I saw that which you above and below last night on Facebook. Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price and Betsy Price's best friend's eldest son, J.D. Granger getting into a Twitter twitfest over the canceling of Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube floating beer parties in the frequently e.coli infested Trinity River.
Betsy Price tweeted thanking J.D., and his nefarious gang of river pirates, for making the right call and canceling this weekend's concert and river float scheduled to take place at one of the world's best imaginary music venues, located, partly, on the landlocked imaginary archipelago known as Panther Island.
Well, J.D. was not gonna sit still for this bit of subterfuge, so he posted a lengthy retort Tweet to set the record straight as to who it was who DID cancel the river floating.
Oh my. The above has so many absurdities.
J.D.'s crew painted a grid system on 1.3 acres of riverfront "lawn"?
With safe distancing between all the spots?
Every single attendee was to get a temperature check before being allowed to get wet with the river's multi pathogens?
Capacity was capped at 25%? What is the number of floaters considered full capacity, I can not help but wonder?
Health safety monitors were staffed throughout the site? On land and in the sea, I mean, in the polluted river water, to make sure masks were worn, with no groups larger than 10 allowed to congregate, with all distancing requirements met? Violators to be asked to leave? How many of these health safety monitors were hired, I can not help but wonder? And how do you find someone with that skill willing to get wet doing their job in a polluted river?
Cleaning attendants were disinfecting on the hour? Wiping down touched surfaces throughout the day? Like what? Wiping down the concrete enclosures around the multi-outhouses? And the outhouses themselves?
The final third of J.D's Tweet details all the measures he thinks Betsy Price went to to shut down his operation, even after she twice rode her bike to the location and eye witnessed the massive effort underway to make the Trinity River and its surrounding area safe from COVID-19, with the final blow from Betsy coming Friday afternoon in the form of a threat, threatening that if J.D. proceeded with Rockin' the River the city would have no choice but to shut it down.
This all has generated quite the kerfuffle on Facebook. One of the more amusing comments opined that this must be real rough for J.D. to get Rockin' the River taken from him, that this was all he and his new wife, Shanna Cate Granger, had to do after their demotion about a year ago, when J.D. was removed from his post as Executive Director of the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, and given a new job, working directly for the Tarrant Region Water District overseeing the imaginary flood control part of what has become one of America's Dumbest Boondoggles ever.
I think we have pointed out previously that J.D. Granger's new job of being in charge of the flood control part of the Boondoggle is a bit ironic in that the area in question has not flooded for well over half a century, due to levees which have kept the area flood-free ever since they were installed. It is thought that J.D. was given this "job" because it would not be possible for him to muck it up, like what happened with what was originally known as the Trinity River Vision.
Those new to this Boondoggle, the Trinity River Vision is an ineptly implemented, ill-conceived pseudo public works project the public did not approve of via the voting method which is the norm for such things. The Trinity River Vision was touted as being, way back when first touted, near the start of this century, as a vitally needed flood control and economic development scheme.
Vitally needed flood control in an area which does not flood. The economic development scheme part of the cloudy vision has always been even more sketchy than the imaginary flood control.
This project was touted as being vitally needed, and yet has limped along in slow motion for most of this century. The project has never been fully funded. Relying on hoping to secure federal funding.
And so the son of a local congresswoman gave up his job being a deputy prosecutor to become an executive director directing a project for which he had zero qualifications.
The purpose of this brilliant scheme of giving J.D. this job was to motivate his mother to secure those federal funds, to help pay J.D.'s over $200,000 a year salary (plus perks), plus the salary of J.D.'s wife, and to pay for all the fun fact finding junkets J.D. and his wife take their crew of river pirates on.
Oh, and also to help pay for things like building three simple little bridges over dry land. And the cement lined ditch to go under the bridges, along with canals and other infrastructure on the imaginary island which is currently an industrial wasteland.
Those three simple little bridges have been stalled in slow motion construction mode for five years. I read a comment, on the Facebook post where these Betsy/JD Tweets came from, that those pitiful bridges are no longer being referred to as the Panther Island Bridges. They are now being called, I assume by the Boondoggle's propaganda websites and printed publications, the TxDOT Signature Bridges.
Fort Worth has a weird pathology regarding signature and iconic things. And labeling some ordinary thing as such. I think this pathology comes from the fact that there is nothing in Fort Worth of the signature or iconic sort, and this creates some sort of civic inferiority complex. I have had it explained to me as such by longtime locals.
Many Fort Worthers have long had a strange obsession with Dallas, which comes across as jealously to one new to hearing it.
Dallas has multiple iconic and signature items. First off there is the Dallas skyline, known world wide due to a hit TV show in the previous century. There is Reunion Tower. A couple new, actual signature, bridges across the Trinity, have been added to the Dallas skyline this century. It was when those Dallas bridges were announced as being planned as part of the Dallas Trinity River Vision (I don't remember the actual name of the Dallas River Vision) that soon thereafter I remember being appalled at a banner headline in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
TRINITY UPTOWN TO TURN FORT WORTH INTO VANCOUVER OF THE SOUTH
No, I am not making this up. Really happened. Something was gonna turn landlocked, mountain-free, Fort Worth, into the Vancouver of the South.
Trinity Uptown soon morphed into Trinity River Vision, and soon was touting three "signature" bridges. However, when the cost of the Fort Worth bridges came in, the designer bridges were dropped, with what look like freeway overpasses replacing them, but hanging on to claiming them to be signature bridges. As if applying that word to something magically turns it into a signature iconic thing recognized the world over.
