Oh no! The Mayor's embarrassed! After years of apparent corruption in the City's Housing Department, Mayor Mike and his elves are suddenly horrified, probably not so much by the act but that it has been exposed in the press. Heaven knows that there is nothing new about financial irregularities at City Hall and none of the elves seemed particularly concerned. Maybe that's because Mike wasn't concerned and if Mike's not concerned, nobody else should be either. Ignorance is bliss and this is the most blissful council I've seen in over thirty years.

I recall that while I was still on the council, Assistant City Manager, Joe Paniagua, told us of the HUD investigation stemming from property acquisition irregularities involving the Evans/Rosedale economic development scheme. That's a project that was heavily invested with tax dollars and supposedly would create a mini-boom in that part of town. The projected anchor hotel soon disappeared and the economic driver finally became a dry cleaning establishment (LOL). Anyway, we paid a lot more for certain properties than we should have.

Then came questions of housing irregularities. Now, according to a recent article in Fort Worth Weekly, the City Construction Company, under the shakey hands of Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks and the City Manager, has messed up city developed housing projects so bad that they can't meet the city's own inspection standards. There also appears to be lack of permitting. In my own mind a lot of responsibility goes back to the shoulders of then City Manager, Charles Boswell, who was oft referred to as "Merlin" by his giddy followers on the council because he could seemingly make money appear from no-where. He could also make money disappear.

City Manager Dale Fissler has his hands full cleaning up the messes of his predecessor and dealing with a few incompetent staff members along with an even more incompetent council. 

Editor,

Failures in the Fort Worth Housing Department go back years and were known by the Mayor and Council, so why is the Mayor embarrassed? He hasn’t seemed embarrassed by the myriad other financial foul-ups. Those, and the potential Post Office boondoggle, will continue to be swept under the rug.

Eric Fox, the antithesis of Chuck Silcox, will make nary a ripple in the pond, if elected. His endorsements, by Granger, Bolen, Barr, and Moncrief (and the Star-Telegram), only show that with Fox, like giving a laxative to a goose; you get the same old crap.

 District 3 voters have a chance to exercise a little Silcoxian independence and vote for “Zim” Zimmerman for City Council.

Fort Worth calls the voter to wake up – “My fate is in your hands.”

Clyde Picht

Note: In my letter to the S-T which was edited to substitute "stuff" for "crap" J R Labbe, Editorial Board chief, allowed as how the tender sensitivities of their readers would be forever damaged by such a crude reference. And with all the crap you read in the S-T , she should know.

District 3 still on the precipice?

District 3 voters will soon go to the polls to elect a successor to Chuck Silcox. The guy most like Chuck failed to make the runoff but there is enough distinction between the two finalists to make anyone not brain dead realize that there is Chuck's antithesis, Eric Fox, and a hopefully a little like Chuck, "Zim" Zimmerman.

Fox has the endorsements of Kay Granger, Ken Barr, Bob Bolen, and Mike Moncrief. You couldn't find a group more likely to sell the taxpayers down the river for the sake of more downtown development (at any cost).

Hopefully, Zimmerman will be endorsed by the same voters who sent Silcox back to office for eight terms. At the very least, with Zimmerman, the residents of 3 will have someone who can answer the phone at any time of day. Fox's conflict of interest letter with Lockheed precludes him from doing council business on company time. All those who want an absentee councilman - raise your hand.

It's a no brainer - send the dogs after Fox and elect Zimmerman to city council.

Big spenders from the West-o-plex

Our city council, fresh from an election day victory, is back at it. At last Tuesday's pre-council session, Mayor Moncrief dutifully acknowledged the will of the people, all 6% of the electorate, and their desire to proceed with the council's enlightened vision of progress for Fort Worth.

Randle Harwood, Director of Frivolous Spending, launched into a briefing that included creating urban centers where city services could be accessed by citizens without experiencing the trauma of going to city hall. The grand vision, of course, is to create mixed use developments to include high density residential, government services, and commercial retail, all tied together with light rail. The plan would probably dictate creating rail first and hoping for the development to follow. Let's take another look at it in about 50 years.

Next on Mr. Harwood's list of essentials was the police and fire training facility which will be in the way of Trinity Uptown. Therefore it will be necessary to build a new facility utilizing 75-300 acres (a rather flexible estimate) elsewhere about town. A previous estimate of the cost was in the stimulus request and amounted to $111,000,000. That would buy a helluva training facility. We'll see what it costs when we spend our own money. Harwood indicated a need to have an operating firing range within 2.5 years, dependent on Trinity Uptown construction.

Finally Mr. Harwood presented the Grand Slam, the allegedly revived (actually it's been in the works all along) plan to acquire the old Post Office on Lancaster and turn it into a city hall worthy of the presence of our mayor and the other elves. The plan is to put up $200,000 in collateral property to fund a study with USPS to determine feasibility and terms of renovating the building and leasing back to the city for $4-6M/yr for 20-30 years after which the property is deeded to the city. USPS has a development partner, Concho 1 LP, which would handle the transaction and do the renovations. The result of this action would be to free up other leases and enable moving some services out nearer the public and create more needed space for our burgeoning government.

Our $1.30/hr math marvel, Jungus Jordan said that building "screams city hall" but he still wanted the numbers. Anybody's guess why since the council and staff have 172,000,000 uncollected or lost numbers already. Councilman Sal Espino actually wondered aloud about the public's number one priority - streets. 

Some curious questions: Who is Concho1, LP and why is the USPS dealing with them instead of directly with the city; how much will the ultimate cost exceed the cost of buying the building directly and paying for renovation with COs or bonds; what services will be able to move closer to the public that can't do that already; can this be done without bidding or without a public referendum; and why does this rise to first priority ahead of streets, drainage and other infrastructure issues?

Mayor Moncrief, the lesser, wants so much to save that icon and implied it could only be done by the city. However, there are clearly other options for preserving the building that don't further burden the taxpayers.