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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Narrow open spaces
When Stephanie Pivec proposes a Texas Tea Party, she’s not talking about china cups and little cakes. Her idea of a tea party is more along the lines of the one in Boston harbor a couple of hundred years ago. Pivec, a Crowley resident, is head of Citizens Against Forced Annexation, a group of folks trying to keep their country homes in the country as opposed to in Fort Worth.
There are solid reasons for cities to be able to annex land without residents’ approval, especially in the area of controlling substandard development. It’s also true that folks who want to be country but only a little bit — by buying homes outside of big cities but not terribly far away — shouldn’t be surprised when their city cousins eventually come calling.
The bottom line, however, is that in a state famed for wide-open spaces, folks have to go farther and farther to find fewer and fewer places that really qualify for that description. And there is something to be said for trying to keep rural places as rural as possible or at least un-Blockbustered. Pivec said she is seeing the beginnings of what may be a larger coalition around that idea. “Our goal is to make this statewide,” she said.
Wide open races
Who wants to be president? Not me, not me, not me, say incumbents running for re-election to the Fort Worth school board. If they said yes, after all, it might piss off supporters who wouldn’t take kindly to voting an incumbent like Judy Needham back in office, say, only to have her quit in August to run in a special election for board president — especially if the supporter has dropped $1,000 into her war chest, as school board lawyer David Chappell or philanthropist-turned-theater-destroyer Anne Marion recently did. Acting board president Christene Moss is not a candidate, she told Static, “but thanks for asking.”
Trustee T.A. Sims is. (Sims’ most important contribution to the district this year, it must be remembered, was giving ex-con Leonard Briscoe job protection.) And now, lame duck State Sen. Mike Moncrief pops out from behind the curtain to announce he might be a candidate. Even Needham couldn’t match the name ID, personal wealth, or political smarts of Moncrief. Who says school board politics are dull? Static can’t wait for summer.
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