Lubbock Left

LubbockLeft has obtained a copy of the Linda DeLeon recall petition submitted two days ago (at 4:52 PM — cutting it close!) and will mine it for statistical and demographic information.

Stay tuned!

El Editor has released a “web-only” article about how two former District 1 City Council Representatives have signed the Linda DeLeon recall petition. KCBD 11 has coverage as well. It looks like there’s a full-on feud within the Lubbock Hispanic community, with current and past elected officials taking sides over Linda’s Council position.

Personally, I wonder what Linda has done to deserve this kind of vilification. Walking out of a town hall meeting was not a good idea, but the circumstances may speak to that. (I was not at that particular meeting.) Closing South Beach to build a visitors’ center was also not a good idea, but she was only 1 voice out of 7 in that unanimous decision of the Council. Do either of those events stack up against 20+ years of public service?

On the other hand, the petitioners are flexing the muscles of democracy, which is always a good thing. Any elected official should welcome a chance for the voters to express themselves directly, even if it’s to vote on whether to recall them.

My prediction: now that the petition organizers have gotten a trial run out of their systems, the second recall attempt will succeed. Then, the November election on whether to hold a recall election will probably succeed. If it does, Linda will win her re-election in May 2008.

(I’m pretty sure that’s how the mechanics of the recall would work — feel free to correct me in the comments if I’m off somehow.)

Anyway, today (Monday) is the day that the new round of recall petitions are due. We’ll most likely know the results of the recall petition by the end of this week, hopefully on Friday.

It sucks to have friends on both sides of a feud. So, whatever the outcome, I hope everyone will be satisfied by the results of our electoral process.

Why did ListenLubbock blame the people’s poor opinion of the bond package on the Mayor and “current” City Council? (It’s unclear if the “current” City Council in this description includes Todd Klein, who has served on the council for just two months.) I believe that they wanted to distract the public from the fact that this bond package was strongly supported by the Chamber of Commerce.

Look at who is a part of ListenLubbock, a PAC formed specifically to support the bond election. (Has anyone gone through the FEC to see who was funding ListenLubbock?) Their listening report (pdf) includes a member list with big names from the Chamber, the Hispanic Chamber, UMC, etc. Their listening sessions were staffed by Chamber members.

People join the Chamber of Commerce for specific benefit to their business, not to their community. To be fair, those are occasionally the same thing, but not generally.

My conclusion is that the Chamber was very much in favor of this bond issue, and when they found out that the public was very much against this bond issue, they pinned it on the already unpopular Mayor, City Council, and City staff — those who actually decided not to have the bond election. Worse, it’s not clear from their “listening report” whether they are basing their blame on an actual polling statistic or on an unscientific general feeling. The public needs access to the full crosstab of their scientific poll.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Everyone’s probably heard the big news of the day: the City Council will not offer a bond election to the voters this November. The current wisdom is to take a step back and prioritize carefully. I think that this is an overall good choice.

Kevin Glasheen was on Pratt’s radio show again today as a guest co-host. He also approved of the City Council’s unanimous decision. My guess is that Glasheen is continuing to play politics very visibly because he may be considering a run for Mayor next year.

In the current local atmosphere, I imagine there are several people considering a run for Mayor next year.

The Pratt-less week of Robert Pratt’s show followed up yesterday’s Gary Boren co-host with another co-host who is also not the current District 3 Councilman but wishes he were: Kevin Glasheen.

The big news of the day is that the ListenLubbock PAC released (most of) its findings from group meetings and a poll of past voters (pdf). Glasheen spoke in favor of the findings of the group; i.e., Lubbock citizens will not support the current bond package. I find that interesting, because it’s almost a complete reversal of his position on downtown development from his campaign.

Indeed, Glasheen was on the Lubbock Arts and Entertainment Task Force Performing Arts Venues Subcommittee, and their March 2007 report (pdf) to the Mayor and City Council advocated for pretty much everything that’s on the current bond proposal that has anything to do with downtown. It’s basically a total flip-flop for Glasheen now to come out against the bond proposal that he had a direct hand in shaping earlier this year.

I also believe it’s a temporary and strategic flip-flop, because Glasheen owns property downtown.

As a downtown developer, Glasheen is sitting on property that currently does nothing while he waits for it to become valuable (say, through actions taken by the City). We have the problem in Lubbock of nearly every single downtown developer having this same behavior. That’s why downtown looks like a ghost town.

So, who blinks first: the developers or the City? If the City blinks first, then we will have higher taxes, or, much more likely due to the rabid “don’t you dare tax me for anything” voting bloc, we would see a cut in essential services.

I’m betting with Lubbock’s history: a majority of developers will not blink first, and some other entity will have to act while the developers profit from doing nothing.

In the meantime, the current bond proposal is likely to go “back to the drawing board” while its proponents think of new strategies based on the marketing study just performed by the ListenLubbock PAC.

We’ll see what happens at the City Council tomorrow morning, anyway.

Former City Councilman Gary Boren was guest hosting Robert Pratt’s radio show today while Pratt is on vacation / suspension / whatever. He remarked that he wished we could force prisoners into the army to go fight in Iraq for us. He prefaced this remark by saying that it might sound “extreme Right Wing.” You don’t say, Gary.

Felons, by committing crimes, have already demonstrated that they don’t deserve the full trust of our society. If you, as a soldier, can’t trust your buddy next to you in the foxhole, then you’re screwed.

It’s bad enough that we have a large mercenary fighting force — somewhere in the tens of thousands — fighting many of our battles. It’s worse still to consider using prisoners to fight our wars.

With brilliant ideas like that, I hope Boren doesn’t have aspirations for higher office.

Today is the day that the public (and the City Council) get to see the staff’s proposed budget for 07-08.

The A-J has posted a copy of the budget broken into different sections as part of their coverage.

In case the above link goes away or they decide to remove the documents, I have re-hosted the pdfs here:

• Administrative Services
• Community Service
• Cultural and Recreation Services
• Debt Service Fund
• General Fund
• Public Safety and Health Services
• Public Works
• Revenue Analysis

As many of us on the Left are fond of saying, “Budgets are moral documents.” I wonder what priorities these documents will show…

I consider myself to be an outside observer of the whole Dixon Platt implosion, but certain aspects of the case jump out at me. The A-J reports that Platt dropped out of the grievance hearing process because he felt that the mediator had a bias toward the City.

I wonder why he uses the potential bias of the arbitrating attorney now, after two days of testimony, to cancel the public hearing process. Why not point out the possible bias at the beginning of the process, thus saving two days of testimony (and taxpayer dollars too)?

My hunch is that the hearings weren’t going well for Platt, and he needed a dignified “out” to re-group and begin a fresh legal assault.

Thoughts?

I attended the District 3 Town Hall meeting, and it was a good experience because I got to see people actually getting involved with their elected leaders face-to-face. The meeting covered lots of ground, from soccer to streets to MHMR, in addition to the expected big topics of the bond proposal, red light cameras, crime, and taxes.

District 3 Councilman Todd Klein was joined by District 2 Councilman Floyd Price — whose district begins across the street from Oakwood Baptist, the meeting location — and a good cross-section of city staff. Councilman Klein really impressed me with this Town Hall debut. He listened well and promised individual meetings with citizens who had concerns beyond the scope of a single public meeting. Overall, I think the whole panel did a good job of responding to citizen questions and complaints.

I took some video of the event, and I’ll try to put some clips online over the next few days. It was my first time videotaping such an event, so I’ll probably have to hunt around for usable clips. Bear with me; I think some important things were said.

I was at a party this weekend, and the Dixon Platt “wrongful termination” hearing was a frequent conversation topic. I met a few people who worked with him before, and their comments gave a common view: he’s… probably not getting his job back, and that’s… probably a good thing.

It’s time for him to find something else to do for a living, and it’s time for the City staff to move on.