Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Betsy Price Thinks The Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Is Extremely Popular Along With Other Nonsense

That is Clyde Picht you are looking at on the left. Clyde Picht is a former Fort Worth City Councilman. Clyde Picht showed up in a YouTube video I watched this morning, via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in an article titled Fort Worth council OKs $6.63 million for Trinity Uptown bridges.

In the video Clyde Picht  opinionizes about the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle.

The Star-Telegram article about the Trinity Uptown bridges is classic Star-Telegram propaganda, spewing the party line and doing no actual reporting of the journalistic sort.

For example.....

“It is a game-changer for Fort Worth,” Mayor Betsy Price said. “It changes the face of Fort Worth. It brings a whole new level of development downtown. It extends out to the north side and pulls those two areas together. It is extremely popular with most of the citizens.”

What is the "it" to which Mayor Betsy Price refers? The three bridges? Or the entire Trinity River Vision Boondoggle? That same "it" is extremely popular with most of the citizens?

How does Fort Worth's mayor know the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle is extremely popular with most of the citizens? Does she know this because of the overwhelming approval given by the voters in a public vote for this public works project?

Oh, that's right, there has been no public vote for this public works project.

And then there is this gem....

The bridges are a beginning phase of the Trinity Uptown project, which includes creating a 1.5-mile-long channel of the Trinity River to form a 33-acre lake, an 800-acre island and waterfront development on the city’s north side.

The bridges are a beginning phase? The Trinity River Vision has been boondoggling since the start of this century and we are only now at a beginning phase? The 1.5 mile flood diversion channel forms a 33-acre lake? Didn't that 33-acre lake long ago shrink to being about a 12-acre pond?

And then there are the following two baffling sentences...

The vision depends on Congress to provide about half the $910 million needed to complete the project. Still, Price said, building the bridges first makes sense because it’s cheaper to build on dry land than on water.

The Trinity River Vision Boondoggle relies on federal money being provided to cover half the project's cost? That is some farsighted vision, basing a project on money that likely will not be provided. How would you sell Congress on voting to fund this boondoggle? A boondoggle touted partly as a flood control plan, which is not needed, because federal dollars and the Army Corps of Engineers built levees well over a half century ago which have prevented the Trinity River from flooding in the downtown Fort Worth zone for decades.

And Betsy Price parrots the party line with the it's cheaper to build bridges before you add water idea.

Elsewhere in the article Fort Worth's senior capital programs manager, Mark Rauscher, says the bridge projects are expected to go to bid in May, with construction starting in July, with bridge completion taking about three years.

Three years?

So, we are looking at 2017 as the earliest these three bridges will be crossing the non-existent flood diversion channel that is waiting for federal money before it can be dug?

And people wonder why I think the Trinity River Vision is a Boondoggle.

Below is the YouTube video I referenced above...

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