by Frank Carroll
The Star-Telegram Editorial Board in its April 22 editorial urged Colleyville citizens to “Vote for Stability in Colleyville.” A nice catch phrase, but the question is at what cost. Stability at the cost of stupidity is too high a price to pay. Once again the Editorial Board is fishing in the red herring pond and has caught its limit.
Perennial Canditate Mike Taylor
When concerned citizens discovered that the City Council refused to even consider their problems and intended to proceed with this boondoggle, they organized to save their homes and their properties obtaining 1000 signatures to force a vote on this project. To make it clear, there are not a 1000 residents living on Glade Road so this is not an opposition to fiscal foolishness by a group of Not In My Back Yard Neanderthals. The NIMBYs have hijacked the project is the second red herring.
The resolution, having been crafted by non-lawyer ordinary citizens, is not of the clarity that one might expect had it been written by the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. However, it is also not as ambiguous or unclear as the Mayor and Taylor would have the citizens believe. The resolution simply protects the citizens of Colleyville from having a hike and bike trail within 15 feet of their front door and protects taxpayers funds from being used for silly expenditures. The resolution manifestly does not prohibit safety improvements, including even the construction of the dubious roundabouts that seem to have found such favor with the current City Council. Lack of clarity is the third red herring.
The Editorial Board tells us that the citizens need to vote for Taylor and a former school board trustee for “stability.” If this means maintaining the status quo on City Council-the Mayor’s rubber stamp committee-then one must respectfully disagree with the premise. As General George Patton said, “if everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” The current City Council’s lack of independent thinking was previously exposed in the Highway 26 almost fiasco when millions of dollars were going to be spent and businesses adversely impacted while still leaving Highway 26 the same four lane road. The independent thinking of a single non-rubberstamp council member has now ensured that it will be a safe 6 lane highway and avoided a second adverse impact on our businesses for what would have been essentially a beautification project.
Dissent and disagreement are of course part of the fabric of American history and politics. To quote from Orson Welles in the classic The Third Man “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love-they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Like thinking and the need for so called stability (or another cuckoo clock) is a fourth red herring.
Lastly, the Editorial Board seeks to demonstrate its intellectual superiority by advising us poor dumb bumpkins in Colleyville that we need to quit clinging to our “horse-farm and feed-stores history” and “look to progress.” Of course “progress” is always the hue and cry of the big government, spend and tax liberals. The premise is simple-if we throw money at something and make it look pretty then we have progress. This is the fifth red herring and the Editorial Board has now reached its bag limit.
Ms. Zeitlin and Mr. Lindamood are citizens who cared enough to get out and do something about the perceived injustice and financial foolishness of the Mayor and his rubberstamp City Council. Rather than being criticized by the Editorial Board they should be congratulated for exercising their American constitutional right to challenge inequities, improprieties and simple foolishness in our government. Their opponents are career politicians who have held office long enough, following in the footsteps of the likes of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Taylor has been on every side of every issue for the last 20 years flip-flopping like a red herring on a hot griddle to secure any old vote in a storm. Coplen was on the Grapevine-Colleyville School Board which is hardly a recommendation for fiscal responsibility. Far from “knowing how to build a business base” being on that school board results in someone who has never met a tax increase or a bond issue they did not like.
Finally, one should keep in mind before accepting the recommendations of the Editorial Board, that this is the same Editorial Board that is one of the longtime cheerleaders for such hopelessly clueless politicians as the-I went down in total flames-Wendy Davis. Rather, on election day I will just put on my Levi’s and my cowboy boots, hitch up my horse and buggy, and slowly meander to the polls to vote for a citizens’ government, fiscal responsibility and Ms. Zeitlin and Mr. Lindamood. I know that I will be ignoring the advice of our big brother newspaper gurus from Fort Worth, but perhaps the citizens of Colleyville are better informed than is the Editorial Board about what their city needs and does not need-career politicians and a $20 million dollar taxpayer funded beautification project.
