I finished what I was doing and then clicked on the Anonymous email....
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Saturday Morning Of June 18 Dawns Windy & Warm...":
You are now a resident of a 2011 All-America City. Congrats Fort Worthians! Seattle will be green with envy when they hear the news!
Can this possibly be true, I wondered? I think the All-America City Award is a legit, respected type award, unlike the Most Livable City Award Fort Worth got a few years ago from a D.C. lobbying group.
That bogus Most Livable City Award set off city-wide celebrations and much boasting about Fort Worth causing cities and towns far and wide to be Green with Envy.
I Googled "2011 All-America City" to quickly learn that Fort Worth was one of the 2011 winners. By what criteria I can not imagine. The city-wide celebration is likely to be HUGE.
From the All-America City website.....
The National Civic League announced the ten winners of the All-America City Award tonight in Kansas City, Mo. They are (in alphabetical order by state):
Kenai, Alaska
Dublin, California
Lakewood, Colorado
Belleville, Illinois
South Bend, Indiana
Scott City, Kansas
Tupelo, Mississippi
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Eden, North Carolina
Fort Worth, Texas
These communities give us hope and new ideas about what can be accomplished when ordinary people work together to address the difficult challenges that lay ahead,” said National Civic League President Gloria Rubio-Cortés. “Year after year, I never fail to be inspired by their outstanding stories of positive civic change.”
Fort Worth gives us hope and new ideas? About what can be accomplished when ordinary people address difficult challenges?
What new ideas? Inner tubing in the polluted Trinity River? Taking down perfectly performing flood preventing levees? Closing community swimming pools? Cutting back public library hours?
Is it the Fort Worth Independent School District that helped make Fort Worth an All-America City?
Is one of the new ideas being the first big city to allow natural gas drillers to poke holes and lay pipe all over town, except in wealthy neighborhoods?
Is an example of an ordinary person addressing a difficult challenge something like Fort Worth's Steve Doeung fighting Chesapeake Energy and Fort Worth to stop a non-odorized natural gas pipeline from being run under his property?
Is an example of Fort Worth giving the rest of the country hope the way the community rallied to the defense of Paradise Center when it was attacked by a Tarrant County agency, MHMR-TC?
Yes, now that I have put some thought into it I can clearly see why Fort Worth would be chosen as an All-America City.....
From http://www.fortworthgov.org/citynews/default.aspx?id=86394
ReplyDeleteFort Worth won the All-America City Award in 1964 and again in 1993. Fort Worth’s 2011 application featured three challenges being addressed through public/private partnerships:
• Homelessness, which is being addressed through the “Directions Home” plan
• Mental health services, which are being addressed through the Mental Health Connection program
• Graffiti, which is being addressed through the We Are Legal (WAL) program
Bold emphasis mine.
I guess the selection committee wasn't too particular about how those challenges are addressed, huh?
ReplyDeleteHomelessness: nod and wink to shanty towns and tent cities hidden behind wooded areas ....raided when impotant sports teams come to town.
Mental health services: Mental Health Connection, which is nothing more than a fancy information and referral set up and another way for the county's political boss Jim McDermott to show off and control the local politicians and mental health advocacy groups like NAMI and MHA. His second in command at competence challenged MHMR of. Tarrant county has been ruling over that information clearinghouse and political club WHICH INTERESTINGLY THE STAR TELEGRAM WROTE IN EARLY MARCH, wait for it, "is The envy of communities across the country.
Graffiti? ? Graffiti? ??
Guess we got minor things like education, air quality, library access, internet access, ethics and transparency in government all under control.
I betcha the ability to turn the Trinity River purple and magic trees to control flooding and erosion pushed FW to the top of all the other cities.
I would settle for just a good old city where the American Way is practiced. Where common sense and common decency prevails...for the common good. Not for the common crooks, no matter their fancy appearances or official titles.
ReplyDeleteIs it too much to ask that we the people in a democratic society be allowed to have more say in how our hard earned taxes and our hard fought rights are used...or misused? And that "public servants" conduct themselves as such in working to advance public interest instead of abusing the public trust to serve their own and their buddies's
personal financial and political interests??
Nevermind, I forgot about the FW Way in the city "of cowboys and culture"...OF CORRUPTION.