May 12, 2006 Colleyville
My perspective: Mike Taylor’s Campaign for Place 6
by Linda Baker
Like most of the town, we received the second of Mike Taylor’s campaign flyers in the mail last week. In the latest one, Mike has proclaimed himself a heap of amazing personal attributes along with the perfunctory and not unexpected loose promises, without ever specifying any actual historical votes on his part.
The problem is that a whole lot of people have moved into Colleyville since Taylor was on Council years ago, and hey, it might just be that easy for him to smooze his way back into that coveted Place 6 seat, unless there are enough of us geezers and wheezers around to call his hand on this campaign fluff n’stuff.
So in the interest of injecting the antidote to political claptrap-that wonder drug, The Truth, let’s just take a waltz down memory lane and look at just a few of these grand and marvelous claims vs deeds performed by Colleyville’s perennial candidate.
Mike Taylor, Quality of Life guy? Hardly.
As a Councilman in his previous tour of duty, Mike Taylor secretly conspired with a former County Commissioner to extend the multiple lane regional North Tarrant Freeway through Colleyville from West McDonwell, straight across to John McCain Road, ultimately hooking up at State Highway 26. When it was revealed who exactly had hatched this covert plan at a public Council meeting, a flustered Taylor could not deny it in front of the opposed, packed chamber. From that date forward, Taylor has been known as “Four-Lane Mike”.
No conflict of interest with developers, Mike? Hardly.
It was Mike Taylor, while he was still on Council, who signed a letter to the Planning and Zoning Commission urging them to “maintain decorum”, after a prominent developer, previously characterized by the Star-Telegram as a “power broker”, complained about having to answer questions at a hearing. At the time, both Tom Hart and Joe Hocutt were members of the censured Commission.
It was Mike Taylor who voted to take the Couch property at Highway 26 and Pleasant Run Road away from the elderly couple, by eminent domain, if they wouldn’t play ball. It had been Mike Taylor personally who had gone to D.B. and Evelyn Couch, additionally promising them a plaque, to give up their $750 monthly income property and not put up a fight. The ill couple finally could take no more, acquiescing to the sale, after receiving contact from the City, sometimes, according to Evelyn Couch, as many as three times in a week.
In a scandal exposed both in Local News Only and the Star-Telegram, Mike Taylor turned around and allowed the developer of The Villages, in a despicable sweetheart deal, to lease the building for $10 per month from the City.
Mike Taylor has always accepted campaign contributions from special interests. Examine his benefactors in his multiple political runs. For a guy who declares in bold red ink that he is “not a developer, home builder or mortgage lender” he sure has been in bed with plenty of them on a fiscal basis. But that’s how politicians can claim they are “fiscal conservatives” as Taylor does. It must be because it’s not their money.
No bankruptcies, Mike?
Neither has Ray Spoth, who opposes him as his biggest threat to power.
But Mike Taylor did manage to throw his long persevering and evidently forgiving neighbor, Tom Hart, under the bus with that crack. Councilman Hart, who is running unopposed, had a long-ago Chapter 13, that was well documented in all of his filings, before and since the current election, so it evidently isn’t the big issue you and your confidante and “campaign treasurer”, Ms. Dezann Kobuly, hope to Red Herring into an artificial issue.
A proven leader, Mike? Hardly.
Unable to win the REAL RACE dear to his ambitious little heart, i.e., the Mayor’s seat, or even get back on Council again, Mike did get busy. He volunteered himself and his prowess as Proven Leader last spring to tout the $13.7 million dollar, ill-fated Bond election to bury power lines at taxpayer expense. When Mike says in his recent flyer under “Streets” that he “supports..relieving rush hour congestion with key intersection improvements…” well, better hang onto your wallets. You are about to be old Four-Lane’s road kill.
Mike Taylor, No Conflicts Of Interest?
That is so true, Mike. Because the ONLY thing you are now, and have ever been interested in is your own political agenda. No conflict at all.
