My granddad said "Smart people change their minds." I take that to mean"smart people can reconsider and change their minds."
There has been a certain amount of mind-changing in Lubbock's city government. Two instances in point.
First, the Great Lubbock Visitor's Center debacle.
It was decided by the mayor and a majority of the city council that the city needed a visitor's center, not kiosks or like racks holding sightseeing literature at various places like we already have, but a palatial structure paid for out of the hotel and motel funds. And there was only one --ONE! -- place it needed to be, and that was on a half block of land between Buddy Holly and what is now Crickets Avenues and 18th and 19th Streets. No where else, only there.
One teeny little trouble being that the land was already occupied, by a night club called South Beach. Not a fancy building, and it was rented to SoBe, which also had an option to purchase the land.
After much criticism, the city bought the land and immediately, more immediately than anything involving the city usually occurs, the bulldozers appeared and took down the buildings on the site. Before any further objection or discussion could prevent demolition.
And there the property sat, vacant, blowing dust, for what seemed like an interminable time. Bulldozers, then,,, nothing.
One factor in the location selected being that a city councilwoman had an interest in an entertainment venue purely by coincidence right next to the land acquired for the new visitor's center. (She voted on the proposal too. Some demanded that she abstain but Ann Burgess, the poisonous city attorney, would not let any objection to the councilwoman's vote on be heard. So much for the wrong-headed theory that the city attorney represents the interests of the public, perish the thought!)
And then, and then, aftr all this, Councilman and former radio personality Paul Beane met with Maria Elena Holly, the professional widow of Buddy Holly, with whom the city had been at loggerheads for years over the right to use the name and/or image of the late Buddy Holly, and with alacrity terms were worked out for a solution to many of the matters in dispute.
And lo and behold the land that was destined to become a palatial visitor's center was now to become a park, named after Buddy Holly and Maria Elena Holly. [Did any later husband of Maria's object to playing second guitar to her husband, killed years before in the Iowa snows, in 1959? One pities the fool, whoever he was.]
So what happened to Lubbock's great and abiding need for a visitor's center, RIGHT THERE!, in the Depot District and nowhere else? All gone. Last I heard, they were thinking about kiosks.
Second, there was the Great Animal Shelter Controversy.
Lubbock's animal shelter (shelter, ha! Euphemism for a place where pets are killed) is located on Municipal Drive just off the interstate near other city maintainance buildings and the LP&L offices. But the existing facility is too small and needs to be enlarged and updated. Okay.
The idea was to relocate to a place where the people of Lubbock would find it convenient, so more animals could be seen and mayhap, adopted.
The trouble with that is that Lubbockites didn't want a kill center in propserous neighborhoods, close to their homes. So, scratch that idea. My idea of a semi truck set up as a portable adoption center didn't fly either.
Where to put the new animal control shelter? Low and behold it was announced that the city had bought property off southeast loop 289, in one of the most out-of-the-way places in the city that could be found. And that is the new animal shelter, soon to open.
I guess going by my granddad's aphorism those folks at the city are pretty smart.
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