Colleyville vote; Cleburne politics; Richland Hills transit; state costs

Colleyville vote

This past year has been busy for those who lost the 2015 Colleyville Glade Road referendum.

Their recipe for prevailing May 7 is to confuse voters with false outrage of “high density,” “high water bills,” “excessive city employee compensation” and the perception of “citizens being ignored by the City Council.”

Make no mistake: The real outrage is their plan to roll back city progress on widening and improving Glade Road, one of our most traveled thoroughfares in Colleyville.

Manufactured false narratives don’t change the fact that Colleyville is a healthy, vibrant city, well run by the current mayor and council.

Cleburne politics

Cleburne Mayor Scott Cain has made a rare but very brave and courageous political move by standing up to the heavily funded Tea Party. (See Bud Kennedy’s April 10 column, “Mayor to outside school-bond bashers: ‘Don’t mess with Cleburne.’”)

Many good public servants, Democrats and Republicans, have lost the next election to a heavily backed and often unqualified Tea Party opponent for doing what Cain did.

We should be very proud of Mayor Cain, support him to the hilt and make sure he is immune from a Tea Party purge.

They will surely drag up an opponent for him, and we should be ready for a battle.

Public transit

Richland Hills is having another election to determine whether to stay part of the Fort Worth Transportation Authority.

As a legally blind person who depends on public transportation, this issue is important to me.

But the difference in this election is not about service or tax revenue. It is about debt.

The city is planning transportation options if voters decide to withdraw from the T.

So I still will be able to use services vital to my independence.

Vote “no” on the T.

State costs

I was amused by the April 27 article in which Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick talked about the need for colleges to cut costs (“Patrick slams universities for raising their tuition, floats several ideas”).

Patrick said, “They need to scrub their budgets like we scrub ours.”

Really?

Recently the Texas agriculture commissioner took a trip to Oklahoma and reimbursed the state only after newspapers revealed that it was not really a business trip.

A few pages later in the paper we were told that the Texas attorney general is continuing to pay a staffer after she left the agency.

Questions from newspapers about this are not answered.

It’s apparent to me that present state leaders do not think that rules and austere budgets apply to them.

This story was originally published May 3, 2016 at 5:31 PM with the headline "Colleyville vote; Cleburne politics; Richland Hills transit; state costs."