TWO FORT WORTH LEADERS SPEAK OUT!

Before you vote tomorrow you need to hear what Don Woodard and Steve Hollern have to say about the TRWD Board Election.

Go to the Durango blog to read Two Fort Worth Leader's TRWD Board Election Voter Advisory.

Woodard says....

Dozens of citizens lost their property to the Trinity River Boondoggle. They had the will to preserve their property but did not have the wherewithal to continue the fight.

Eminent Domain! It’s been around a very long time. Its use is recorded in the Bible in the story of Ahab and Jezebel, who coveted and seized poor Naboth’s property. (KJV 1st Kings – Chapter 21).

Dozens of our citizens through the use of eminent domain lost their property to the nepotistic Trinity River Boondoggle which they believe was more for economic development than for flood control. They had the will to preserve their property. They did not have the wherewithal to continue the long fight against their government. They fought bravely, but like the defenders of the Alamo their meager provisions ran out and they were financially slaughtered.

Now comes along Monty Bennett, a man of wealth will who will not be bulldozed or bamboozled by those who hold the levers of authority in their hands. He supports Craig Bickley and Michele Von Luckner for the Water Board. The incumbents are running big ads that blare forth: DON’T LET A DALLAS BUSINESSMAN TAKE CONTROL OF TARRANT’S WATER BOARD.

Bennett’s answer, as reported by a local newspaper: “The entrenched incumbents continue to try and scare the voters with grandiose stories about an evil Dallasite trying to steal their water. This is absurd. For the record, I have no interest in Fort Worth’s water, or the Trinity River Vision or the Integrated Pipeline project. I’ve successfully blocked the TRWD from snatching my mother’s family land in east Texas. My only interest now is to help Mary Kelleher continue the fight against a heavy handed government agency with numerous allegations of corruption, cronyism, and self-dealing, that treats citizens, including me, very poorly while neglecting its core duties of water provision and flood control.”

Bennett is disparaged by his opponents as a Dallas hotelier. True, but the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce could well take note of the fact that Bennett is also a Fort Worth hotelier. He owns the Hilton and Ashton hotels in downtown Fort Worth. Monty Bennett a Dallasite? Horrors! The Chamber might also consider that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is printed in Dallas but the Fort Worth Chamber reads it just the same.

Texans rose up when the governor of Texas a few years ago proposed a grand multi-lane boulevard all across the state. Its construction would have uprooted farms, ranches and homes from the Gulf to the Red River. Like those Texans at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, today’s Texans fought and defeated Rick Perry’s land grab, and the Perry super highway was consigned to the dust bin of history.

Even now, ranchers and farmers are up in arms over a proposal to build a bullet train railroad from Dallas to Houston. They are ready to do whatever it takes to preserve their property.

In the 1700s, William Pitt, the prime minister of England, stood up to King George III. Pitt is remembered for his powerful defense of the rights of American colonists. One of his memorable “a man’s home is his castle” speeches that bespeaks the limits of eminent domain rings down the halls of history:

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter – all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”

Don Woodard is a Fort Worth businessman and author of Black Diamonds! Black Gold!: The Saga of Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company.

Tale of Two Boondoggles...

That's the title of Don Woodard's latest dissertation in the Fort Worth Business Press.

YOU should pay attention, YOU can't afford not to.

And all you Merle Haggard fans, be sure and check it out.  Don't say you weren't warned.

The tollway was built over the objections of many farmers in the area whose land was legally taken for a highway by eminent domain. For the Trinity River Vision boondoggle, dozens of property owners were forced off their land not to build a highway but for economic development. A large area centered by White Settlement Road, which once flourished in taxpaying businesses, now lies nude and barren waiting for multimillionaire land developers to move in like carpetbaggers. Waving the banner of "flood control" – the promoters acquired this property of "the little people" by eminent domain – or the Sword of Damocles threat thereof.

But it's NOT primarily for flood control. The lion's share, $425 million, is for economic development. The Corps of Engineers has estimated that only $10 million is required for flood control. The Eminent Domain Economic Development Juggernaut of 21st Century Texas, unlike the tanks of China, takes neither pity nor note of the poor little property owner standing in defiance.

Woodard: Fast lane to failure – a tale of two boondoggles?

Hail Mary!

Don Woodard has done it again. You don't want to miss it. It's too much fun.

And truthful. Guess we don't have to mention that it's in the Fort Worth Business Press.

An excerpt:

"The silence of the water board, city council, commissioners court and our congresswoman, aided and abetted by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has been deafening.

The Star-Telegram has been the star abettor in the property-snatching, squatter-like scheme. I knew Amon Carter, Sr. and Jr. They would have side-tracked this runaway earmark 10 years ago. They published the truism far and wide that the confluence is where Fort Worth and the West began. Go down to the confluence and read the monument for yourself."

Click on "One giant leap" image above to enlarge to readable size.

All that glitters

Letter in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 

Fool's gold

Letter writers and columnists are lambasting the new Museum of Science and History and nostalgically longing for yesterday's old museum. What if after a billion earmark dollars are spent on new-fangled Trinity Vision with its boondoggle of canals, condos and bridges to nowhere, Fort Worthers, suffering buyer's remorse, wake up, tax bills in hand, and long once more for the old nature-carved Trinity and its vanished West Fork-Clear Fork landmark confluence admired by Ripley Arnold, Robert E. Lee and Amon Carter -- the confluence where the deer and the antelope played and Indians pitched their tepees, a picture that no museum artist ere could paint.

An 1898 painting by Frederic Remington portrays Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado on his ill-fated quest in 1541 to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. The expedition, which included hundreds of soldiers and Native American guides, lasted two years and traversed some 4000 miles of the American West. In the end, no cities of gold were found and Coronado returned empty-handed and in debt.

Coronado's Seven Cities of Cibola. Kay Granger's Trinity Vision. All that glitters is not gold.

-- Don Woodard Sr., Fort Worth

Oh say can YOU see?

Excellent letter in the FW Weekly this week.  If you haven't seen Up A Creek yet, YOU should.  You can't afford not to. 

You can see it on TRIP's website.  Isn't half an hour of your time worth a billion dollars?  Skip a so called "news" program one night, trust us, you'll learn more from this.  Watch it, for YOUR kids, if nothing else.

TRV: A Vision Problem?

To the editor: Dan McGraw’s article “TRV’s Up a Creek” (April 6, 2011) was perfectly timed, with elections coming up. The Trinity River Vision’s supporters on the water board would rather spend money attracting tourists with that project than meeting the flood-control needs of other communities.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, knowing the flood potential from Big Fossil Creek, allowed land to be developed on the pretext that they didn’t have $6 million to fix the problem. And yet, as the article points out, they “found” $500 million for the TRV.

Don Woodard calls the TRV “pseudo flood control” and compares some politicians who advocate the project to bank robbers like Bonnie and Clyde. His comments are apropos. Woodard was joined in his opposition by Libertarian Party Chairman John Spivey and by Clyde Picht and Louis McBee, who refers to the TRV as “Lake Kay Granger.”

Layla Caraway’s video Up a Creek is going to be a success story. She should run for city council. As for Granger, maybe she needs an eye doctor. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

Delores Raikes
Fort Worth

What does Woodard say?

About the Fort Worth bullying concerning Riverside Park and the Trinity River Vision?

Below is his latest letter in the Fort Worth Business Press.

Gouging

Now the Fort Worth City Council on a late night vote has unanimously approved the gouging of Riverside Park, another small step in the giant mad, mad, mad Trinity River Vision eminent domain boondoggle. One step by stealthy step. That’s the history of the Billion Dollar earmark. Never a vote by the people. One little piece of the jigsaw puzzle at a time while the people sleep. After every time a new piece is fitted into the picture, they make their case: “Too late to turn back! The ship has sailed.”

In his historic 1951 address to Congress, Gen. Douglas MacArthur told that when he was asked by his soldiers in Korea, “Why surrender military advantage to the enemy in the field?” He replied: “I could not answer.”

When they get three bridges built over a non-existent drainage ditch, I can hear their predictable unarguable gotcha!: “Too late! That ship has sailed!” Then, when I am asked, as I will be, “OK, letter writer, what do you say now, I’ll reply like the General: “I cannot answer.”

Oh for one courageous voice on a council, commission or chamber of commerce that will ask, “Don’t you think we should put this thing up for a vote by the people like we did in 1973 on the Trinity River Canal before it is undeniably too late?”

– Don Woodard

Don't mess with Don

Have you sensed a pattern here?  Mayor Moncrief might have gotten away with talking to residents in the "Fort Worth Way", but it seems THE PEOPLE are growing tired of that.

They don't like it when you mess with their friends.

Read it in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Jeers: To our usually gracious Fort Worth mayor for ridiculing his longtime friend Don Woodard Sr., when Don asked a legitimate city budget tax question regarding the new cost of the Trinity River Vision at the Sept. 13 council meeting.

-- Beverly Branham, Fort Worth

More Fort Worth Video

We've showed you the best Trinity River footage and the Fort Worth Way...now take a look at last week's council meeting.

Starting at 32:00 minutes there are 7 speakers in a row you might want to watch.  While all of them have some different concerns such as Mary's Creek Sewer Plant, the treatment of Mr. Don Woodard by the Mayor, the damage gas drilling is doing to our air, water and property values, all of these folks mentioned the same thing.  OUR MONEY and the TRINITY RIVER VISION. 

WHY do you think that is?  THE PEOPLE want answers.  To questions such as, wouldn't $26 million go a long way in keeping city employees paid and city services running?  And WHY are WE paying $26 million dollars?  Did WE get a vote?  Remember, that's only the Fort Worth portion (so far), you still have the Tarrant Regional Water District portion and the Tarrant County portion.  Oh yeah, where do those Federal funds come from?  YOU.

ANYONE ever going to answer?  Keep asking.  They can't turn all the mic's off.

Watch it here.
While all the presentations are great, Linda Walsh Jenkins who serves on Gateway Park Board is excellent. (35:50).  And Clyde Picht's questions are as well - the cost, scope and plans for the project have changed greatly, WHY has no one told YOU?  It's YOUR money.

More Moncrief Reviews

What do THE PEOPLE think of the way Mayor Moncrief treats those addressing the council?  Read another letter in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to find out.

By the way, THE PEOPLE still want an answer to the question.

The bottom line

In regard to Shirley Heller's Monday letter concerning a City Council meeting and Mayor Mike Moncrief not acting like a mayor but more like a pouting spoiled child, it has seemed to me for some time that Moncrief feels he is crowned royalty rather than just the working mayor of a large city. Maybe this is because he was the recipient of inherited wealth, unearned money he did not have to work hard for, as we mortals do.

In a democratic society, every man is equal, and resident Don Woodard should have been treated with the same dignity and respect as any resident standing before the council.

Woodard also deserved an answer to his question: "How much will the Trinity River Vision Project cost us, the taxpayers of Fort Worth?" I would like an answer to that question too, and I have wanted it for some time.

As Heller said, shame on you, Mike Moncrief.

-- Barbara Bledsoe, Fort Worth

Fort Worth Council Follow Up

Earlier we told you about how Mr. Woodard was treated at the Fort Worth Budget Hearing, we decided to show you.  Check it out on the Fort Worth City site here.  Fast forward to 1:53:00.  Mr.Woodard gets the last laugh, literally.

Be there tomorrow for the Fort Worth City Council meeting, we hear it's going to be good.

CITY COUNCIL CHAMBER, CITY HALL 7:00 p.m.

1000 THROCKMORTON STREET FORT WORTH, TEXAS

Woodard's Words

As our readers know, we have always been a fan of Mr. Don Woodard, this man is Mr. Fort Worth.  He has done more for the citizens for Fort Worth than most of your elected leaders.  He is an intelligent, kind, compassionate man who donates his time and knowledge to making Fort Worth a better place for ALL of the PEOPLE, regardless of color, status, or party affiliation. 

He is also in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Fort Worth Business Press today.  He didn't write either, they were written about him.  And about the way Mayor Moncrief treated him last week.  Too bad we can't convince Woodard to run, what a wonderful city we'd have if our Mayor was intelligent, kind, and compassionate.

Bad form, mayor

Mayor Mike Moncrief should be ashamed of himself. His passive-aggressive behavior at the Tuesday City Council meeting was appalling.

He treated all the citizen speakers in a kindly fashion until Don Woodard spoke. The mayor claimed a 50-year friendship with Woodard, but had I been treated in the manner he treated Woodard -- and in a public forum no less -- our friendship would not see 51 years. His reply to Woodard's question about how much the city will be paying for the Trinity River Vision was rude, flippant, sarcastic and disrespectful. Woodard asked a legitimate question that deserved an answer that neither the mayor nor any of the nine council members saw fit to give.

As a taxpayer, homeowner and citizen of Fort Worth, I'm entitled to an answer. So is every person at the meeting and all Fort Worth residents. The mayor allowed almost everyone to run over their speaking time with nary a word of dissent until Woodard's bell rang signaling his time was up. Perhaps the mayor did not appreciate the valuable input from Woodard.

-- Shirley Heller, Fort Worth

Letters: The Don

Don Woodard surely deserves to be designated letter writer of the decade, if not the last half century.

His words are incisive, penetrating, provocative, humorous, needling, courageous, timely, targeted, challenging, intelligent, reasoned, probing, lucid, educational, rewarding, firm, inspiring, measured, poetic, influential, illuminating.

Which, in a word, makes them a delight to see in the paper.

Write on, Don Woodard, write on.

– Roger Summers

(Roger Summers worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for MANY years).

Good Question

Mr. Woodard has a question...read about it in the Fort Worth Business Press.

Blow out preventers


In 2007 when the estimated cost of Trinity Uptown had risen from $360 million to $435 million,
Steve Hollern, Clyde Picht, and the late Councilman Chuck Silcox mounted a valiant effort for a petition for a vote by the people to limit Fort Worth’s participation to $26.6 million, being 6.11 percent of the then $435 million estimated cost of the Boondoggle. Much like Arlington wisely did vis a vis Cowboy Stadium.

Because they wanted to keep taxpayer money flowing no matter what the final cost would be, this petition was vigorously and successfully opposed by the city’s leadership - Congresswoman Kay Granger, Mayor and City Council, Commissioners Court, Tarrant Regional Water Board and the real rulers of the city, the Chamber of Commerce.

Since then the estimated cost has spiraled to $909 million. No doubt the next estimate will be at least $1 billion. The question arises: Will Fort Worth’s participation still be 6.11 percent of $435 million ($26.6 million) or will it be 6.11 percent of $1 billion ($61.6 million)? Ask the mayor or your city council member.

Following in conservative Chuck Silcox’s steps, new District 3 City Councilman Zim Zimmerman says that the city does not deal in percentages – it deals with hard dollars and $26.6 is the limit –not one dollar more.

That sounds like the petition to me. With a Zim-minded Council, we wouldn’t need a petition. But that raises another very interesting question. If our participation is limited to $26.6 million, who or what makes up the gaping shortfall? Like the King of Siam said to Anna, “It’s a puzzlement.”

Taxpayers of Fort Worth! Today you grimace at a few cents tax raise that would balance the budget and keep the city swimming pools open in 100 degree weather. Wait until the bills start coming in for the boondoggle! Talk about an out-of-control oil well in the Gulf of Mexico! That Hollern-Picht-Silcox petition that was opposed by and defeated by the leadership was our blow out preventer. It failed.

Know what happens when blow out preventers fail?

– Don Woodard, Fort Worth

What might have been...

Read Don Woodard's latest about the Trinity River Vision (scheme) in the Fort Worth Businsess Press.   Wake up people!  It's YOUR money.

Cost, cost, cost

The estimated cost of Trinity Uptown has tripled over the years from $300 million to $909 million.

Will the next estimate push it over a billion?

The cost of the boondoggle is calculated on Congress coughing up 50 percent, a Tax Increment Fund 25 percent and local taxpayers 25 percent. Who is to say that the bankrupt Feds will ante up? Or who will guarantee that the TIF will not come a cropper like the Radio Shack TIF did? That leaves it all to the locals! Woe! Woe! Woe!

In lamenting not having the funds to tear down the eyesore barnacle that clings to the Court House,

County Administrator G.K. Maenius said that “If the economy and Radio Shack TIF hadn’t turned south, we probably would have had the money! Probably would have had the money!”

When the wished for Trinity Uptown money disappears into thin air like Bing Thom’s designer bridges, and the chickens come home to roost, I can hear the mournful lament: “If we had only known about this or that turn of events, we probably would have had the money.” In his poem Maud Muller, John Greenleaf Whittier spoke eternal truth:

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

– Don Woodard, Fort Worth

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

Busy man

Mr. Woodard's pen has been busy this week!

Letter to the Editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram today.

TODAY is last day of early voting - VOTE!!!

No City Council since Chuck Silcox and Clyde Picht, no Commissioners Court and no Chamber of Commerce has sounded the war tocsin against the near-billion-dollar Trinity Uptown boondoggle. They're all asleep in Fort Worth. Even now comes another surprise, a new version of an expensive bridge to nowhere.

Taxpayers, why stand ye here idle when your money is being thrown down the river? Elect Adrian Murray and John Basham to the Tarrant Regional Water District board. Just as St. George of old slew the dragon, Murray and Basham are pledged to slay this Trinity Uptown tax-eating monster, the mother of all eminent domain earmarks. Victory is in view! Oh the joy!

-- Don Woodard Sr., Fort Worth

People Talk

And people are listening.

Two excellent letters in the Fort Worth Business Press today. We'll give you a preview of each of them, go here to read both.

Why hasn’t the council demanded the gas industry use its own product, compressed natural gas, to fuel compressors and vehicles? Why hasn’t the council imposed use fees on the thousands of heavily-laden trucks plying our city streets on a daily basis? As the roads continue to deteriorate, will the council add another surcharge to the water bill and make the residents pay for council negligence?

Probably, and because of council’s disdain for public input, Rogers should not hold her breath – either for clean air or responsible government.

The aim of the eminent-domaining earmarkers is to cover the confluence with a detritus-filled 33-acre town lake, an unsavory olla podrida of pollutants, excrement, sewage, garbage, oil and grease, fertilizer, mercury and myriad other chemicals, dangerous PCBs, known and unknown carcinogens, and other flotsam and jetsam that washes down from a hundred miles upstream – a rancid, malodorous pond in which no Streams and Valleys Mayfester or knowing tourist would wade or swim, and whose bottom-dwelling catfish you would not eat. Tourist? Perhaps a lawsuit waiting to be filed? It happens.

One of the letters above came from Mr. Woodard. We saw some Cheers in the Fort Worth Star- Telegram this weekend, one because of him and one from him. Both too good to pass up. Cheers, Don, carry on sir!

Cheers: To Don Woodard, whose letters are always a delight to read. I can usually pick his out even before getting to the name at the end. Although I am sure there are those who do not appreciate his opinion, he always tells it as it is!
-- C.S. Morford, Fort Worth

Cheers: To the Tarrant County College Board of Trustees for saving a search firm fee by naming Erma Johnson Hadley chancellor. It's a no-brainer. She knows the college like the back of her hand. Some criticize because she does not have a doctorate. So? Whoever heard the Bard of the Avon called Dr. Shakespeare?
-- Don Woodard Sr.

To the point

Leave it to Mr. Woodard to again point out the obvious. His Letter to the Editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is another example of the questions citizens should be asking.

Unanswered question

According to Sandra Baker's Friday story, XTO Energy wants to demolish a 1950s-era industrial building that previously was part of the Armour & Co. meatpacking site in Fort Worth's historical Stockyards district. XTO has asked for permission from the city's Historical Commission to tear down the one-story structure.

Most historic properties in Fort Worth have demolition delay zoning, which is a way to protect structures and make sure owners make every effort to preserve a structure before demolishing it.

Let me be sure that I have this straight. Permission has to be received by XTO to tear down an unneeded, privately owned, off-the-beaten-path building but not for Town Lake earmarkers to demolish Fort Worth's signature landmark, the Clear Fork-West Fork confluence of the Trinity River.

XTO's obscure building is perhaps 50 years old. How old is the confluence, the observed of all observers? Ask God.

-- Don Woodard Sr., Fort Worth

AMEN!

Demand it!

Don says so. We couldn't agree more.

Read the entire letter from Mr.Woodard, about Mission Impossible, also know as Trinity Uptown, in the Fort Worth Business Press.

Trying to convince the gung-ho Trinity Uptowners that an election should be called to see if taxpayers really want to pay for their billion dollar, confluence-covering Fantasy Island is like trying to empurple the Trinity River by pouring a vial of food coloring into the fast-flowing water.

Trinity Uptowners! Historic, financial, and environmental icebergs dead ahead! Taxpayers! Demand an election or get ready to run for the lifeboats!