Monday, June 21, 2021

TRWD Secretly Tables Honoring General Manager Jim Oliver

Yesterday Miss Elsie Hotpepper pointed me to a Fort Worth Report article titled Tarrant water board tables plan to honor retiring GM which Elsie thought I might find of interest.

Apparently in the video released of a recent Tarrant Region Water District Board meeting a couple items did not make it to the video available for public viewing, with one of those items being the Board's discussion of a plan to do some sort of honor deal for retiring TRWD General Manager, Jim Oliver. 

Oliver has been employed by the TRWD for 35 years. And during those years he has been the center of plenty of controversy. Controversy of the sort which might make a discussion about honoring him to be a bit lively.

Over the years there have been reports of Oliver acting like a childish bully. Including notoriously bullying a TRWD Board member, or two. One of whom was recently re-elected to the TRWD Board.

Oliver made news years ago due to being caught in an inflagrante delicto incident with a TRWD employee.

For those who do not know what inflagrante delicto is I'll do a quick Google for you...

in fla·gran·te de·lic·to - in the very act of wrongdoing, especially in an act of sexual misconduct.
Used in a sentence, "He had been caught in flagrante with the wife of the Association's Treasurer"

I have been told by more than one person who has had personal contact with Jim Oliver that he is a classic case of little man syndrome. Hence the bullying.

So, I can see why a TRWD Board discussion about honoring Jim Oliver might turn into a heated debate edited out of the video intended to transparently document the TRWD Board's meetings. 

Relevant paragraphs from the Fort Wort Report article...

Some district observers said they were suspicious about what caused the delay in Oliver’s honor.

Layla Caraway, an office manager who formerly served as chair of the board of the Northeast Tarrant Chamber, noticed the items concerning the integrated pipeline and Oliver weren’t videotaped when she tried to watch the meeting online Wednesday.

Caraway has made it her mission to increase awareness of the water district after she experienced a flood in Haltom City in 2007. She said that years ago, residents filmed the meetings then because they were concerned many couldn’t attend them because of their timing on a weekday morning. It’s a concern she still has today as she thinks the water district’s modus operandi is to be secretive. 

Caraway questioned what was behind the video problem of the public meeting.

“There’s a reason it was tabled, and I’m assuming that happened in executive session, so we’re not going to know,” she said. “But why didn’t we see it being tabled?

“I don’t know what the issue is, but nothing would surprise me at this point.”

Layla Caraway's experience with a flood in Haltom City, way back in 2007, was a bit more than an "experience". Ms. Caraway's house teetered on the brink of toppling over into super flooding Fossil Creek. That flood drowned a little girl, Ally Collins. You may have seen Ms. Caraway and her teetering house on the national news, as a watch was underway, waiting to see if the house survived.

Congresswoman Kay Granger visited Layla Caraway and her teetering house during the crisis. The aftermath of that meeting with Granger is part of what turned Layla Caraway into an activist. She went from being a regular person minding her own business, to a lady with a mission.

With that mission being to get Fort Worth and Tarrant County to do something about the chronic flooding caused by the bad urban planning for which Fort Worth is infamous. Such as allowing the covering of open land with buildings and cement, without adequate drainage. Hence the flooding.

In 2007 Layla Caraway had zero awareness of the money being wasted on a bogus Fort Worth flood control project, way back then known simply as the Trinity River Vision, where there had been no flooding for well over half a century, due to flood mitigation installations already in place.

When Layla Caraway met with Kay Granger she had no idea Granger had an interest in Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision flood control economic development. And that Granger had no real interest in helping with actual flood issues in parts of Fort Worth where Granger had no vested interest.

Too bad we don't know one of the TRWD Board members well enough to ask about the discussion of honoring Jim Oliver...

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