Apparently I Got To Vote Because I Am A Stakeholding TRWD Founder

I saw that which you see here a day or two ago on Facebook. The following paragraph of explanatory text explains that which you see here...

Newcomers Leah McCloe King (green) and James Hill (red) dominated TRWD - Tarrant Regional Water District election. Incumbent Mary Kelleher (aqua) carried only Ryan Place and Handley.

Yes, this map shows you who won each precinct in the recent TRWD Board Election.

The results this time are very similar to the results of the previous TRWD Board Election. In that previous election the map was dominated by Jim Lane and Marty Leonard, whose domination was brought courtesy of what is believed to be the biggest election fraud ballot theft in Texas election history, with a statistically impossible high number of absentee ballots giving Lane and Leonard the win.

Of course, since that election  took place in what is now known as Crookedtown, Lane and Leonard were allowed to keep their ill gotten seats.

In the most recent TRWD Board Election the results map is dominated by Leah King and James Hill, whose domination was bought courtesy of hundreds of thousands of dollars, many of which came from Dallas, with that flood of money funding an unscrupulous campaign of lies and misinformation attacking Mary Kelleher and Andra Beatty.

This TRWD Board Election Map posting on Facebook generated an extremely interesting, extremely bizarre, short discussion which I shall share in its entirety, with the names of the posters not altered....

Marla Senter Morris: Some of us aren't allowed to vote!! Did you know north Fort Worth folks who live in the city don't get to vote on the water board?

Bud Kennedy: Only the stakeholders of the district -- the taxpayers who founded, established and funded it -- get to vote. Not new parts of town. That is how it should be.

Pam Humphrey: Really?

Thomas Torlincasi: But the new parts of town ....such as the Alliance Corridor mean millions of dollars in valuation changes for corporate or big money interests.....why aren't people in the water shed stakeholders?

Marla Senter Morris: Doesn't our water come from there? Do we pay taxes to the water district?

Bud Kennedy: No. Those outside the district are customers. Those inside the district are taxpayers, investors and stakeholders.

Thomas Torlincasi: Anyone impacted by the water district has a stake in its decisions. They're stakeholders by association.

Bud Kennedy: If I dine in your restaurant, I don't own the restaurant.

_______________

Oh, I see, according to the TRWD expert, Bud Kennedy, only the taxpayers who founded, established and funded the TRWD get to vote in a TRWD Board Election.

Well.  prior to escaping Fort Worth I voted in multiple TRWD Board Elections. I had no idea I was able to do so because I was a TRWD stakeholder who founded, established and funded the TRWD.

Lifelong Texans who have owned property for decades in the TRWD water shed are not allowed to vote in a TRWD election, whilst I, a Yankee newcomer, who has never owned property in Texas, was allowed to vote in TRWD Board Elections.

Yeah, that really makes a lot of sense.

I have no idea what point this Bud Kennedy person thinks he is making when he says he does not own the restaurants he dines in.

Thomas Torlincasi seems to make an excellent point when he suggests it is logical that those who are impacted by the TRWD should be able to vote in TRWD Board Elections.

Then again, the TRWD has quite a storied history of running amok without resorting to asking voters for permission to spend millions of dollars.

Like when the TRWD foisted on the public what was originally known as the Trinity River Vision, with no public vote on a public works project which has been so ill-managed it has evolved into the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, more commonly known as America's Biggest Boondoggle, with embarrassments like three simple little bridges being built over dry land to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island, with the construction stalled for over a year.

With no explanation for the stalled construction.

And, apparently, those few who are allowed to vote on the TRWD's shenanigans, have no problem with the TRWD's inept money wasting management, which in addition to America's Biggest Boondoggle, also includes wasting a lot of money on bogus lawsuits, such as suing to try and take water from Oklahoma.

It seems outrageous, and wrong, to me, that all the Texans affected by the TRWD are not included in who votes for the TRWD.

Such as people who live in Haltom City. Apparently the people of that town are not TRWD "stakeholders" even though the town is impacted by the TRWD's water management.

Haltom City is plagued by flash flooding exacerbated by the TRWD's inept flood plain management.

The Haltom City flash flooding has been deadly.

And caused a lot of property damage, including one locally famous incident where North Texans watched TV coverage, day after day, as a Haltom City home teetered on the brink of toppling into Big Fossil Creek.

Another Haltom City flash flood drowned Ally Collins when Whites Branch Creek rampaged through Ally's home, and many others.

The Haltom City flash flooding problem triggered political activism in some Haltom City citizens, who soon found themselves appalled at the cavalier attitude of the public officials who were supposed to be concerned about issues, like out of control development developing without adequate mitigation of the increased water velocity due to the increased acreage covered by manmade obstacles to adequate, flood slowing, drainage.

Discovering the cavalier attitude of these public officials soon brought the realization of how absurd the TRWD's Trinity River Vision project is. A project projected to spend millions of dollars on unneeded flood control in an area where there has been no flooding for well over a half a century, because federal money was spent way back then to build levees which have kept the Trinity River under control ever since, as it flows through central Fort Worth.

And then there were the flooding issues in east Fort Worth,  east of the area where those levees had been built over a half century ago. This new flooding was also caused by poorly designed development and gas drillers wreaking havoc with the landscape, with no one holding them accountable for the resulting damage.

Mary Kelleher was one of those affected by this "new" flooding and decided to see if she could do something about making the TRWD  more responsible to the actual needs of the people the TRWD is supposed to serve.

Mary Kelleher was elected to the TRWD Board with the biggest vote total in TRWD history.

Mary Kelleher then spent four years trying to get the TRWD to act like a responsible public agency, with some success, along with a lot of maddening frustration.

But, good people, like Mary Kelleher, and the victims in Haltom City, find they are up against a corrupt machine, willing to steal elections, willing to spend incredible amounts of money to attack the character of those trying to shine a light on all the obvious corruption and mismanagement.

Basically, I think one can only conclude that fighting the Fort Worth Machine, the Good Ol' Boy Network, the 7th Street Gang, the Fort Worth Way, whatever you want to call it, is futile, until changes are made.

And one of those obvious changes is to expand who is allowed to vote for TRWD Board Members.

For anyone to say that voting for the TRWD is for "Only the stakeholders of the district -- the taxpayers who founded, established and funded it. Not new parts of town."

And that "That is how it should be" is clearly not only ridiculous, to suggest such is embarrassingly ridiculous, wrongheadedly embarrassingly ridiculous. And, well, just plain stupid....