By Madeline Condor | Staff Writer
During a State of the City address on Sept. 22, Waco Mayor Dillon Meek confirmed he does not plan to seek reelection after his term expiration in May 2024.
Meek, who is also a Baylor alum, has served as mayor since November 2020 and said he never planned to run for a third term. While he intends to return to the private sector of business, Meek said he thinks his two terms were a great use of the position.
“I think that serving as mayor for four years is actually the perfect amount of time because you’re really able to accomplish a lot of good work in that time frame,” Meek said. “But … combined with service on the city council, this will have been nine years. So if I would have run again, it would have put me over a decade.”
Meek said city councilman and mayor are full-time jobs without a full-time salary, so it was only a matter of time before he moved to the business world and took more time to spend with his family.
“My kids are young, and I want to be around them,” Meek said. “But more than anything, I think the Lord lets us know when it’s time to move into something different, and it’s certainly that time.”
Meek said the people of Waco are what make the community great.
“There’s a spirit of ingenuity and kind of a pioneering spirit in Waco, and that’s why you’re seeing that Waco’s very different than it was five, 10 years ago,” Meek said. “It’s because this community is working together to advance and bring better and bigger and greater things to our town.”
Waco also has a sense of culture, which Meek described as an “air of optimism,” as well as a good value set.
“It is good people who care about one another, … who really love people well,” Meek said.
During his time at Baylor, Meek was a member of Kappa Omega Tau. He graduated with degrees in business and political science before attending Baylor Law School, from which he graduated in 2010.
Tupelo, Miss., junior Jake Brown is a current member of Kappa Omega Tau, and said seeing a former member of his organization succeed inspires him to make future members proud.
“It gives us confidence that we can do stuff in life,” Brown said. “We all just uplift each other, … so to see him doing well makes us want to do well too.”
Throughout his time as mayor, Meek said he is most proud of “being part of the team that kept Waco’s civic landscape and culture consensus-driven, civil and kind.”