Eighth Council Member

The elections are over and the results will be interesting to watch. This will be a very different council then the one we've had for the past few years.

It's been a busy couple of months for me. In addition to running for election, I've been moving into a new home. House hunting took up more time then I figured, and for a while I wasn't sure if I would still be in SMD 2. Still getting settled and I'm still in Lakeview, SMD-2.

I enjoyed my campaign although I didn't have the time to put in the effort needed to win. I enjoyed the forums and meeting voters and my supporters. I will do better if I run again. I learned a lot, especially from the news coverage, write ups and letters. I especially liked that the Standard times called me the eighth council member. Quite a compliment but it got me thinking.

It's common to refer to the press as the fourth branch of government or sometimes the fourth estate. That's because the press has the function and responsibility of keeping the public informed about the what, where, why, how and who of government and politics. It's seen as a watchdog that helps citizens keep their government under control and in check. Among the keys to open, honest, good government are the press functions information, communication, research and reporting. At the local level, that function could be called the eighth council member. I like that because the main reason I attend so many council and other local government meetings is so I can provide information and reporting. Need to do more of that then I have been lately. ConchoInfo and the other bloggers and the posters on facebook and twitter, etc. are truly an eighth council member. Wish I could say the same about our local press.

Right before early voting started the Standard Times changed the rules. With little advanced notice, SAST put up a paywall. All of a sudden content that was freely available was only available to paid subscribers. An active and popular online community of posters was effectively shutdown because even many ink on dead trees subscribers, as my fried Jim Ryan calls them, didn't have their subscription linked to their online presence for one reason or another. The online comments went from hundred each day to single digits in the middle of one of the most important local election campaigns we've ever had. This limited the access local citizens had to election information for a while until the paper move all the campaign coverage back outside the paywall. It also cut off most of the discussion and online feedback we had seen in past elections and were seeing until the paywall was erected. I realize that papers are struggling to stay in business, not to mention make a profit. I know that changes had to be made just to keep the paper in business but I do have to question the timing and wisdom of what I see from my perspective.

If I was a conspiracy buff, I could probably make a compelling case that the timing of the change was partly to influence the election. The papers editorial view point and the regular letters would still be readable but the online discussion and feedback were effectively silenced. I'm sure this change had been planned for months in advance but there is no doubt that this change directly affected the election discussion and had an impact on the outcome. Would online discussions like we had in previous elections have changed the outcomes? Would a greater participation in online discussions have affected voter turnout? Probably yes to both questions but we will never really know.

I also have to wonder about how Scripps determined what to charge for their newspaper subscriptions. I went to the scripps home page and checked the new subscriber rate for almost all the papers they have. At $15.99 for printed and $14.99 for online only, the Standard Times is the most expensive paper to subscribe to in their chain. The next highest one was Memphis, TN Commercial Appeal at $14.99 and $13.99. The rest ranged from $10.99 to $12.99 for the dead tree edition, and charged $9.99 for online only access. San Angelo has one of the lowest per-capita pay rates of any newspaper market, and yet the Standard Times charges one of the highest rates of any paper for online access. I'm afraid they are pricing themselves out of the majority of the local market. This change in subscriber model and recent price hikes could actually hurt their bottom line. I'd be willing to bet that online traffic whether measured by page views or click thru's or what ever measure you choose are down and when the traffic goes down advertiser revenue goes down and advertising dollars are still the dominate way a paper make money.Same thing applies to the printed edition.

At a more fundamental level though, it seems the paper is resigning from participation as part of the eighth council membership in favor of being mostly about marketing and entertainment. Seems to me there were many ways the paper could have derived revenue from online services and still had a free, open forum and information exchange on the political and government issues of today. Until they figure out how to do that ConchoInfo and the rest of the local bloggers and online community will be happy to fill the need for the eighth council member.

Onward Through the Fog

City, County and school taxes attract a lot of voter attention. City has managed to reduce its core ad valorem tax rate at least one cent a year five years running, County has held the line against costs and unfunded mandates, and SAISD had to try twice to get part of its bond proposal passed.

A recurring complaint is that "tax rates be damned, my bill is (same/higher) those nasty Appraisers keep pumping up my bill". Posters on the Standard-Times' e-site accuse the city and county of manipulating appraisals as a disguised tax increase. For sure, the Tom Green County Appraisal District is the least understood government entity in the county, and this is likely true statewide.

I'm going to try to de-mystify the District and its functions. For background, the statutory guide is primarily Chapter Six of the Texas Property Tax Code. I also interviewed Bill Benson, our Chief Appraiser. A most forthcoming gentleman, if anything he seemed tickled pink that someone was interested in his usually obscure office.

There is a Board of Directors and a Review Board, each composed of local citizens. Can you name one of them? December 15 is not only the run-off date for Mayor, it is election day for the Appraisal Board of Directors, I'm guessing you didn't know that. Don't feel ignorant, until State Constitutional Amendment Three spurred me to nose around, I didn't have a clue either.

As to the election, don't look for a ballot. The Directors are elected by the taxing entities in a county. In Tom Green, there are 5,000 votes divvied up between the city, county and school districts according to each entity's percentage of the "take". This year's election is based on last year's revenue, so SAISD does not yet get the increase from the bond they will vote next time. The ballots have already been sent, must be returned by Dec. 15. The votes are cast cumulatively by each body and there is no rule against getting together on voting strategy. the voting strength this year is as follows:

San Angelo Independent School District: 1,839 votes
City of San Angelo: 1,521 votes
Tom Green County: 1,180 votes
Wall Independent School District: 130 votes
Grape Creek Independent School District: 93 votes
Christoval Independent School District: 89 votes
Water Valley Independent School District: 84 votes
Veribest Independent School District: 48 votes
Miles Independent School District: 16 votes

Note that next election SAISD's bond issue will count. SAISD will get more votes, the others correspondingly fewer. Rough estimate depending on tax rates; SAISD will have nearly as many votes as City and County combined, increasing its plurality to 40%+. And yes, Miles is in Runnels County, but part of its school district takes in a small chunk of northeast Tom Green. Many years ago I lived north of Orient, my kids and my mail went to Miles. Similarly, Water Valley takes in a small part of Coke County.

OK, now we have a Board, what does that Board do? Ours typically meets 6-8 times a year at the call of the Chair, they must meet once a quarter. The Board hires the Chief Appraiser (who is a non-voting member of the Board); it sets the budget; it appoints the Review Board which rules on taxpayer appeals of evaluation; and every two years they develop and approve a written plan for periodic re-appraisal and approve said plan no later than Sept. 15 of each even-numbered year.

All meetimgs are subject to Open Meetings Act and are posted at the County Courthouse. Under 6.05(i), the biennial plan must follow a public hearing advertized in the local paper of record (Standard-Times). It really was posted, I suspect I paid it as much mind as everyone else, to wit: none.

There are a bunch more details, but I don't want to spend time parsing the difference between the second degree of affinity and the third degree of consanguinity as regards allowable employees.

What is of interest is the appraisal method selected, possibly demanded with Amendment Three. Tom Green uses "highest and best use". Not to wade too far in the weeds in accounting practises I don't follow, h&bu means a property can be valued not for existing use, but the value of the new business a block or two away. The real horror story example is a third generation home a couple blocks from the new Jerry Jones Tax-Payer Ripoff Stadium. {Full disclosure; I am a huge Cowboys fan, but Jerry has plenty of money, he needs mine because...?}

Amendment Two would cover it now, but a $60,000 home was re-valued at $600,000, a not unrealistic value as parking lot. Result: a loss of homestead similar to the infamous Kelo decision without the inconvenience of an eminent domain hearing; taxpayer could not afford a bill ten times higher, and loses property in foreclosure.

Now the "budget" is that of the Appraisal District, building lease, salaries, etc. Board has nothing to do with the budgets of the taxing authorities.

Frankly, I wish I had looked at Amendment Three more closely. I supported 3, which will set a single state-wide standard for appraisal accounting, but upon further review; No. I don't like "highest & best use", but I also realize, metro areas have different requirements than our more residential use property. A standard appropriate to a highly commercial district might over-charge a largely residential district. God's honest, I would prefer a system of gov't revenue that did not rely on "quit-rents" or property taxes, but tarrifs don't seem to be making a big comeback.

I tend to the Libertarian side of government. That is not so much reflexive anti-tax, as anti-gov't spending on silly stuff. Example; the money ($240,000) spent on skinny trees on the Bryant/Harte interchange might have bought synchronized traffic lights.

Really not the point: the Appraisal District is only responsible for raising money. As such it is easily characterized as the black-hooded fellow in the Hagar the Horrible comic strip. Truth is; services must be paid for. The Appraisal District is not the door to knock on for waste or fraud, it is solely charged with raising the money to fund that which we and our elected officials deem necessary.

I'm sure the next complainant about appraisals will have attended an Appraisal Board meeting. Just kidding, but... Also in Chapter Six; we are not only allowed, but once County hits 125,000 population, required to have a Taxpayer Liason officer whose job is making these mysteries public.

On the one hand, Appraisal Districts are the under-appreciated, necessary functionaries of revenue raising, and I have some sympathy for that view. Other hand, a rising view is rather than fight issues one by one, choke off the income and force the gov't to live within its means.

Storm over Stormwater

As I mentioned last weekend, the city held three public meetings this week on the new stormwater requirements. This poster child for the term "unfunded mandate" has been on the horizon since 1987, really the original enabling legislation was the 1972 Clean Water Act, but it is only now filtering down through EPA to Texas Commission on Envionmental Quality and finally to cities our size. We must comply by 2009 or face killer $25,000 a day fines.

City staff has been thorough on this issue. The full meal deal is there for anyone interested on the city's website. Right now, it is the biggest item on the homepage opener, just click on the "more information" under the stormwater meeting dates. If one gets through all that without being bored to tears, a simple search of TCEQ or EPA will bring up enough stuff to eat up a couple ink cartridges and a few nights' sleep. Fortunately, I sleep like a day-walking vampire at best and read govermentese for amusement. I am still not completely in command of all the details, but I believe I have wrapped my warped mind around the basic concepts.

The plan presented by staff (Shawn Lewis, Development Services; Clinton Bailey, City Engineer; and Elizabeth Grindstaff, Asst. City Manager were the presenters) is really two parts. The mandated portion has to do with limiting undesireable discharges into rivers and resevoirs, including, but not limited to, pathogens, nutrients, surfactants and toxic pollutants. This portion centers on what EPA terms IDDE, Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination. Not a lot of wiggle room here. This mandate will require setting up a separate city dept. which will be charged with identifying and limiting potential point-source and non-point source pollutants that might otherwise end up in Lake Ivie, which gets a surprising 75% of its water from the Concho River. Well, I was surprised, I would have thought more came from the Colorado, but that was staff's figure.

Mind you, a crucial distinction here: EPA and TCEQ requirements on stormwater management do not care a whit if the stormwater lifts your house off its foundation and floats it downstream. Their only concern would be if your house contained hazardous materials that might be released into the untreated runoff discharge.

On that, we can only quibble on details. Part of the mandate addresses household hazardous materials. Staff is advising curb-side pick-up. I found that San Antonio gets by with a single collection point open two days a week and one Sat. a month. We might shave a bit by incorporating the existing San Angelo Friends of the Environment center off Jackson St.

By the way, an aside here to brag on this excellent group. SAFE has been encouraging and making convenient recycling and appropriate disposal of everything from used crankcase oil to plastics to paper and cardboard. Dedicated people doing a great job on a shoestring.

This mandated portion will cost the city about $2.6 million a year, and represents roughly 60% of the proposal.

Part two of the staff proposal is not mandated, and to be fair, staff clearly makes that distinction on pages 8 and 9 of their presentation. This second part is infrastructure improvements totalling $46 million in low water crossings, bridges and culverts, drainage channels and at least one detention pond for San Angelo Draw in East Angelo. They propose this program be implemented over 23 years at $2 million/yr. (today's dollars) and both mandated and non-mandated infrastructure improvements be paid for by a utility fee based the square footage of impervious surface on a given residential or commercial property owner. Impervious in this context is anything that does not let water soak in, parking lot, rooftop, driveway, if the water runs downhill off it, it is "impervious".

Now as this fee increase comes into effect, they are not playing wordgames by renaming one's bill "utility". Granted, 95% of the recipients are still going to call it a "water bill", but it already includes trash, $8.95 for residential. The case staff made was the abandoned K-Mart site, which is not now billed for water or trash, but the current owners will be billed for this at a proposed 15 cents/month/100Sq.ft of impervious area. The residential rate will be based on a four level billing from $1.40/mo. for under 1,000 sqft to $7.01 for over 3,000 sqft. If you have a two story house, yes you can get that reduced to the rooftop footage, but you have to bring it up or they will go by appraisal district footage.

For those without a calculator handy, the commercial rate comes to about $700 per month per acre. Not surprisingly, in the two meetings I attended, we saw a car dealer and the Mall manager in attendance.

Now city staff has done a good job in the un-mandated portion as far as identifying the 40-some intersections which regularly become dicey-to-flat-impassable in any heavy rain. They have some credible numbers as to cost of remediation. What they have not done is separate our options and cost out should we decide to go only with the mandated portion, beyond the working assumption "roughly 60%" number.

My objection here is two-fold. Even the SAISD Board as it failed miserably to convince voters of the last bond, presented us with different figures for tax rates depending on: a) both Props pass; b)only one or the other passed; c)both fail; and just in case, the rates for a, b, and c with or without the state Existing Debt Allotment subsidy. City staff has not done this for the possibility that Council decides to approve only the mandated portion of staff's proposal. Unlike the school bond, this will not be a voter measure, but clearly, as this moves forward, Council will be getting public input, and if the meetings were a sample, some of that input will be a bit heated.

The #1 un-mandated project is labelled San Angelo Draw at Bell St. This is really five separate proposals, grouped in the master plan as 1-50-1 covering all the intersections the Draw crosses as it flows to the river. It includes a detention dam behind Producers Livestock and totals up at about $10 million, the detention dam being over half of that figure. As I put it to them Wed. night, this is my "stomping grounds", one might expect I'm all for improvements in my back yard, as it were, but... In this time of unavoidable improvements to water and sewer, with gas at $4 and likely to go up, we might look at these nuisance intersections, remember that it's only a nuisance a few days a year, and decide, heck, we've lived with this all our lives, we can live with it a while longer if it keeps the tax bite down. To get specific, as to my house, I might decide I'd rather detour a few days a year and have my utility increase be $1.43/mo than $2.72.

My second objection I noted at the Thurs. meeting. Page 9 of the presentation, staff listed Funding Options. The third is "Transfer Capital Improvement Funds to Stormwater". It just happens that the two lead authors on this Blog were also on the City Charter Review Committee. One of the items we were most proud of was making Capital Improvement Planning a mandatory, forward-looking-at-least-five-years feature of the city's budget process. We didn't invent it, in fact Council to its credit had implemented CIP by ordinance. We do firmly believe that had City Councils for the last thirty years had to put a CIP process in writing, San Angelo would not be in crisis mode today.

The un-mandated portion of this staff recommendation is by any definition a "capital improvement". Instead of adding it to the utility bill (again, those pesky voters will keep calling it a "water" bill), those projects, however desireable in a perfect world, should be put in the hopper every year along with all the other CIP projects. Then we can reasonably prioritize them along with every other need, and figure out where the money comes from. Once we hit that wall, a further "funding option" might arise: It ain't that urgent, don't fund it today.

Lynn Transki at the Wed. meeting hit the nail on the head here. This second, un-mandated portion of the staff proposal brings back the spectre of the days when the water revenue was treated as a "cash cow" by staffs and Councils of days gone by and for three decades regularly raided to pay for whichever "chance of a lifetime" happened to be the flavor of the day, the result being a water/sewer system that went past the verge of and well into collapse only two Decembers ago. Though it will be a separate dept. the relationship between the mandated stormwater activity and the water utility is rational, a utility fee makes sense.

I compared this to a family budget thusly: there are bills we gotta pay; bills we really ought to try to find a way to pay for because they're a good idea; and bills we think about if Uncle Ernie dies and remembers us in his will. Right now, San Angelo is in the position of paying off Uncle Ernie's funeral since we discovered the spendthrift rascal's estate had a negative value.

Council, please remember us taxpayers when this comes to you. Not all of us are a highly paid as Councilmembers. Uh, that's a joke ya'll. Sorry about Prop 5, you really did deserve better.

Standard-Times Time-out

As it happens I had just last week written the Standard-Times my quarterly subscription check, so I shall continue to find my daily supply of fishwrap on the lawn most of the summer. After Sunday's column I can't think of a reason I should continue to fund the enterprise. No, that's unfair, the local paper is always worth reading. My very first published editorial was in the Raleigh NC News and Observer, an unabashedly liberal paper whose ownership included some of the archtects of FDR's New Deal. That goes back a ways, JFK was still President when my first editorial got ink.

I would have been pleasently surprised to find a Sunday lead editorial giving us the sincerely apologetic straight story on how the "outing" of anonymous posters happened. The explanation so far provided lacks in timeliness, details or sheer believability. What I was not prepared for was to find myself and my fellow readers lectured to, admonshished like naughty children and essentially put on "time out" and probation!

I quite agree with editor Archuleta, the quality on online posts is on the decline, but whose fault is that? Look, anonymity was never an issue for me. I "outed" myself when I took Archuleta's seat on the City Charter Review Committee just to put aside any ethical concerns about advocating for that Committee's recommendations.

Those posters who trusted the Standard-Times to abide by its privacy policy, those people who expessed opinions they would otherwise have been reluctant to state for attribution, people who have legitimate concern over possible retribution on the job or in the marketplace, those are the people with a complaint. At its best, the online comment site did attract loons and irresponsible comments. In a typical "thread" from a given story with enough interest to go "hot", let's say 50 comments, I would usually see maybe half that were worth the time to read, but so what?

One soon learned to skip lightly past the sillier tin-foil hat wearing authors, perhaps take them in for amusement. Sadly, a lot of the folks whose commentary I became accustomed to looking forward to have vanished, and who can blame them? I don't know how the Standard-Times can ever regain the trust of its readers. I suspect the San Angelo Police Dept. is experiencing a bit of difficulty developing new "confidential informants" in drug cases. Similarly there, only the desperate or the deranged would put their lives on the line and trust that organization not to put their identity on the front page. Trust once betrayed is exceedingly difficult to regain, be it a marriage, a church, or a newspaper.

What I do know is that everything the S-T has done so far has been just about precisely wrong. The "leak" of user profiles had been out there for 10 days, was being actively discussed by posters whose feelings of betrayal were evident in their comments before the S-T ink-on-dead-trees edition acknowledged it. Then the article revealing it used the "outed" user profiles to out one of the high profile Police Chief candidates, compounding the betrayal of anonymity. Assuming that article should have been written and published (two separate actions, BTW), It should have gone beyond identifying Davis and mentioned that all the candidates were using online anonymity to post, if not directly, certainly through surrogate spokespersons. I caught this incident fairly early, an SAPD source gave me a heads up that lists of user profiles were circulating in the Dept. by Thursday noon, but by the time I knew about, the barn door had been shut.

Amazingly, the S-T seems still to maintain its IT people don't talk to its reporters, who have to go to out-of-paper sources for information. While S-T passes blame to "new employees" in a Tennessee division of Scripps-Howard, a check this weekend shows the other papers in the chain are managing to keep their online comments services up and reasonably well moderated. Tells me we do have a problem, and that problem is somewhere in the Harris St. building.

Newspapers across the country are realizing the old fishwrap on the lawn model is trending toward buggy-whipdom. A recent NPR interview revealed the San Francisco Chronicle, heart of the Hearst chain, is losing a $million a WEEK. I believe the ink version of the Standard- Times is down to about 25% of households. When I was a young man, no one with pretensions of caring about "things" would have admitted to not reading the paper, and a hefty chunk of them paid for morning and afternoon editions.

I don't know how significant online revenues are to the S-T overall, but I know that online edition is a revenue source. As treasurer of two local issues SPACS, I have made out checks to pay for those annoying ads. Commercial advertizers want to see numbers of "hits" and "pageviews" to justify the ad rates. One can safely predict a sharp drop there during this "cooling off" month.

My co-author makes the case well that anonymous comments have a justifiable place in public discussion. Often exactly the people with real knowledge are in a position vulnerable to pressure from employers or commercial partners, and unlikely to risk comments for attribution. This reality justifies whistle-blower statutes granting anonymity and/or legal blocks to workplace retribution.

I hope during this period the S-T will re-examine the no anonymous posts policy announced by Mr. Archulteta. Allowing anonymity does not necessarily result in a slanderous free-for-all, that's where moderation comes into play. Set rules, keep them simple, and ENFORCE them.

Free Money

I received an unexpected bonus check this week, and after careful consideration, decided to use it for pure indulgence, a pricey meal at a local restaraunt. The "economic stimulus" crowd of federal gov't would be proud of me, as will the eatery and the Chamber of Commerce.

We do limit ourselves to local issues, so I spare my loyal readers a symposium on Keynesian macroeconomics.

I did think it worth an alert to pass this on. My roommate is retired, Social Security income, and does not have to file tax returns, as she has no additioal reportable income. Something I heard on NPR Sirius radio, the "economic stimulus rebate" will go to last year's filers, just for an address base. Roommate owed no taxes, could have skipped filing altogether, BUT...

She went down to the local federal office, explained her situation to the helpful soul there, he filled out her 1040EZ return and she will get a Gov't check for about $300 this May! Same result for at least two other retirees we personally alerted. Now whether they will use it to pay bills or stimulate the economy is up to them, my opinion, as long as the feds have been taking their money, they are entitled to get some of it back.

We have plenty of people in my roommate's situation as a retirement city. If this circumstance applies to you, or someone you know, make sure they file for the "free money". No guilt about being welfare queeens here, anyone qualifying will have been a long-term tax payer.

Good luck; the local economy is so diverse, failure in one aspect won't kill the deal. If my job is senior supervisor of buggy-whip manufacturing, I should worry. San Angelo may not be the town to get rich in, but damned if it ai't fun

Just another helpful hint from conchoinfo.

NAACP Chiefs Forum Introduction

We have been furnished a DVD taken at the NAACP chiefs candidate forum held last saturday, March 1st. This is the candidates introductory remarks. Answers to questions will follow soon.

What We've Got Here

One of the most memorable lines ever from a movie was delivered by Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke. That line started playing over and over in my mind last Tuesday, because “What we've got here is failure to communicate.” By the end of the day, I was convinced that City Hall continually fails to communicate.

The most obvious example was in Rep. Darby's statement to the joint City Council / Planning Commission meeting. His first words were about how few people in the Real Estate community knew about the meeting or what was being proposed. This was shortly after Planning Staff had asserted they physically visited every property affected by the CG/CH rezoning plan. How can you have City Staff visiting hundreds of properties and not have the owners and tenants know why?

The movie line was again brought to mind as Jim Ryan and I were leaving the meeting. Jim had made another of his periodic calls for an Ombudsman to serve as a single point of contact between city hall and people trying to navigate the red tape involved in any business and construction venture. Shawn Lewis, director of the development services department, wondered why we were still asking for an Ombudsman, when that position was now in existence and had been since a recent reorganization. Neither Jim nor I could remember hearing that, and we both try to pay attention, but we could have missed it. Just to make sure, I asked one of the council men later if he was aware of the Ombudsman, and he was as surprised as I was. We also gave Mr. Lewis a business card and asked for more information. Nothing yet. Look at the development services web page, and find the Ombudsman. The job title is less than informative. I also wonder why neither the City Manager or Mr. Lewis took the opportunity to point out this long needed addition to the city organization chart. Deja Vu. What we've got here is failure to communicate.

City Hall, like most government bureaucracies, needs an effective communications strategy. This strategy needs to be grounded in the basics. First they need to know that effective communication isn't in just one direction. You need to put the information out but there has to be feedback. Every time you put out a message, you need a way to ensure it was received. In radio communication, you have the ”rodger” acknowledging success. In personal communications, there are active listening techniques. In public speaking, there are ways to judge the crowds response. If the snores are getting annoying, you might not be communicating. City Hall can and must employ feedback techniques in any communications strategy. They must identify and actively use feedback mechanisms.

Personal contact is also part of an effective communications strategy. Any time a city employee comes in contact with the public, something is communicated. Everyone realizes that work crews, whether busily fixing a water leak or lazily leaning on a shovel, communicate an image of the City Hall. We must remember that every time a staff member interacts with the public, that is communications. The planning staff was in the field for considerable time studying the CG/CH rezoning. What an opportunity for communication. What would have happened if they had taken the time to hand a one or two page letter to available business and property owners while they were there. Such communications with businesses and property owners would have been a giant positive leap.

In conclusion, it is time for City Hall, and all local government organizations, to develop a communications strategy. “Failure to communicate” needs to be relegated back to movie trivia.

Traffic, Transportation, Studies and Plans

There are two real hot button issues out there right now: The future of Johnson Street, and red light cameras. These issues share two major components. They both show the need for realistic, thorough and comprehensive traffic studies, and they both should be addressed by the San Angelo Metropolitan Planning Organization.

According to their website, "SAMPO is the transportation planning body for the City of San Angelo and adjacent areas." They are responsible for the long range Master Traffic Plan and they are where all the different local groups working on transportation and traffic are supposed to come together to get things done. While I browsed the site recently, I noticed a couple of interesting things. First off, ASU is not represented in SAMPO, even by a non-voting member. This oversight is probably one of the reasons that Johnson Street is such a major issue right now. There has been no effort to coordinate the SAMPO Master Traffic Plan with ASU's Centennial Master Plan. SAMPO is still planning on routing 13,000 vehicles a day down a street that ASU is planning to close. A definite failure to communicate.

The second thing I noticed is that we are in the public comments period for revisions to the various plans that SAMPO uses. It is time to get in touch with them at by email or phone them at (325)657-4210. Do it quickly. The comment period ends on January 19th.

Indecision As Art Form

I deeply regret I was unable to attend last Thursday's School Board meeting. Bearing in mind that Board trustees are unpaid, they seem to be dedicated to proving the old saying, “You get what you pay for.”

In particular, there was a list of summer projects to get done at Central presented by Asst. Superintendent Jeff Bright. It caught my eye because after the defeat of the bond, I had, in an online reply to a gosanangelo article, suggested nearly the exact list of obviously needed, and very doable tasks at Central as a possible demonstration that someone in SAISD understands the word “maintenance”. No rocket science here, things like fix some broken plumbing, chip rust and repaint, take care of a few ADA access problems. Basically the sort of projects Hi from the comics might find in Lois' Job Jar.

In truth, every project on the list should have been taken care of years ago. As has been mentioned here and elsewhere by many others, the fact that SAISD has been so poor a custodian of that which we have already bought them helped many voters decide not to give them another gob of money until we had some assurance they could take better care of the toys they already have. In truth, Bright's list of jobs should have been given a unanimous “go” the first meeting after the bond went down. By last meeting it really should have been a no-brainer, and instead it failed 6- 1. There was doubt expressed that local contractors might not have been given a fair shot, or there was not enough time to complete all the jobs by school opening. By putting off the possible start date until late July, Board has guaranteed the latter concern.

Quibbles, details, draffsack and havers! This was one time the need to get something done and possibly convince some voters that maintenance matters outweighed the ever-so-cautious dotting of “i's”. By failing to gather their collective courage and make so basic a decision, the Board has in essence made a decision, a decision to accomplish nothing this summer. That seems to be the thing they do best, that is dither until it is too late, then do the wrong thing for no better reason than an unavoidable deadline. The bond itself was a prime example, not until the final meeting before the legal deadline did Board approve placing the bond on the ballot, then publicly drove a stake through it by spending two hours wrangling over the Crockett site and alienating their own task force. Considering I have been told Board had really wanted the bond on the Nov. '06 ballot, that's not exactly warp speed.

Shortly after the May defeat of the bond I met with Superintendent Bonds. I came away well impressed, in fact she made the point that maintenance was high on her list of priorities. Dr. Bonds is not free to do anything she desires, by design, she is charged with implementing policy passed by the Board. So long as the Board insists on punting the ball on first down, Dr. Bonds' options are somewhat limited.

I cannot read minds, I do not know whether Board thinks some electoral miracle will pass the bond we recently thumped come November. Matters not, even if they are that delusional, under any circumstances the Central campus will be in use for several years to come if nothing else serving during new construction. The $500,000 in overdue projects would have directly improved the campus for student and teacher alike. Looking back at the last couple meetings the word “postponed” comes up on more agenda items than not. If this is the best this lot can do, we the voters need to start thinking of new faces to put in those seats.

Information Freedom

You have probably heard this verse "And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. (John 8:32)." This is one of the reasons we are doing ConchoInfo.org. Easy access to information is necessary to get at the truth. Easy access to the truth is absolutely necessary for freedom to flourish.

Much of the research on any issue is done over the internet today. You can wake up at 3:00 am and check out the facts on that idea you just had. No need to wait until the library opens the next morning. No reason to trek through the cold and spend hours searching the stacks.

The Standard Times, our major local news paper, used to have their complete archive on line back to 1996 for free. This was a great service for politically active or just interested individuals. Use it to research who said what about the sales tax or tennis court or proposed prison. It was quick and easy.

Some time this year, the paper changed their web presence and services. They added some blog like capabilities so readers can comment on articles right there, and they are occasionally publishing these comments like they used to run Speak Your Mind, a great way to get reader feed back.

They also changed their Archives. If you use the basic search, you get any article from the first of the year. Any article older than that requires you to search their archive separately. The titles and first paragraph comes up, but if you click for the full article you are redirected to a site ran by newsbank.com. You will be presented with a price list that starts with $2.95 for a single article, and ranges up to $1995.00 for a one year, 1000 article max annual subscription (they do have a $995 plan that allows 500 articles a year.) Talk about sticker shock.

If you go directly to newsbank, you can save yourself considerable money. It still costs $2.95 if you just want a single article, but if you sign up as a researcher or free lance writer (not sure about other plans) you can get 50 articles a month for $19.95, which they will bill monthly. This access also allows access to a number of papers that are signed up for their news library service. Still a bit high, but affordable.

I understand that print media such as newspapers are facing financial challenges. They are struggling to make money off their articles, etc.. A reasonable charge for past articles, if you can't figure out how to pay for views through advertising, is also reasonable but lets be reasonable. The New York Times has free registration which allows access to current news and a significant part of their articles. They have a full access service called times select that is only $7.95 per month or $49.95 a year. It is hard for me to swallow that Standard Times articles cost that much more than articles from the premier American paper.

In a way, I find this a step backwards. It limits article access to those with deep pockets. NewsBank seems to be archiving a lot of regional and small town papers. With that number of papers they could charge a more modest fee and actually make more money.