Time For a New Norm

Keep Somervell, Somervell

My family and I left NJ to escape the incredibly abusive and destructive liberal lunacy that has been destroying all of the northeast for decades but has been especially destructive to NJ. Ever increasing taxes, political correctness run amuck, wokeness before there was such a blight on this country, dead people voting by the tens of thousands, useless bags of wind as politicians and corruption at every level of gov’t both state and local.

When we found Glen Rose we thought we had gone back in time and we loved it. We loved everything about it but especially the people and their lifestyle. No one in a rush to get anywhere. Everyone friendly. No crime. No need to lock your doors. No hustle and no bustle to the extent we started telling people we believed we had moved to Mayberry. The quality of life was just exquisite.

Unfortunately, over the eight years we have been here I have noticed a change. Nothing drastic and maybe it has always been this way but I now sense a desire to turn Somervell county into Hood county and Glen Rose into Granbury and, frankly, Granbury reminds me too much of why I left NJ and I do not want to see that happen to Glen Rose. Does anyone want to see 67 become like 377? I sure don’t. We have enough problems downtown with the ongoing inability to provide another bridge across the Paluxy. That is certainly a situation I will be looking into in depth when elected.

One of the most obvious signs of a community moving in the wrong direction are ever increasing property taxes. In my opinion property taxes should be done away with altogether as they prevent anyone from EVER owning their house and land but that is a state issue at this point and our feckless and corrupt politicians in Austin refuse to deal with it. However, that does not mean we cannot do something about the yearly increasing property taxes here in our community. This will be priority number one for me as it is directly a result of my first concern. Housing developments and retail businesses do not lower taxes they increase them. Next thing you know there will be a $20 million dollar bond issue on the ballot because there is a need for a new school or two. There will be a need for more law enforcement personnel and equipment, bigger fire department, more EMTs, a strain on the water supply, a need for a larger reservoir, etc. etc. and with each growth spurt the quality of life deteriorates, not by leaps and bounds but incrementally so that most don’t notice until it is too late. Of course, the lack of notice does nothing to prevent the ever increasing tax bill necessary to pay for that incremental decrease in what makes Somervell such a great place to live.

There is another thing that appear to constantly plague the county. The Expo Center seems to be ever present as a problem. It is possible that the community will simply have to come to agree that the facility adds to the attraction of Somervell, as I think it does, and will simply have to be augmented with tax dollars however, my experience tells me that almost all entities can not only support themselves but turn a profit with the problem usually being one of two things. Either, the “problem” has not been looked at properly or there is a management problem. Of course, the motivation to solve problems has to be the problem itself —- not something else.

It is the “something else” that I detest most and will be most on the look out for. I am a firm believer that the absolute best way to protect the taxpayers of any locality is transparency. To that end I will be maintaining a website, TransparentSomervell.com, where I will post the goings on at all meetings. I am not sure who is able to attend meetings at 9:00 AM on Monday mornings other than those that may be looking for “something else” but I assure you that once I am elected everyone in this county that is interested will know exactly what is going on. I will report on who voted for what and the pros and cons offered on the issues. I will report on RFP’s (request for proposal) and any other contractual negotiations or awards that are the people’s business (which is everything since it is your money that pays for everything). Too often those who authorize the spending of the money of other’s (taxpayers) are not as frugal or cautious as they might be when spending their own. I will report where, when, why and to whom and by whom your money is being spent. Since nothing can be done about the phony conservatives we send to Austin and Washington I aim to at least see what can be done about our local economy and, to the extent that it is within the power of the court, what can be done about keeping the quality of life that is Somervell county . I guarantee y’all that you will know precisely what is going on in the county.

Here is the video I did for the concerned citizens of Somervell County. I really would like to thank the citizens that took the initiative to do these interviews.

This is the type of transparency and ease of gathering information this county needs.

Here is a link to the candidate’s forum video — https://www.facebook.com/100003725236395/videos/338874624913250/  — If you care to see just the fireworks they are at the very end.