Mayor Jeff Cheney

Congrats to Frisco for breaking a city record for votes cast with nearly 26k. I want to congratulate Laura Rummel, Frisco City Council Place 5 for her convincing win with one of the highest % votes in favor in recent history. I look forward to welcoming Brittany Colberg for Frisco City Council who will be sworn in as our newest council member.

For the Mayoral race we will have a runoff between first place finisher Mark Hill for Frisco Mayor and second place finisher Rod Vilhauer for Frisco Mayor. This important election will be in mid June.

I want to say a big thanks to every candidate that put your name on the ballot. It’s not easy to run for office so we should all personally thank all of the candidates willing to serve their community.

FINAL Election Night Combined Results – May 2, 2026 General Election.

The Frisco City Council will canvass the election for City Council Places 5 & 6 at the Special Called City Council Meeting being held on May 12, 2026 at 4 p.m.

A Runoff Election for Mayor will be held on Saturday, June 13, 2026

https://www.friscotexas.gov/1883/May-2-2026-Election-Results

Grand Park is officially no longer an urban legend! Today was so much more than a normal ground breaking, it’s a 20 year promise finally coming visible.

I’ve attached some pictures of what will be built in Phase 1. If you make it to the last picture it shows our original design which was more about the commercial and included multifamily and much less park. This is ultimately the story how the vision grew larger and larger over time.

There are generations of elected officials and city staff that made today possible. Mayor Simpson and their council, along with George Purefoy, had the foresight to acquire 358 acres 20 years ago. The citizens passed a bond in 2006 for over $20 million for construction.

Next came the frustrating years working through Corp of Engineer permits and closing and cleaning the Exide battery recycling plant. This was a 10 year process under Mayor Maso. I was proud to be a council member on this team that helped finally get this resolved along with the tireless efforts of our city attorney, Richard Abernethy.

Early in my tenure as Mayor we were finally able to get this unstuck by taking over the responsibility of the cleanup from Exide and finally getting started. We threw the original plans in the trash and started over with an extensive public input process to make sure we were building the community’s vision. We decided to put the focus back into the park and reduce the commercial components. We also decided to preserve the Exide property for future expansion and our creek corridors to flow out of the park to Lake Lewisville, to The Star, through the Rail District, and connecting into our master trail network. The original vision of a few hundred acres has grown to over 1,000 acres. In total, the city has spent nearly $100 million acquiring all this property, something that would have been impossible in today’s dollars. Decisions, vision, and a collective will to get it done over 20 years led to today.

Phase 1 will be a significant park by itself. We are already working on designing Phase 2. The future Mayors and councils will continue this work likely over the next 10-20 years to continue to deliver future phases.

In my opinion, Grand Park will be the project Frisco is best known for. It will undoubtedly be one of the most significant park projects in the entire world.

Many have heard me tell the story that learning about Grand Park is what prompted me to run for city council in 2007. At the time, our 3 kids were ages 4 and younger and I dreamed of being a part of building something they would grow up playing in. It’s taken more twists and turns than any of us expected and I joke now that I’m working on it for my grandkids instead. However, this has been a personal passion for me for over 20 years and there was no chance I was leaving without having this done. I am so thankful for everyone that had a part of getting to today and I cannot wait to see it start coming to life.

Grand Park represents the future of Frisco. However, it will also tell the story of Frisco’s long standing belief of excellence and the harder the project, the more we’ve wanted to try and do it.

For generations to come, families will gather here without ever thinking of the 20 year story. But it’s moments like these that make those moments possible. Let’s celebrate together this incredible community milestone.