Bridges for sale

Don Woodard does it again. 

His recent piece in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram asks Susan Combs some good questions.  WHERE is the response?  Maybe some of our elected and appointed ones should answer.  Perhaps they are too busy following the Fort Worth ship around the country.

Meanwhile back on the ranch, crickets are chirping as Fort Worth debt grows by leaps and bounds.

State Comptroller Susan Combs is alarmed about the growth in state and local government debt in Texas during the past 10 years. Alarmed? Rightly so. (See: "Scary numbers on local government debt," Sept. 28)

In Fort Worth, the city's general bond debt, serviced by property taxes, grew by 102 percent from 2002 through 2011. The total went to $574 million, up from $284 million in 2002.

Twenty-six million of that figure can be attributed to the city fathers' gung-ho embrace of the $909 million Trinity Vision Rube Goldberg boondoggle with its hydraulic dams, three bridges to nowhere and a silt-collecting, unfishable stock pond called Town Lake.

That is just the beginning, Susan. What will it be like in 2020?

But not to worry. One lone councilmember, Mayor Pro Tem Zim Zimmerman, says $26 million is our limit. Not a dollar more.

Believe that? I'll have three bridges in 2020 I'll sell you.

-- Don Woodard, Fort Worth