Perplexed By Disenfranchised Voters In The Tarrant Regional Water District

I do not know which Saturday in May the Tarrant Regional Water Board election takes place.

I do know it is very odd that elections take place, in Fort Worth, on Saturdays, in May.

I also know it is very odd that this particular election was arbitrarily postponed a year, even though those elected are elected to four year terms.

I also know it is very odd that not all the voters who live in the Tarrant Regional Water District are allowed to vote for Water Boarders.

For instance, I am allowed to vote in this election because I live in Fort Worth. If I lived in Haltom City I would not be allowed to vote in this election, even though I live in the Tarrant Regional Water District in a town which has deadly flash floods, indicating Haltom City is direly effected by Tarrant Regional Water Board policies, but can not vote on those who make the policies.

And the locals accept this bizarre situation. Why the disenfranchised locals accept this bizarre situation is perplexingly bizarre to me.

This morning I got a blog comment from Dannyboy to a blogging yesterday where I verbalized my perplexation regarding the lack of public participation in proposed public works in Fort Worth that sheds light on the Fort Worth elections in May anomaly and a couple other things....

Dannyboy has left a new comment on your post "Wondering About The Effect Of Fort Worth's Citizen's Minimalist Public Participation In Proposed Public Works": 

There is a huge lack of public participation on any Fort Worth local government issues. Look at the city council elections this year. Everyone is unopposed. And they hold local elections on a Saturday in the spring. Because the local stuff is the only thing on the ballot, turnout is very low, rarely above even 10 percent. Many cities throughout the country put their local (council, transit, library funding, road building) on the ballot in November, and they obviously get more people engaged and a turnout that is usually over 50 percent. The reason Fort Worth does it this way is that 1) low turnout helps incumbents, and 2) Fort Worth doesn't think any public participation is good. An example: when I moved to Fort Worth from up north many years ago, I asked a neighbor why there weren't any public pools on the near west side of FW. I was told that 1) public pools draw the wrong kind of people, and 2) join a country club if I wanted a place to swim for my daughter (all this is moot now, as FW has gotten rid of its public pools). That sums up FW in a nutshell. If you tell people you would hope the mass transit system gets improved, they ask you if your car is broken down or if your lost your job. And this goes from the young trendies up to the I-hate-everything-old-people. 

UPDATE: I have been informed the Tarrant Regional Water Board Election is Saturday, May 11.