Years ago, at a TRIP (Trinity River Improvement Project) event at the Botanic Garden I was impressed with how well Jim Lane defended the seemingly indefensible Trinity River Vision Boondoggle.
In the years since I listened to Jim Lane defend The Boondoggle all that The Boondoggle has accomplished can be pretty much summed up by saying "very little",
Well, there are those Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats in the Trinity River, along with the bizarre re-branding of The Boondoggle by slapping the Panther Island nomenclature on anything associated with it. And we do have those three bridges finally, supposedly, under construction, with an amazing four year project timeline to build these three little simple bridges.
Jim Lane and Marty Leonard are up for re-election in an election that was postponed a year. Running against the incumbents are Craig Bickley and Michele Von Luckner.
So far my mailbox has been free of any TRWD election propaganda of the sort that spewed in the TRWD board election which elected Mary Kelleher. I suspect this lack of propaganda is just the calm before the storm, judging by some of the quotes I read in a typically slanted Star-Telegram article about the electiion, titled Tarrant Regional Water District election highlights opposing views on board’s performance.
And unfortunate quote from Jim Lane in the Star-Telegram article...
“If you want a Dallas businessman having control of the Panther Island project and controlling the future of your water, vote for the other guys,” Lane said. “This race is about a water district has planned for the future and continued growth with Integrated Pipeline that can handle our water needs for the next 20 or 30 years and continues to search for other sources of water.”
I read the above and thought to myself are these ethically challenged miscreants actually going to trot out the Dallas Businessman Boogey Man again like they did the last election? Spewing stupid propaganda claiming that an evil Dallas puppeteer, Monty Bennett, was behind a nefarious plot to take over the TRWD.
Somehow I don't think the Dallas Boogey Man nonsense is going to have any traction this time. Or are the locals more easily duped by nonsense than I give them credit for?
After publishing the print version the Star-Telegram amended the online version of this article adding a retort from Mr. Bennett....
Bennett disputed Lane’s assertions in an email.
“The entrenched incumbents continue to try and scare the voters with grandiose stories about an evil Dallasite trying to steal their water,” Bennett said. “This is absurd. For the record, I have no interest in Fort Worth’s water, or the Trinity River Vision or the Integrated Pipeline project.
“I’ve successfully blocked the TRWD from snatching my mother's family land in east Texas. My only interest now is to help Mary Kelleher continue the fight against a heavy handed government agency, with numerous allegations of corruption, cronyism, and self-dealing, that treats citizens, including me, very poorly while neglecting its core duties of water provision and flood control.”
Oh my, doesn't Monty Bennett sound like the devil incarnate? How dare a landowner fight to keep his land from being snatched. The nerve. And for this man to own a business, or two, in Dallas, why this is such an outrage there should be a law outlawing such a thing.....
UPDATE: A few minutes after publishing the above I heard from Elsie Hotpepper, telling me the shocking news that the plot by the evil Dallas businessman to take over Fort Worth is further along than I had realized. Apparently in addition to being an evil Dallas businessman, Monty Bennett is also an evil Fort Worth businessman due to his owning two downtown Fort Worth hotels, those being the historic Hilton and the Ashton. Shocking. What's next? Hearing that Monty Bennett has bought controlling interest in The TRWD's Woodshed Smokehouse?
Who is Annis backing?
ReplyDeleteI don't know who Annis is backing, other than himself. He emailed me a very convoluted "press release" that basically made no sense.
ReplyDelete