Local political splash-fest

Centerpointe Communicator is a neighborly lifestyle blog conceived in an idealistic effort to rise above stereotypical suburban mediocrity.  If I succeed in delivering just a few local residents one inch further away from the nadir of anonymity that tends to characterize life in the sprawl, then I will consider myself successful with this effort. 
:-)

As a lifestyle blog, it is not my intention to assume the roll of political commentator, a job that is better left to others whose natural interest in (and experience with) that sort of thing propels them toward at least the potential for actual journalistic competency.

Nevertheless, from time to time I feel compelled to exercise editorial privilege and respond to some of our municipal goings-on.  After all, our lifestyles are directly affected by the financial decisions made by our local elected reps, and there is an election on the horizon.

Such is the case with one of the lead stories in the Galveston County Daily News online edition this morning, in which Hayley Kappes served as a triangulator between League City, represented primarily by Rich Oller, an assisting Public Works manager, and a new election-inspired website called Leaguecityvote2011. 

As of this post, the originator(s) of Leaguecityvote2011 have not been revealed.  Doesn't matter - my opinions about them wouldn't change supposing I found out that one of my own family members was publishing it on the sly. 

And my opinions about them are not positive ones.  Thomas Jefferson declared, "Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe."  That is as true today as it was when he said it in the year 1816, but I have moments where I wonder if the venerable President Jefferson ever could have imagined the explosive partisanship and astonishing degrees of self-servitude that would eventually be born of free speech in our electronic age. 

Let me pick a single post from Leaguecityvote2011 to illustrate what I mean:  their February 20, 2011 post about League City water rates. 

Not knowing that Leaguecityvote2011 existed until this morning's Daily News, I independently published some preliminary comments on our water utility situation just three days ago in response to the recent conservation request. 

In that post, I began to explain that Texas is genuinely believed to be running short of potable water.  Water supply isn't some nebulous thing like global warming where developments in arcane system models have the potential to alter future conclusions.  Water is much closer to being a matter of simple arithmetic: we know how much we can get from sources on top of and underneath the ground, and we know how much comes down from the sky.  We know what the population of Texas is, and we can extrapolate with reasonable precision to predict what that population will be in future years.  We know how much water is used for any given population.  Add, subtract, multiply and divide, and what you find is, Texas is going to run short of water unless management adjustments are made. 

That being the case, what motive could any commentator have in calling an objective consumption-based rate structure an "elaborate revenue-generating water scheme" ?   As I eluded in my March 21 post, to my knowledge, there is nothing being done by League City with respect to their Water Conservation Plan that is also not on the standard menu of municipal responses to this looming predicament.  As citizens, we have the right to grumble about rising water rates, but we are all in the same boat here.  Thus far, there's nothing that I see happening in League City that is not also happening (or reasonably predicted to happen) in some comparable form in every other regulated city in Texas. 

And the key word there is regulated: I'm not an attorney, but it has been my observation that state law trumps local law in almost every instance.  And with respect to water, League City is highly regulated.  Even if League City WANTED to back off on water-associated utility rates, it's not likely that it would be allowed to do that by its regulators, which include (but are not limited to) the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Water Development Board. 

With all this in mind, it seems pretty silly to classify a post titled "League City Water Rates on the Rise Again!" under the blog heading "Big Government", does it not?  The implication is that the city is merely doing a cash-grab for the purposes of funding its burgeoning self.  I'm as against "big government" as anyone you'll find, and as I noted on March 21, some of the city's historical financial conduct with respect to water has, indeed, been less than exemplary, but League City never originated these conservation mandates, of which consumption-deterring pricing is considered to be a cornerstone.  "Rich Oller thinks that it is OK to charge citizens more to discourage them from using too much water." (URL op. cit.)  It's not his personal decision, you dorks!  These practices trickled down from much higher elevations and they have been widely adopted by other local cities, including nearby Friendswood (which also appears to have adopted block pricing).    

The problem is, a website like Leaguecityvote2011 doesn't transmit objective bits of information like those described above.   What it does instead is invite you to jump with them onto the bandwagon of righteous indignation so that you, too, can participate in their titillating but completely-mindless ride: "When does it stop?" "Is this the way you, as a taxpayer, want to be treated by your city government?"  (URL op. cit.)

And THAT is what drives us Old Schoolers absolutely bonkers.  I'm not naive - I know that politics has never been a clean sport and never will be.  But the troubling bit is that our complicated society has gotten to the point where it's almost impossible for the common voter to distinguish between ill-conceived opinions and the underlying facts.   There are so many complex issues that voters must struggle to understand, and yet so much of what we see arising in response to that complexity is just one propaganda machine after another, with many attaching the puffery term "Watch Dogs" to themselves.  Jefferson is surely spinning in his grave by this time, and frankly, I wouldn't have a clue what to tell him if he ever managed to rotate all the way up for air.   

In sum, make your personal voting decisions according to your conscience, but I will tell you this much: 

On the face of that water rate post alone, I will not vote for ANYONE who ultimately proves to be associated with Leaguecityvote2011 because, by simple logic, one of two things must be true about that individual:

(1) Either they LACK the intellectual horsepower required to comprehend water conservation issues and therefore as an elected official they would be too uneducated and/or too stupid to deserve my vote,

OR,

(2) They DO HAVE the intellectual horsepower required to comprehend water conservation issues but they choose instead to present a discourse that has been deliberately twisted for their own sensationalist gain, and if that proved to be the case, then they would be too devious to deserve my vote.

Either way, I don't see anything in all of this that would merit my support in any form. 

Disclosures and disclaimers:  I moderate and write this noncommercial blog as a citizen of League City Texas.  I have some municipal management experience, but I am expressing personal citizen opinions only here, entailing absolutely no professional judgments.   I have not provided professional services either directly or indirectly to the City of League City within the past five years, nor do I plan to seek any such contracts or appointments.  If I were professionally associated with League City in any capacity, no matter how minor, it would be a breach of ethics for me to opine on city management issues publicly even as a private citizen (yoo hoo, do you guys at Leaguecityvote2011 hear that?? because you sound suspiciously like you're emanating from The Inside).  No elected or hired League City personnel are known to me personally at this time.  No election candidates are known personally to me at this time.  I support no electable candidate at this time.