Your Tax Dollars at Work

Back in September the city crews were out on Vance Jackson, putting in sidewalks on both side of the street, from Wurzbach all the way to Jackson-Keller. We remarked at the time that this seemed very wasteful, as the curbs were very high and the sidewalks were certainly precluding any future widening of a very busy street. In fact, the curbs at the entrance to our neighborhood were dangerously high and threatened cars that turned the corner too sharply. But there was no stopping progress, especially when "stimulus dollars" were involved.

Just as the new walks were finished, and I'm saying immediately, like the very next day, the two-year South Texas drought broke and the heavens opened up and rain came down on Clearfield and Vance Jackson! And it rained and rained and on Sunday morning this is what we had to drive through to get out of our neighborhood.

About sixty feet to the left of our street there is a drainage ditch that collects and carries rain water from several subdivisions into a creek about a half-mile away. Before the sidewalks were put in, our rainwater naturally flowed in the direction of the ditch and we rarely had water built up this far. But now, thanks to our stimulus dollars, we not only had an artificial lake, but all the silt and sand from the construction. Once the water receded we had a mudflow!

Here is the city's solution to the overflow - a nice trench, aiming the water right into our street. I'm sure I was not alone, but I took lots of pictures and emailed them to our city councilman and asked what could be done. In just a day or so I looked down the street and observed about a dozen men all standing around the corner looking at the trench! Reminds me of the joke, "How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb?" I digress.

Here we are in the middle of November and two days ago I heard some major "construction noise" and looked out to see this:

Apparently the twelve men looking at the trench decided to do something about it! There is a large sign on Vance Jackson proclaiming this a $1,536,000 "pipe bursting" project! Oh my. All I know is that they have been ripping out all the sidewalks from our street to the top of the hill where the water used to run into the ditch. And they have now made a very deep trench which I assume will be fitted with some big pipes to carry the water somewhere.

Meanwhile, this is what we are left with today and just last night the weatherman predicted major rains and flooding for tomorrow and Friday! Just what we need. This project is problematic of so many things our government has been doing. They get some money to spend and jump into a project without looking past the completion to the consequences. Then the remedy becomes more costly than ever. Will we ever learn?