tony jeter dot com

i am going to take a break and enjoy the holidays so I won’t be doing much writing until after the 1st.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Click here to view a PDF of last week’s building permits.

I like being independent. I think it makes for a better public servant. I don’t have a boss that tells me how to vote. My wife doesn’t have a boss that tells her to tell me how to vote. I don’t have to worry about negatively impacting my employer with my votes. I don’t have to worry about losing customers due to my actions or inactions. It’s hard to be squeezed when you don’t owe anybody. Yes sir, I think independence is a good thing.  What do you think?

Here’s a question. Should the taxpayers foot the approximately $738 bill that the City incurred a couple of months ago to dispose of the brush from one home pictured below? I will admit that I just can’t get my arms around the fact that you can put pretty much whatever you want by the curb and the City will pick it up for free or a modest $65.  Click here to view a generic analysis on the costs associated hauling 4 loads of brush to the dump.  The cost is bad enough but the fact that a job like this one would pretty take the whole day really steams me.

Click here to view a PDF of last week’s building permits.

My 6 year-old boy recently reminded me that all was not lost with this younger generation of kids coming up through our schools.  He brought home an art project he worked on in class the title of which is “If I Were President”. The project consisted of drawing a picture of himself as President and a few lines on which to write what he would do as President. Although his illustration was top-notch in and of itself it was his written comment that made me beam. For those of you that have difficulty interpreting my 6 year-old’s printing it reads, “If I were President I would lower taxes”.  His use of 5 exclamation marks really hammers home how important he views extending the Bush tax cuts.  So what do you think we talk about around the dinner table?

I had a few people inquire as to why “Belton” is in red letters in the PDF from Workman Construction.  This is a good question. I changed the color for my benefit during of my analysis of the documents provided by both contractors. In the original document provided by the contractor Aspen Air was listed as a local contractor being from Temple. So I changed it to Belton after I caught the mistake. I instantly wondered whether this was an innocent or intentional mistake. Either way it definitely had an impact on my vote.

For those of you that are clueless as to what I am writing about click here to view my first post on a local preference issue we voted on last week.  Click here to read my second post on this topic.

The elections are over. It’s time to take the signs down. Apparently there are some that think leaving signs up for their losing candidates can somehow alter reality as we now know it. C’mon folks swallow the frog and pitch those signs.

Click here to view a PDF of last week’s building permits.

Tonight I voted, with the rest of the Council, NOT to award the construction contract for the Sammons Aquatics Center to the low bidder.  Instead, we voted to award the job to a Temple-based contractor whose bid was $40,000 higher.  My post last night really stirred the pot. I received considerable input from folks weighing in on both sides of the issue.  Tonight’s decision proved easier than I originally thought it would be due to fact that Cheney Cox is going to use considerably more local sub-contractors on the project than Workman would have. Had this not been the case I am not sure I would have voted the same way. So how do I know which subs were going to be used you ask? I requested that each contractor submit a list of their intended subs and suppliers.  Click here to view what each contractor provided.

The real issue is what happens next time? What if the non-local contractor is actually going to use more local subs and suppliers?  What happens if the local contractor just has small office and is not really based in Temple? What if the amount in question is $400,000 and not $40,000? BTW, how should we define local? There are a lot of businesses in Belton that were listed as subs in Workman’s list. People from Belton shop and eat out in Temple, they buy cars in Temple, they go to Temple doctors, etc. There is whole lot more to consider on this issue. I have requested a council workshop to further discuss this issue. We have some big projects on the horizon, namely a couple of fire stations. I think it would be prudent for us to have a plan in place on how we might deal with this situation if it were to arise again.