An End to Victor Hernandez' Chapter in the City Property Tax Saga?

So, the Hernandez persecution has fizzled out, but legal research continues for future reference, by outside council, on a high-rate meter. http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2011-04-29/hernandez-retains-lubbock-council-seat#comment-167336

One wonders, why does the city have in-house lawyers if they go outside all the time? Is it that they need someone to decide which outside lawyers to hire? Or is it the need to have someone outside to blame when mistakes are made, the way "consultants" are hired or committees formed before making any decision on anything, So much of our activity is no more than CYA.


See that headline? "Hernandez Retains Seat"? Makes you think he was about to be kicked off the council and hung on by his fingernails, doesn't it? Wasn't it pretty clear from the outset that he would not be ousted?


So Mayor Tom Martin is now saying “I don’t think it would have occurred to anybody that people would run for or serve for office not having paid their city taxes,” Oh, how unthinkable!

Really?

Then why think that city charter provision applied to unpaid property taxes in the first place?

That interpretation occurred to Mayor Tom and most on the Council and the City Attorney back in Jan/Feb. But that was then and this is now.

And what's the problem, anyway? Why can't someone who owes the city work for the city? Or be elected to city offices?

The only problem with that is the conflict of interest involved in working for an entity that is trying to collect from you, and in the case of unpaid taxes, there is no conflict because LCAD is in the picture. Maybe there ought to be a rule that everyone at LCAD has to be caught up on property taxes; no need for city employees.

In all this unpaid tax fuss, there is an irrational, angry, punitive element that Mayor Martin and others on the council have been pandering to, that paints those who are late paying taxes as bums and moochers, which is not the case.

Did anyone think Hernandez' taxes would never be paid?  Or that Hernandez would pay the city a lot more in the long run? So what was the problem?

A Proposal for Control-Burn Strips

Controlled burns are labor intensive.   You have to choose a day when hunidity is not too low, when wind speeds are low, and have a bunch of people standing by the fight the fire if necessary.

So burning half of Texas to prevent catastrophic prairie fires is not very practical.  

But there is a cheaper way.  

Why not do controlled burns in strips a half mile wide, separated by several miles of terrain that is not burned?  Orient the strips at right angles to the prevailing winds? 

This would limit the spread of wildfire to a smaller area.

The Salvation Army's Campaign for Survival

Living for most of my life a few blocks from Lubbock's Salvation Army, I can assure you there was a time when they were very busy.  Recently, though, they have fallen on hard times.

"Hard times" for a charity means they are no onger relevant, and are about to be dropped from United Way funding.

The S.A. soup kitchen has been almost entirely supplanted by St. Benedicts, and the chronically homeless have been out of the S.A. system for a long time.   They do get some few drop-ins for a night or two stay, mostly travelers who come by vehicle.

Facing extinction, Lubbock's S.A. has been desparate to come up with a function that justifies their continued existence.   They hit on a step program for reintroducing the homeless into society.  

Naturally, this is not done with the facilities they now have.   There has to be a building program.   Which gives the Salavtion Army's paid administrators job security, for a while.  That being the purpose of charities in general:  salaries for the higher ups.   Charity, if any, is wholly secondary.   It's sad to see the venerable S.A. playing this game with donated funds.

We'll see how it all works out.  I myself am quite dubious.  You don't end homelessness.  Not entirely, and never for some.   I don't even think it ought to be a goal.

Prairie Fire!

At first I thought it was a fog Saturday night, from the haze around the lampposts.  But there was an acrid smell that tipped me off to the fact that it was smoke.  Smoke from fires burning and that had burned scores of miles away from Lubbock.

Sad of think of lives burned up and destroyed.  Why?

Observations.  
*Fire -- forest fires, prairie fires--are normal.  What is not normal is the absence of fire.
*The absence of fire makes fire worse when it does come, and it will come, sooner or later.
*Fire kills and destroys but it also renews.
*Periodic burns favor certain species over others.  Part of what we think of as natural ecology is a product of periodic fire.
*The Indians used to set grass fires to aid in the hunt.  
*Lightning can start grass or forest fires.
*Fires can be started any number of ways.  A few years ago there was a line of fires following the progress of an old diesel locomotive on the Seagraves-Whiteface line.  A hot catalytic converter can set off a grassfire.
*A narrow fire road alongside the fenceline on most ranches does not stop a fire if there is wind.

I am all for the old CREEP program, which rewarded farmers for planting grass on highly erodible land.  A lot less blowing dust than we had years ago, in the 1950s-1970s.   But that grass is highly inflammible.

Overgrazing is bad.  Any argument there?  However, undergrazed ranchland or pasture or CREEP land is a prairie fire waiting to happen.

In the old days, you didn't see a lot of wasted fodder.  If there was good growth on the roadside, farmers would stake out cows or goats to take advantage of that food source.  Mowing not needed.  Farmers had big families, and there were always kids around who could be told to go stake out the livestock and mind them.

Now, we all live uptown, or think we do, even (and perhaps especially) farmers and stockmen.  Labor costs are high.  And nobody takes advantage of grazing opportunities.  Nobody gathers twigs and limbs off the mesquites for firewood.   Nobody cuts or plows over dried up weeds.

So the brush collects.  Dry grass collects, especially on roadsides where a thrown-out cigarette can set off a multi-acre conflagration.  Last year's roadside mowing has left some dry thatch on the ground.   And so conditions are just right for fire, if drought and some wind is added in.   Wind is rarely in short supply around here.

So what to do?  It is too labor intensive (labor-expensive) for ranchers to go around staking out goats or mowing and sawing. 

The only solution I see is to practice preventive burning, preferably when winds are calm and before a drought hits.

Update on the Lubbock City Charter-Councilman Hernandez Situation

It is dying off without a whimper, after DA Matt Powell signed off on a letter to the city council declining to file suit over the matter.   Powell cited a prior city attorney's opinion dating from 2008 concerning the city charter "no debts"  provision and constitutional problems with enforcing it and that was that. 

(Now why weren't the opinion and constitutional problems revealed by the current city attorney, who gets a higher salary than the DA does?)

Unsatisfying, to those of us who like to see final definitive conclusions.  But for the political realists on the council and at the DA's office, it is enough.