INGRAM, Texas – City Councilmember Ray Howard is battling Stage 4 cancer. Yet, he’s putting his energy into a different kind of fight.
For weeks, Howard has been doing his civic duty from a hospital bed more than 250 miles away in Houston, including voting to install a flood siren system.
Howard has Retroperitoneal Liposarcoma, a form of rare malignant tumors, and the battle has weakened his immune system.
Nevertheless, Howard chose to help with flood response and recovery effort. His hand was infected by the floodwaters in the process.
“Three weeks, I’ve been in the hospital almost the whole time,” Howard said. “Right now, I’ve got 11 tumors that I’m dealing with.”
Howard said chemotherapy has not worked, but is looking into a treatment in Australia he believes has a high success rate.
Although Howard said he has never asked for money, his colleagues at City Hall set up a fundraiser to try and help him out.
For now, Howard has been focused on and vocal about getting flood warning sirens installed along the Ingram section of the Guadalupe River.
“If we can get a 15-minute head start warning,” Howard said, “that would have saved a heck of a lot of lives.”
Ingram voted to install three sirens along their 2.2 square mile section of the river. He’s also working on an effort among other entities.
In a closed-door meeting with the Upper Guadalupe River Authority and Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly on Friday, Howard said they talked about ways to work together moving forward.
“It’ll all work and benefit each other if we get this all set up,” Howard said, “so the alarm systems work all the way down to the river.”
Howard and Ingram leaders are still searching for a way to fund the roughly $200,000 project, however.
State Sen. Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton, said lawmakers are working to pass a bill that could help fund the installation of sirens.
“Specifically for Ingram and communities like it, $55 million is in there,” Sen. Flores said Wednesday.
Howard does not want to wait for a bill to pass.
“We got to get it through all that bureaucratic red tape,” Howard said. “In the meantime, if we can get funding for it and get it done, that’s even better.”
“If we could get one donor, that’d be great,” Howard continued. “If we get a bunch of donors, then it doesn’t really hurt that bad in the pocketbook.”