For a day or two I avoided reading about the latest absurdity of that which has come to be known, far and wide, as America's Dumbest Boondoggle, also known as the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision Boondoggle.
As the years of this century amble on, along with this Boondoggle, I lose track of the timeline. Suffice to say in the past year or so, multiple entities have become fed up with Fort Worth's biggest mess.
And so it was decided to spend about a half million bucks to have someone analyze what has caused this mess and how to fix it.
That analysis was released a few months ago to almost universal eye rolling and contemptuous disgust, due to the obvious erroneous nature of much which the analyzer concluded.
But, out of that waste of money one conclusion was acted on. J.D. Granger was fired as Executive Director of the Trinity River Vision Authority.
And then transferred to another job in the TRWD (Tarrant Regional Water District) at the same $200 thousand annual salary, with his job now being to oversee flood control efforts. Since there has been no flooding in the area in question for well over half a century it must have been assumed that this was something Granger could not muck up. And keeping him on the payroll might still motivate his mother to attempt to secure federal funding for Fort Worth's pitiful imaginary flood control and economic development scheme.
Here's the part of the FW Business Press article in which we learn about J.D.'s new phony job...
As part of the re-organization, the position of TRVA executive director was eliminated and J.D. Granger, who held that position at a salary of more than $200,000 annually, was shifted into the ranks of the TRWD in a role focused on flood-control. His salary has reportedly been unaffected.
But, someone was needed to take over the job which J.D. Granger had failed at. Hence the subject of that aforementioned Facebook post and its link to the Fort Worth Business Press Former Army Corps executive named new Panther Island leader article about J.D.'s replacement.
This article contains no details about how the J.D. Granger replacement, a retired Army Corps of Engineers executive, named Mark Mazzanti, was selected and vetted. Was a more stringent investigation into the replacement's record conducted than that which resulted in hiring the un-qualified to oversee anything, J.D. Granger?
Let's look at a couple paragraphs in a recent article in another publication in which the hiring of J.D. Granger is mentioned. The article is titled Commentary: Panther Island and the Tarrant Regional Water Discombobulation (TRWD) and the author is former Fort Worth city councilman, Clyde Picht, who details the absurdity of the hiring of J.D. Granger...
To add insult to injury, TRWD General Manager Jim Oliver picked a lawyer to oversee this project. This lawyer was reportedly from a fourth-tier law school and, at the time, worked for the Tarrant County district attorney.
You should be aware that the general description of a fourth-tier law school is one with lower entrance requirements, but apparently, they also teach economic development and flood control subjects.
This new, highly paid manager, who has since declared that everything is on cost and on schedule, was J.D. Granger, coincidentally the son of U.S. Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX); a recent programmatic review from a third-party organization found the opposite to be true.
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We have long known that it was TRWD General Manger Jim Oliver's fault that J.D. Granger was hired. And now that J.D. Granger has been fired, why does Jim Oliver still have his job after so many years of so many various scandals of various sorts?
And, again, what was the process by which this new guy was hired to replace Granger? Let's take a look at what we learn about him from the FW Business Press article...
He recently retired as director of programs for the Dallas-based Southwestern Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, covering Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico. He managed inter-agency work on more than $6 billion in programs and led efforts for Congressional appropriation of more than $5 billion in disaster funding for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts.
His previous special positions include serving at Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. where he prepared the budget for the agency’s Civil Works Program and in a management role for the Corps in Baghdad and Iraq, where he managed more than 3,000 projects worth about $10 billion for infrastructure development.
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Okay, did the TRWD people do a better job of vetting this guy's qualifications than they did with J.D. Granger? What was the process by which Mazzanti was selected? Were there other candidates? Was there looking into this Mazzanti guy's performance on these multi-billion dollar projects for which it is claimed he managed various aspects of various projects?
It would seem sensible that one can not help but wonder why a retired guy would come out of retirement to oversee an un-funded, stalled project which has been boondoggling along for most of this century.
Well, there is that $25,000 a month, which could be quite enticing.
And one can not help but wonder where this additional salary money is coming from, you know, what with the project being short of funds. Well, the article answers that question with...
TRWD General Manager Jim Oliver said Mazzanti’s will be paid from funds the TRWD received from the 2019 TIF disbursement as debt repayment.
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With inadequate funding how does Mr. Mazzanti plan on getting this Boondoggle out of Boondoggle mode?
Will Mr. Mazzanti ask, you know, due to those vast previous management experiences, why, if the Trinity River Vision is a vitally needed flood control and economic development scheme, why was it not put to a vote of the people asking voters to support paying for the project, such as what happens in towns wearing their big city pants?
A billion bucks for a public works project in a big American city is not a huge price tag for something worthwhile. Multiple big American cities have gone to their voters for approval of projects which dwarf Fort Worth's relative puny project.
Why should the more prosperous parts of America pay for Fort Worth's Boondoggle is a question it would seem any reasonable person would ask.
Will Mr. Mazzanti be appalled at the reality that this project has been long stalled in slow motion due to the lack of funding, because the locals are expecting federal welfare to pay for their imaginary flood control scheme, where there has been no flooding, and which is really all about the economic development part of the ongoing scam?
Like that Facebook poster asked above, will this absurdity never end?
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