinate as a city budget analyst. He might allude to the whine of the prop jets flying over McKinney National Airport, which the municipal government bought while he was assistant to the city manager. He might chuckle while pointing out the Oxford Cemetery Road sign on State Highway 21 near North Zulch – a guidepost that sticks in his mind partly because, while digging the hole for it during a summer construction gig in the mid-2000s, he hit bedrock.
“Someone didn’t sink the foot deep enough,” Ferrell likes to crack, before adding: “But all these years later, the sign is still there.”
The larger point that Ferrell often makes to students encompasses the sign, the airport and the renovated children’s theater: “In local government, you can see the results of your work, often very quickly.” After holding a variety of city-administration roles around Texas, Ferrell, a Bush School alum, is now director of its City and County Governance Program. The burgeoning initiative trains masters-level students to work as government administrators in communities large and small. Three-plus months in, Ferrell has three goals: sparking more interest in local government, beefing up post-graduation support and offering help to more communities navigating complex issues.
The ultimate goal is Aggies serving in local governments around the nation and world – and helping to manage towns and counties across Texas. Bush School Dean John B. Sherman ’92 said that producing local-government servants “is one of the pillars of the Bush School,” an effort supported by a $1 million endowment created through an investment by Texas A&M alumni Amy ’84 and Tim Leach ’82.
“We need leaders of character to step into these positions,” Sherman said. “If you have a heart for public service, this is a way to make a real difference.”
Ferrell has many stories about what sort of a difference someone can make serving in local government – and he is eager to help Bush School students, including midcareer professionals, build skills with which they can make a difference and one day have their own stories to tell. Their education usually culminates with a project that helps a community to solve a difficult, real-world issue. They will probably graduate into a healthy job market thanks to a slew of expected openings as baby boomers retire and Gen Xers approach that age.
“Public service is not easy,” Ferrell notes. “The people you’re serving are your friends, neighbors and family, and everyone in a town knows who you are. But that’s also the beauty of it. You can see how your work affects your community. You see the good you do, and that’s a special thing.”
“IT TOUCHES PEOPLE’S LIVES”
San Antonio is one of the country’s largest and fastest-growing cities. And sometimes, when Ferrell visits, he sees toddlers playing on the statues of caterpillars and turtles in HemisFair Park, which gets him thinking about whether a project that he helped bring into existence might help them live fuller, happier lives.
In 2011, following an internship, Ferrell was working as a City of San Antonio budget analyst. He was assigned to a major proposal from then-Mayor Julián Castro: a citywide pre-kindergarten program, which the mayor argued was the best way to improve the lives of San Antonians. Ferrell’s job was to translate the associated sales tax increase, and the $32 million in annual revenue, into a budget – basically, to figure out how to properly channel the money into a viable operation that voters could support.
He did. And the following year, San Antonio voters passed Pre-K 4 SA. More than a decade later, it has helped 13,000 children, who tend to enter the program below the national average in math and literacy and finish the year above the average. Program supporters are fond of saying that Pre-K 4 SA will “change the trajectory of San Antonio in one generation.”
“It still feels amazing to have been a part of that,” Ferrell said.
Much of the work of city administration is more prosaic, of course. The spreadsheets (which the Bush School trains local-government students to use effectively) are just as likely to track the funds to repair streetlights or mow the grass in the medians. Ferrell said there is satisfaction in that scale of work, too. Many of those essential services form the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For instance, people need safety – which means not only the firefighters to save a burning house but the pipes to bring water for the firefighters to tap. That water is often the result of dozens or hundreds of people doing their jobs well every day.
“Quality of life begins with local government. One of the cool things is how many places it touches people’s lives,” Ferrell said. That so many people do not even think about such civic essentials is a credit to the public servants who deliver them, he said, adding: “These services underpin so many things. Nobody gets to the amusement parks without driving on the roads.”
“YOU’RE A SERVANT”
Mount Vernon is a proud, 4.4-square-mile city in northeast Texas known mainly for three things: being the home of famous football player and announcer “Dandy” Don Meredith, having a local museum displaying the eggs of more than 200 species of birds, and sitting just up the road from the good-time atmosphere of Lake Cypress Springs. But in the early 2010s, the downtown square was so lifeless that “you could throw a grenade at 5 p.m. and not hurt anyone,” as a City Council member explained to Ferrell.
Ferrell had just been hired as both the city administrator and director of its economic development corporation, the sort of multiple-hat role common in small-town government. One of his jobs was fixing the downtown.
Most of the storefronts were vacant. When a local entrepreneur was looking for a place to open a pizza parlor, hoping to attract some of the Lake Cypress Springs crowd, he and Ferrell began talking. Ferrell arranged for tours of some of the properties. He was counting on what economists call the clustering effect: If one business attracts a crowd, another business will probably open nearby, attracting yet more people, who attract even more businesses in a virtuous cycle. Ferrell eventually offered a modest tax-incentive package – after running an analysis that showed the city would be economically better off doing the deal, another skill Bush School students can learn – and Steve-O’s Pizza and Pub opened on Mount Vernon’s downtown square in 2016. It kick-started what became a downtown Renaissance. All those vacant storefronts? The square reached maximum occupancy later that year. Friday nights are hopping.
“People want to go where other people are enjoying themselves,” Ferrell said. A government official usually cannot manufacture that atmosphere, but “you can help the people who can make it happen.”
But such ambitions must be tempered with humility, Ferrell said. His predecessor, Paul Hofmann ’81, ’83, said that part of a city administrator’s job is letting people stop them at the grocery store to vent frustrations. Those frustrations are usually not voiced in charming fashion.
“You’re a servant,” Hofmann said, “and always have to remember that, especially during the difficult times.”
But Hofmann, who retired in August, also believes that the polarization leading to so much vitriol in national politics is giving people a sense of appreciation for their local governments. Residents still pull together to solve problems, regardless of their political affiliations.
Or, as Ferrell put it: “It doesn’t matter how you voted in Tuesday’s election. On Wednesday, you still feel the same about the potholes.”
“A HEART FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT”
Ferrell grew up in North Zulch, an unincorporated Blackland Prairie community of 350 people about 45 minutes northeast Bryan-College Station. Ferrell remembers civic luminary Randy Sims ’61 not just as a longtime Brazos County judge but a public servant who volunteered countless hours in numerous positions across the Brazos Valley. Ferrell remembers Sims’s wife, longtime KBTX-TV host Brenda Sims, serving the Brazos Valley by telling its story through interviews with athletes, celebrities and local officials. Ferrell now holds the Randy Sims ’61 Endowed Chair for City and County Governance, created in honor of the couple. Ferrell wants to bring their sense of service to cities and counties across Texas and the nation.
One way is by offering more partnerships like one between the Bush School and the City of Bryan in 2019-2020.
A team of students examined ways the city could incorporate new technology into its operations. Based on the team’s recommendations, the city has streamlined its online permitting processes, is enhancing its computer-assisted 911 dispatching system and plans to automate more of the “offboarding” process for employees leaving the city (which involves a surprising number of human-resources tasks).
“To get a third-party perspective is really helpful,” said Cray Crouse, the city’s chief information officer. His teams must focus mainly on the city’s day-to-day needs; hiring a consultant to bring a big-picture, outsider perspective would probably cost $100,000 to $150,000, “which could be cost-prohibitive for most cities to do on a whim.”
“For that to be offered to a city for free,” Crouse said, “is a huge deal.”
Such partnerships are not new to the Bush School. The students’ report for the City of Bryan actually predates the City and County Governance Program. Former dean Mark A. Welsh III created the program in 2022 after advisory board member Drayton McLane, Jr. suggested that the Bush School make itself a pipeline for skilled local-government administrators. Hofmann, whom Welsh hired to run the program, was always quick to note that the school has been producing local-government administrators since its 1997 founding.
“We were doing a good job creating public servants,” Hofmann said. “What we weren’t doing was reaching enough of the students who have a heart for local government but don’t know what to do with it.”
To that end, Hofmann created an alumni council, developed a course on local government management and guided students to related classes such as leadership and policy formation. He also developed a workshop to help incoming mayors learn their jobs, as well as the City and County Governance Symposium, at which students hear from, and network with, local-government officials. Expect those efforts to continue, Ferrell said; the next symposium is scheduled for April 16, 2026.
The field continues to be a draw. In surveys of the last three incoming classes, roughly three out of every four Department of Public Service and Administration students expressed interest in careers in state or local government. Some study in College Station, while the department’s online master’s program trains mid-career local officials across the country. The profession is expected to have plenty of openings. A 2023 Texas City Management Association membership survey found that 55% of respondents were already eligible for retirement, with 80% of them planning to retire within a decade.
The retirements could help the Bush School fulfill the vision of Tim and Amy Leach, the couple who invested $1 million for the endowed chair that Ferrell now holds. As Tim Leach put it: “We want to have Aggies serving in local government in every community in Texas.”
“IT STILL MATTERS”
Still, why enter public service, as difficult as it can sometimes be?
Ferrell considers the question a moment. He attended Texas A&M as an undergraduate on a scholarship from The Terry Foundation, then earned a master’s degree in public service and administration from the Bush School thanks in part to an anonymous donor who covered his expenses. That sort of help, he says, nurtured his desire to serve.
“Giving back is one of the hardcore truths our students should walk out of here with,” Ferrell says. An altruistic mindset is critical to working in local government, he recently told his students during his leadership class. But, he added in an interview, paraphrasing what he told the class: “Altruism isn’t what you think. It isn’t about giving up what you want, because if it was, people would be miserable and no one would do it.”
Numerous studies have established what is often called the “helper’s high.” Serving others stimulates the brain to release a variety of feel-good chemicals, such as dopamine and oxytocin. People with a strong desire to help others tend to be happier in the moment and over their lifetime. This effect is often associated with volunteerism but also holds with public-service jobs. There are competing impulses, of course – people are complicated – but our brains are wired to find enjoyment and satisfaction in serving others. Thus the core appeal of working in local government.
One of Ferrell’s most vivid professional memories is a frisson of excitement over an old spreadsheet, of all things. It was five years after he left San Antonio to take a job as assistant to the McKinney city manager. He had returned to visit San Antonio City Hall. Many of the faces had changed. In the budget department, he found not only new people but desks arranged in a semicircle around a ceiling-mounted television. A team was discussing a spreadsheet displayed on the television. The spreadsheet laid out the finances of Pre-K 4 SA.
It was the spreadsheet Ferrell had created at the program’s outset. The numbers were a little different, but it was fundamentally the same. Pre-K 4 SA still bore his fingerprints, as the screen reminded him.
“What I had the opportunity to do mattered,” he said. “And even then, when I could see it up on that screen, it reminded me – it still matters.”
