Sunday, January 24, 2010
Pre sign up thoughts
The Holiday Season is over and that means elections in League City. We, of course, have the March primary, as well as city elections in May. Sign up for city council position will start soon. In your mind, what issues will the candidate need to address? What do you believe will be the top issues for the city in this election? Flooding? Traffic? BLM ? Change in the form of government? The selection of a permanent city manager/administrator? Ethics? Development? Taxes ? What motivates you, issue or not, to vote in the city election?
4 comments:
The real biggest issue is the City Mgr vs Strong Mayor form of govt.
The general citizenry can't see past the first layer of the onion and so once again it will be traffic, and the newly recognized issue of flooding.
Some will try to make it about the recent changes within LC Staff and the lack of action on fixing problems. But that's a rabbit trail.
While League City candidates might have and express their opinions on the municipal form of government, that charter related issue is better left to all the voters. Otherwise, effectiveness of government should be an issue. We've heard the citizenry complain a long time about quality of life issues such as protection from flooding, traffic, water pressure, and green space. I want to see milestones set, milestones completed and independently verified. Also, the land use -- i.e. development -- issue is always a sore point with homeowners. Finally, financial responsibility must be demonstrated. For example, there needs to be no property tax increase later this year since the city's reserves are far beyond the standard 120 days worth of operations. And, no sales tax increase for any reason.
These are questions that surface in every election year, as well they should.
More than one comment on these local blogs and elsewhere shows that a number of people are behind the curve. For example, Mr Hallisey continues to whine about the lack of work or accomplishments on long-standing problems like roadwork, flooding etc. Some of these turkeys should get to town and have a look around more often. Several months back, I regularly saw work -- lots of it -- being done to fix flooding. Lots of road work is getting done (SH96-IH45) and more is already planned (FM270 by-pass) etc.
We don't need to waste resources on projects with solutions that are already settled and behind us.
Instead, all candidates need to address some real issues still in front of us. For example, why do we continue to throw good money after bad, after we've heard unanimous public sentiment lead elected officials to say we are going to pull the plug? I refer to projects like BLD, BLM, River Market; dog, disabled children and other special interest parks; passenger train stop, and the like. Some of these ideas are just plain hair-brained, flat-out bad ideas even if they didn't keep bleeding us dry in the middle of bad economic times.
Candidates also need to show us real results, whether good or bad, that have grown out of turning this town into an "amnesty" and "anti-smoking" community. How much political correctness do we really want to pay for?
P.S. We mustn't leave the red light cameras off the discussion table either. A half-dozen states and nearly that many cities have now banned or will soon ban them. In just one community (in south Florida) alone, over a thousand motorists have filed at least 18 lawsuits alleging the cameras are unconstitutional because there is no democratic process.
The cameras are just another incarnation of the photo radar scam of the 80s that is now extinct everywhere.
The trend nationwide in communities installing the cameras went from 32% in 2000 to 141% in 2002 and then plummeted to 16% in 2009. Unsurprisingly, League City is once again behind the curve.
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