Welcome to Grangerville

Either we’re getting better at this...

...Or Tarrant County voters are catching on.  We’ll hope for the latter.

All of our election picks won their race, except for Glen Bucy.  He’s in a runoff and will win in July.  Help him out.  It’s in YOUR best interest.

Ask WHO is interested in his opponent winning.  His opponent received approximately $80,000 from his family, for a constable race.  Really?  Is that WHO YOU want in office?

Congratulations to Lon Burnam, Jonathan Strickland, Giovonni Capriglione, Matt Krause, David Woodruff and Glen Bucy.

And the winner is...

We don't know yet, but if you didn't vote, don't...well, you know the rest.

Now, we wait.

By the way, WHO's counting the votes?

Word to the Wise, "Follow the Money"

The primary is Tuesday May 29th.  It seems that Friday May 25th before noon is too late to let my opinion be known in the Fort Worth Star Telegram Letters to the Editor. Their loss.

 

I hope you will share these thoughts with your readers....

Word to the wise, “Follow the money”

Texans pay too much for insurance, every type of insurance. We pay more than the National average for auto, home and employee health insurance. Is it possible that the storms are tougher here than in Kansas, Iowa or Missouri ? Are we worse drivers than New Yorkers? Are we less healthy ? No, we are not.

Texans pay more because our of State Legislators.

The BIG INSURANCE company lobbyists and PACs are strongly supporting one of their own to continue the fleecing. The Texas Ethics Commission Candidate finance report web site shows District 91 State Representative candidate Ken Sapp has received check after check after check from the lobbyist and Political Action Committees representing the Insurance industry. Can we really expect this lifelong insurance company executive to suddenly see the errors of his ways after taking the oath of office? No, we can’t. More words to the wise, “Don’t send a fox to guard the hen house“.

Tuesday, May 29^th a handful of Republican Primary voters will decide who will represent 175,000 of us in North East Tarrant County. Your vote is at a premium.

 

Haltom City

 

End of letter to the Editor

 

Want to know who is "supporting" your candidates? Stop by the Texas Ethics Commission's site, http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/php/cesearchSimple.html, from there you can search using different methods.  I found that using the Treasurer's name worked the best.  John Lewis is the Treasurer for Ken Sapp. You may be surprised to learn that your candidate has more than one "account" raising money for him/her. 

 

Another item regarding Tuesday's election. Voter turn out is abysmally low, less than 4 percent.  In the case of the House of Representatives District 91 race which includes  Haltom City, North Richland Hills, Richland Hills and a bit of Watauga there is NO DEMOCRATIC Party candidate.  That means our Representative will in fact be one of the four people on the Republican ballot, Ken Sapp, Lady Thombs, Stephanie Klick, Charles Scoma. 

 

P.S. the Star Telegram Editors Endorsed Ken Sapp, without meeting all the candidates.

Today is Prairie Fest x3 with Movie Night on the Prairie

Today on the Tandy Hills at the Park on View Street,
Part 3 of Prairie Fest x3

Wildflower-Prairie Hikes for all ages
Solar-powered Live Music 
Food and Brews 
Movie Night on the Prairie

NEW for May 26 . . . 

• Movie Night on the Prairie debuts featuring,The General, starring Buster Keaton
• Plein air painters will be setting up easels and painting the prairie
• NEW Science-based Hikes for kids and families (see website for details)
• LIVE Musical performances (see below)
• Sponsor Info Booths including, Whole Foods Market, Electronic Waste Disposal, Greenling, Arlington Conservation Council, Tarrant County Green Party, Prairie Keepers and Texas Bluebird Society.

Event Hours
4 pm - Dusk
Movie Night starts at 8:45 pm  (Film running time: 78 minutes)
All FREE and open to the public

Stage  Schedule
4 pm: Sunshine Emery
5 pm: Fontanelle featuring, Jeff Prince & James Michael Taylor
6 pm: Rabbit's Got the Gun
7 pm: Pablo & the Hemphill 7
8:45 pm: Movie Night on the Prairie sponsored by, The Citizen Theater

Vote in District 12

Election Season

Is a busy time around these parts.

For those who keep asking, here are some of our picks that we know we will be voting for. 

Be sure and VOTE.  Otherwise, YOU are part of the problem. 

Check out the following. 

State Rep District 90 - Lon Burnam
State Rep District 92 - Jonathan Strickland
State Rep District 93 - Matt Krause
State Rep District 98 - Giovonni Capriglione
Constable Precinct 2 - David Woodruff
Constable Precinct 6 - Glen Bucy

VOTE!

Fort Worth goes to the dogs

Last week over 500 animals were brought to the Animal Shelter in Fort Worth.  The capacity of the shelter is 400. 

The math is not on their side, if you know what we mean.

So for the rest of the month, all animal adoptions are half price. 

If you've been thinking about a pet.  NOW is the time. 

Help save Fort Worth, any part of it you can.

See the story on NBCDFW.com.

Fort Worth Voter Fraud

No, we're not talking about YOU, yet.

Though the Fort Worth Star-Telegram article is just the tip of the iceberg.

Does anyone remember what happened 100 years ago involving an iceberg?

What he said...

A letter in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram speaks volumes.  So if YOU don't vote...don't speak.

YOU know there is an election taking place, right?  VOTE!

Based on the election returns Saturday, less than 6 percent of the residents of Hurst bothered to vote. Shame on you!

I've lived here for 33 years and have seen a lot of change. Some I liked, some I didn't, but, all in all, Hurst is a good place to live.

I voted early in the city elections. Two of the people I voted for won; two lost. I voted for the new Law Center, and it passed. I didn't get everything I wanted, but I took the time to let my voice be heard, and I'll live with the results of the voters' choice.

What I don't understand is why so many of the residents just don't care enough to vote.

Please, don't tell me "I didn't have time" or some other hollow excuse.

People get the representation and taxes they deserve. Deserve is based on willingness to participate.

When your taxes go up a bit next year to fund the new Law Center and you don't like it, but you didn't vote, please sit down and be quiet.

-- Dave Waldrop, Hurst

Rockin on the River

Wonder if they will they be serving gator this year?

The alligator was found by game wardens in the Trinity River at a location between Eagle Mountain Lake and Lake Worth.

Based on WHAT?

As we read the usual endorsements from the 'news'paper and while we agreed with only a couple, we had to wonder WHAT these endorsements were based on.

The letter we received from 'Ms. Led' which leads us to believe, we ain't the only ones.

I was disappointed to see the Star Telegram's endorsement for District 91 State Representative.

How is it that an Institution as respected and influential as a major city newspaper can use their bully pulpit with callous disregard for fairness? The Star Telegram's readers, like all citizens of Tarrant County should know that their Editorial Board has chosen to make their recommendation without the common decency to interview all the candidates for an office. Without an across the board, fair and impartial visit with each and every candidate the Star telegram's endorsements are meaningless and deceitful. The Editorial Board's endorsement should come with a caveat: Endorsement based on incomplete information.

Ms. Led

Fort Worth APB

UPDATE: Olive the Prairie Dog has been returned home!

An All Points Bulletin has been issued for Olive the Tandy Hills Prairie Dog. 

Please help find her.  Her family are contributors to our blog and our city. 

Durango has the scoop.

You must not be from around here...

But if you're still looking for info on floating on the Trinity River with the Trinity River Vision and the Tarrant Regional Water District, Durango's got the 411.

No Swimming Allowed

Durango's been talking about the Trinity River lately, and when we received a link to the article from Oklahoma below, well, it makes you wonder if floating (and Wakeboarding) on the Trinity River is really such a good idea. If you still can't decide, think about this.

First, from Durango -

Yesterday after I mentioned that I had considered kayaking among the floaters in J.D. Granger's upcoming Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats on the feces infested Trinity River someone named Anonymous commented....

"Looks like the stage is up on the river's edge again for the J.D. & Friends Poop O'Matic Float A'Thon."

I did not know the name of the river floating event had been changed to Poop O'Matic Float A'Thon. I guess it's a more fitting name.

And this from the OUDaily

Seems a whole bunch of people got sick from e coli, etc. in the water. 

It says swimming is "not usually allowed in the Oklahoma River, or any Oklahoma City lake or river."

Now WHY would OK City ("usually") not allow people to get in the dirty water and back here in Fort Worth, Texas they are duped in to doing so?   Kind of challanges a rumor we've heard all these years about Texans being smarter than Oklahoma.

Dallas Morning News

All these years, and they are still reporting news. 

They are interested in what's happening with Tarrant County water.  WHERE is YOUR paper?

We noticed some familiar names in the article.  Do YOU? 

The article mentions the Tarrant Regional Water District supplies water to 1.7 million.  With all the Trinity River Vision distractions, we thought they might have forgot.

Which would you rather have, a water supply or more development?

Arlington vote on permanent water restrictions on hold, at least for now

A top official at the Tarrant Regional Water District said consumption has to go down among its largest customers.

“We do need everyone to come up to that conservation level [so] that we can delay construction of a new project,” said Linda Christie, the water district’s community and government relations director. “They’ll have to come up with a way to reach the conservation level that’s necessary.”

Christie wouldn’t speculate about how the water district might react if Arlington couldn’t or wouldn’t reduce its demand. She only said she was confident that the city — which uses about 18 percent of the district’s water — would find ways to conserve. The district supplies about 1.7 million people with water.

“We haven’t reached that bridge yet,” she said. “If we have to make a decision, we will.”

The goal, they said, was to delay the expensive and inevitable expansion of the water supply for a growing region.

Christie said the delay allows water suppliers to pay down their debt before having to spend millions or even billions for new pipelines and reservoirs.The city of Irving and the Tarrant water district have also faced major legal setbacks in their efforts to acquire new water supplies from Oklahoma.

“Even though we’re up here talking about it, it might not work,” Cluck said, summarizing the mayors’ consensus. “There could be a city council or two or three that would not support it.”

He said he was unaware there was significant opposition on the council until it was too late.

“I didn’t really pick up on that until the day of the meeting,” he said. “I was shocked, however, when we had a motion to approve it and couldn’t get a second.”

 Kelly Canon, an Arlington Tea Party activist who helped organize opposition Tuesday, said the mayors had already decided on these rules and held their news conference before consulting with their councils or the public. She said conservatives in Arlington have been fighting against efforts to “shove” smart meters, hike and bike trails and other projects “down our throats.”

Acknowledging that the water supply is a critical issue, Canon said she would favor an expanded tier system that would charge more for larger water users. She said that would raise more money to expand supply, while giving customers an incentive to save water.

Grapevine puts the brakes on Chesapeake

Seems no one told the City Council that the seismic trucks would be rolling through town.  Seems Grapevine is the only town around that you can't just roll over. 

More power to them. 

Read about it on the Grapevine Courier. 

By the way, did the rest of you know you could tell the seismic testers not to look at your info?  And if you do that, "it is never seen".  How many of you buy that?

Neither the testing company, Dawson Geophysical Co. of Midland, nor Chesapeake gave the City Council advance notice of their plans. The council members and the mayor were unhappy they were not informed.

The only parts of the county not yet completed were small sections of North Richland Hills and Euless, and all of Grapevine, according to officials.

After Chesapeake announced it would postpone the testing, Tate said the company was having trouble getting people to give permission for the geophone placements.

"Part of that was a lack of information on what it was," he said. "And second there is a concern about drilling."

However, Tate was not happy that Chesapeake had not informed the city earlier, and questioned why the company did not need a permit to do the testing. He expressed concern that the buggy convoys would add more frustration to drivers already frustrated with streets and roads blocked by construction.

"I'm sure citizens will be thrilled with more traffic at this time," Tate said at the meeting. "They're fed up now. Your timing is not very good."

Tate suggested Chesapeake postpone the seismic testing until the fall when the DFW Connector is expected to be 85 percent completed, or later when it is done. "With gas at a dollar, I don't know what the urgency is," he said.

District 8 Gate

The Fort Worth Weekly looked at a council candidate for District 8.  YOU won't beleive it.  Well, then again, it is Fort Worth. 

Read the story here.  Things like this are why YOU should vote.

House of Cards

Since the news broke of the biggest fracker getting fracked, things have been unraveling at a rapid pace. 

Chesepeake's stock is taking a hit, shareholders are suing Aubrey McClendon, and finally, Feds are investigating.  We hear the trickle down has already started to hit home.  How many elected officials throughout the shale own stock?  How many campaigns will be impacted by the losses?

In addition to all that, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports, Wyoming governor got EPA chief to stall announcement on fracking, groundwater contamination.  WHY?  "....show that Wyoming officials took advantage of the postponement to "take a hard line" and coordinate an "all-out press" against the EPA in the weeks leading up to the announcement Dec. 8."

Seems Al Armendariz isn't quite the news story they thought he'd be.  In today's paper, he was called, "the best".  Thanks, Al!

WHO YOU voting for?

We hear a lot of complaints coming out of Haltom City - we say, if YOU want something different, elect someone other than the incumbent. 

Our crew in HC unanimously agreed on WHO they were voting for out there. 

Bob Watkins & Mary Haltom.

"Haltom" is pretty self explanatory, well that and none of our folks have ever seen her opponent. 

Watkins is a longtime resident and local business owner.  He serves on a city board and volunteers all over town, he's been doing both for decades. 

Sounds like just the kind of council member Haltom City needs. 

VOTE!!

Gas Leak

No, we don't mean Chesapeake stock. 

We have incoming reports of a gas leak and possible evacuation on Rufe Snow in North Richland Hills. 

If we hear more, before the "news", we'll let you know.

Texas Water Restrictions

What restrictions?

Apparently they only apply to YOU.

So do vehicle registrations, headlights and license plates...

Bazinga

WHAT happens when reporters start asking questions? 

Read it in the Rolling Stone.  Fracker Aubrey McClendon Booted From Chesapeake Board

The facts of the loan itself were bad enough, but the way the Chesapeake’s PR dweebs handled it – at first they said the board was "fully aware" of the loan and approved it, then the next day reversed themselves – just made the whole deal more rancid. Chesapeake is a publicly-held company, with a market cap of about $12 billion.
 
The company’s stock tanked by 10 percent or so, vaporizing more than a billion dollars of shareholder value. The Internal Revenue Service is investigating the loan, as is the Security and Exchange Commission. No less than three shareholders filed lawsuits. You just know Chesapeake’s lawyers are going to be dealing with fallout from this for years. And who knows what other sweet nuggets of impropriety investigators might unearth along the way?

As I learned a few months ago while reporting for Rolling Stone, the Chesapeake is really a land-acquisition company disguised as a natural gas producer, and one that is leveraged up the wazoo.

If I were a Chesapeake shareholder, I’d have lots of questions – like, if the company is playing games with financial disclosure, what kind of foolery are they up to with disclosure about, say, the chemicals they are pumping underground during fracking operations, or what they are doing with the hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic flowback water they dispose of every year?

Enron with drilling rigs.

What's that noise?

Another letter to Mayor Price and the Fort Worth Council.  Are THEY listening?

Fort Worth Mayor and City Council

M&C G-17568

I am strongly opposed to the "new" proposed Sound Ordinance.

The reasons I am opposed to this Ordinance approval starts with it being a naive approach to a problem that will create more problems than it can possibly solve.   The resources used to support this proposal is also from a highly questionably source.

I will start with the questionably source, or the so-called expert on sound from which much of the advice is based.  It comes from the City's prior sound expert Mr. Don Behrens, who guided the City in writing the current Gas Drilling Ordinance.  For those who may have forgotten the history on this matter, Mr. Behrens was hired by the City to be it's sound expert for the Natural Gas Drilling Task Force in 2008.  Prior to that, he was used as the sound expert for the original Gas Drilling Task Force.  It is my understanding he was recommended and supplied at no cost to the City by the Gas Drilling Industry for the first Task Force.  This would appear to be a conflict of interest, but he was used anyway.  Later, Mr. Behrens was selected and paid to advise the City in writing the noise ordinance for the second Task Force, even though he also owned the company that did the sound studies for Chesapeake Energy and supplied the reports required for gas well applications.  His company also did the follow up sound testing for any noise complaints to the City on these same wells.   In addition, his company was one of only a few companies at the time that could supply the sound blankets to the gas drillers for noise reduction.  All of this would appear to be one huge conflict of interest that was allowed to take place with the help of this City.

It is my opinion that Mr. Behrens provided biased information that should not be relied on for any information related to sound studies including this one.

This Ordinance proposes the City to a adopt a policy of allowing extremely high sound levels as a back up to what the current Noise Ordinance already states.  The problem as I see it would be that in reality, the Police would fall back on the sound levels written in the proposed Ordinance.  I had experience with this exact same problem.  The Officer came to the complaint and found the noise was unreasonable, as stated in his report, but the Police Supervisor overruled the complaint and used the Texas State Statue that allows levels of 85db. The supervisor closed the complaint and found no wrongdoing.

I would ask you to consider this, if you were the Officer and had a noise complaint that seemed unreasonable, but the City's own (proposed) Ordinance allowed a sound level of 60db at nighttime, what would you do?  I believe that answer would be to look at the allowable sound level determined by the City Ordinance, regardless of the current excessive noise level (in your opinion) for the time and place.  That action would be both logical and expedient.  It might not be the correct action, but it would be much safer politically for the Officer.

In most instances, the Police Officers will not have a sound meter in their squad car and the one's who do would probably not be available until the next day or later, much the same as in my experience.

The proponent of this document appears to not fully understand the nature of sound, because Section (c) #2, it states,   "All measurement levels will be inclusive of any ambient noise that exists at the time of the measurement."

To the best of my knowledge, when sound is measured, it cannot be measured without the ambient noise being inclusive.  This phrase also contradicts the prior requirements of the readings being taken using the "A" scale.  The phrase using inclusive would have to include all ambient sound and that would include all frequencies as well.  The "A" scale excludes certain frequencies by definition.

I requested each of the Council to take a sound meter to their home in order to experience the various sound levels proposed, but I will assume the Council had more important issues to deal with, so I will provide a few examples why the proposed ordinance is flawed. The Staff recommendation for a residential nighttime level is 60 db.  A neighbor's running lawnmower in their yard will register approximately 60 db or so at your house.  The noise may be temporary in nature, but do you want that noise to be OK at 3:00 in the morning?  Remember, many lots lines are very near an individual's house.  Another example of what's wrong would be that talking in a normal conversation at your back fence could be a criminal offense.  Should it be?  In the City's own presentation they show conversation as 65db.  The 65db exceeds the allowable in the proposed Ordinance of 60db at the property line.

Why would Fort Worth's proposed sound levels be so much higher than that of so many other quality Cities like New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Albuquerque, and Palo Alto, Ca?  Could it be, because the recommendations come from Fort Worth's sound expert that may have had an agenda to protect other client's interests?

Some of these Ordinances allow noise levels nearly as high as proposed for Fort Worth, but consider the City.  New York City is a very noisy City, yet it's levels over-all are lower.  Do we really need our City to be like that?

Look at some these other respected Cities Ordinances and compare them to this rather simplistic and ineffective proposed Ordinance for Fort Worth.