Common Sense

See why we love this guy?  Mr. Woodard has an excellent Letter to the Editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  YOU can't afford to miss it.

A shell game

The Tarrant Regional Water District approved a funding agreement May 18 for the Trinity River Vision project, allowing it to loan up to $226 million interest free to the project's tax increment financing district until it starts generating revenue. Isn't this like taking money out of one pocket and putting it in another? What kind of razzle-dazzle shell game is this?

There is no guarantee that the TIF will ever generate a sufficient amount to repay that loan, and even if it does, that money will sound for 40 years like a giant sucking sound flowing out of the city's general fund.

We are told that the TRWD loan is not tax money, that it's coming from the water district's natural gas revenue. What fools do they take us for? That natural gas revenue belongs to the taxpayers.

Instead of squandering it on the earmark boondoggle Trinity Uptown, TRWD could invest it in a fund to build a future Marvin Nichols dam.

I resent it being said that the TRWD is spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. I was in the Navy. Every drunken sailor I knew stopped spending when his money ran out.

- Don Woodard Sr., Fort Worth