"Thrilling Days of Yesteryear"
Rarely can I recommend reading the inappropiately named Richardson City News. It's not so much that I disagree with the viewpoints expressed there by the site owner, Nathan Morgan. It's more that I can't even figure out what the heck he's talking about. Once in a while, he reprints letters from others and sometimes those are worth reading. This week's letter from an unnamed reader offers something that's been missing from the campaign for Richardson City Council up to now. That's a report card on the performance of past city councils.
To my way of thinking, if you think Richardson is on the right track, you ought to reward incumbents with another term. If you think Richardson is on the wrong track, you ought to vote for the challengers. This reader clearly is not happy with the decisions of prior city councils. See if you agree.
Recent city councils were at least in part responsible for the Spring Valley underpass; the Galatyn overpass; the Eisemann Center; the new TI wafer fab on Renner Rd (not yet in operation); mixed-use developments such as the Block (Arapaho at Jupiter), Eastside (Campbell at Central), the Venue (Galatyn), the Shire (Bush Turnpike at Jupiter) and Brick Row (Spring Valley at Greenville); legalization of beer and wine sales; a smoking ban; zoning laws to restrict adult-oriented businesses as much as legally possible; the relocation or expansion of Countrywide Financial, Blue Cross, MetroPCS, Yahoo, Huawei, Fujitsu and Halff Associates; and a bond rating of AAA (one of only four cities in Texas with that high rating).
This unnamed reader informs us that unless we vote out incumbents like Bob Townsend, John Murphy and Gary Slagel, we risk "go[ing] back to those thrilling days of yesteryear" when the decisions leading to the achievements in the previous paragraph were being made. This unnamed reader thinks those achievements were mistakes. If you agree, vote out the incumbents. But if you think that the list of achievements makes a pretty good report card, then being an incumbent ought to work in a candidate's favor this election. Early voting has begun. Make your own informed decision and vote.
Should Kay Follow Arlen?
Paul Burka, on his own blog, posts an open letter to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, pointing out to her that Sen. Arlen Specter's reasons for leaving the Republican Party also apply to Kay Bailey Hutchison's situation in Texas. She wants to be governor but faces a nasty Republican primary in which her opponent, Gov. Rick Perry, has already staked out the far right turf. By running as a Democrat, Hutchison not only avoids all those GOP primary attacks on her insufficiently conservative record. She also would take office as head of a new Democratic majority in Texas, a majority interested in governing, not seceding. OK, Burka could not have been serious about this. Could he?
10 comments:
Ed, we were discussing this issue earlier today, "OK, you want change? What do you want to change? Our AAA bond rating? Our strong business tax base (takes some of the load off homeowners)? Our DART rail line (makes us the envy of many other suburbs)? The acceleration of the Cotton Belt line to run public transit from northern Richardson to the airport and Ft. Worth? The fact that the Telecom Corridor is the second largest employment center outside that Central Business District in Dallas?
What voters need to remember is that each one of these positive things took many years to achieve, because these things aren't and can't be done overnight (Yes, I know the Cotton Belt isn't in place - I said it's been accelerated in the planning). So, as you say, Ed, if you are going to blame people for what's wrong, you had better give them credit for what's right...Who wants to go back to a lower bond rating and paying higher taxes to cover the higher interest?
Speaking of which, something that probably very few voters have heard: last night at the City Council meeting, the Council approved an ordinance that refinanced $20 million in previously issued city bonds, dropping the interest rate so much that we will save the city $266,000/year or upwards of $3 million over the next 11-12 years or so.
How did that happen? Of course, the low interest rates in the current economy are a cause - but so is that AAA bond rating that no one is talking about. The City of Richardson has that excellent rating (which translates directly to lower interest rates when we borrow money) because the City Council and City staff have worked together for many years to keep spending down. Did you know that we have 2.8% fewer employees than in 2002 while providing the same level of service? How many cities can say that? No, most places have been adding employees because times were good - and now they're paying for it.
We survived the first economic downturn of the 21st Century precisely because the City started cutting back even before the worst of the crunch, and we are very well positioned to ride out this downturn, because our shortfall in revenues is quite small and is expected to be covered by reductions in spending without affecting services. We are not a City facing a huge deficit like Dallas, because over the long years, the City Council and City staff have actually been managing our money prudently.
And who wants to change that?
Vote against the incumbents if you want, but at least give them (all of them, new and old) the credit of handing a City to their successors that is in great shape compared to a lot of the towns around here...
Bill
Thanks for the feedback, William J. 'Bill' McCalpin. I didn't include DART as an achievement of the city council because it's a regional achievement, but the city council has certainly bought into DART and that's a great thing for Richardson. Having the N/S and E/W lines intersect in Richardson will put Richardson in a prime location to benefit from public transportation to and from Richardson.
McCalpin, let me get this straight, you mean ALL incumbents? Can't vote for Slagel, ragardless of all the good he has done. You seem to ignore the ethical problems that he has, and continues to have, and how he has embarrassed our city in the region. I guess as long as he continues to do "good" it doesn't matter about that ethical stuff, right? Oh, and the AAA bond rating happened on the new mayors watch.
"Anonymous" I agree that Slagel's history of not keeping a proper distance between city business and his personal business is a negative for his candidacy. If you consider that of primary importance, then I think Diane Wardrup should be your choice.
But if you consider advancing the city's interests to be of primary importance, and credit the many city achievements over the past 22 years, at least in part, to Gary Slagel, who was mayor during much of that time, then Slagel deserves consideration for another term.
As far as the AAA bond rating happening on the new mayor's watch, that's one reason why I endorse the reelection of Steve Mitchell.
Anonmymous,
If you read what I actually said and not what you think I said, I said, "give them (all of them, new and old) the credit of handing a City to their successors that is in great shape". If you have other reasons against voting for this or that candidate, then by all means vote your conscience - I never said otherwise.
Unfortunately, as many reasonable people are now realizing, the public discourse in this election has focused primarily on Gary Slagel. We aren't discussing:
- the excellent work the ENTIRE Council (and City staff) have done over the last many years to put us in great financial shape
- the fact that the Council has passed a Neighborhood Development Overlay ordinance which will allow neighborhoods - if they choose - to have some control over development
- the new 'transit villages', and the whole issue of not replacing single family homes with apartments as they age, but allowing the density of areas already zoned multi-family to increase in density by going up in height
- changing how we do code enforcement on apartments, which had led to some ratty apartments being torn down
- what ratios we want to have between business taxpayers and residential taxpayers (business taxpayers take some of the burden off of residential taxpayers)
- the benefits to Richardson of having an excellent working relationship with UTD, who has the right by State law to build whatever they want without our consent, but they don't because they like working with the City
- the fact that we have one of the lower municipal tax rates in the area
- keeping the police and fire (and code enforcement) well funded to protect our City
- managing our spending and borrowing to keep up the infrastructure so that when older residents move on, younger families buy their houses because they like the established neighborhood and, yes, feel that their investment is safe because Richardson keeps its eye on its infrastructure
In short, we aren't discussing the things that are really important to this City...and the election ought to depend as much on those issues as on anything else.
As for Steve Mitchell, the public record shows that I am and have been a strong support of Steve's, but, to be fair, I think Steve would be the first to tell you that that the acquisition of AAA rating was the cumulative result of many years of work by all the Councils (including him) and staff to place the Richardson budget in a great position.
I have noticed that people who don't attend City Council meetings on a regular basis and who aren't closely involved in the City's business seem to think that things happen overnight; hence many of the promises we get every election cycle, promising to make this or that change immediately. In real life, the best changes take a lot of work (if they were easy to do, they would have already been done - duh), and so these best changes also take time.
So, as I said, each of the incumbents including Gary and Steve and everyone else (and earlier Council members as well) deserve at least a little credit for the great shape that Richardson is in, and the reasonable person takes that into account when evaluating all the issues, personal and otherwise...
Bill
Ed, I apologize for appearing to hijack your blog (at least, in terms of the volume of words), but I think you will agree that these issues go way beyond a few pithy campaign slogans and need a more full public exposition which necessarily means "detail".
I thank you for allowing your blog to be that platform for the exposition...;-)
Bill
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, no apology needed. Take all the space you want to talk about the issues. And you raise some good ones that have gotten very little attention this election. I suspect that's because the candidates mostly agree on the direction that Richardson is already moving. But we should still be talking about it.
SteveG, I think the theory is that Kay Bailey Hutchison may have trouble beating Rick Perry in the GOP primary. And if she has to move far to the right to do it, she damages her chances to govern with Democrats after the general election. Personally, I think the theory has too many holes to drive Hutchison into the Democratic Party, but Hutchison's path to the governorship in the GOP field has at least a few holes itself.
Richardson went up to AAA because before about 2007 only a few cities the size of Richardson got AAA bond ratings. Depending on the agency some didnt give any. Now S&P (and perhaps others) will give AAA-level to a city as small as Richardson. So the AAA doesn't represent an improvement but probably where Richardson was all along.
Thanks, "Anonymous," for that additional information. Whether you credit the most recent city council for the AAA bond rating, or all the city councils that have led up to it, it says something good about the city of Richardson.
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