Mayor Mike Moncrief, the oil-rich guy who wants a gas rig on every corner and a tax abatement for every corporation, will be one step closer to being gone tomorrow. Election Day is finally upon us.
Now Moncrief won’t have to peer over his granny glasses during city council meetings at all those pesky constituents who invade meetings, sit around for hours, and then stand there at the podium for three agonizingly long minutes and whine and complain and wah wah wah.
We want potholes fixed! We don’t like being poisoned by airborne toxins! We want accountability at city hall!
Jeez, you people ought to get a life. If not for you, Moncrief could have more easily run the city behind closed doors as his own personal fiefdom.
And now he’s moving on.
But he served with conviction since 2003. He did his job. He took over the city at the dawning of horizontal drilling in the Barnett Shale and he successfully whisked the drillers inside the city. He watered down attempts to regulate them. He protected them during ethics complaints. He was the industry’s champion, and now the drillers are so firmly entrenched there’s no turning back, even as concerns about public safety are growing.
Way to go Mike! Hope the gas companies got you a gold watch and a bottle of scotch.
Saturday’s election day weather is supposed to be gorgeous, so you might be tempted to blow off voting and simply enjoy the outdoors. Don’t do it. Take the time to vote. Your city needs you.
During the last mayoral election, only 6 percents of registered voters bothered to cast a ballot.
Political watchers are weighing the odds, and this is a scenario that’s being pitched: Betsy Price and Jim Lane will split votes between them, and only one will make it to a runoff with Cathy Hirt. And then Hirt will lose in the runoff. So our next mayor will be Lane or Price, according to speculators who may or may not be knowledgeable…or sober.
But that election day scenario is built on the premise that few voters will turn out. What if 60 percent participated instead of 6 percent? If anything, we’d more likely have a mayor that the majority of voters prefer.
Reporters shouldn’t endorse candidates. I don’t even believe editorial boards should endorse them. So I won’t tell you who to vote for. But this recent cover story on the race might give you some idea about what the candidates are preaching, and which one might best represent you.
Good job pops!
If you want more of the same old same old, vote Betsy Price.
If you want more of the same old same old, plus you want the cops to become millionaires at the expense of taxpayers, vote Jim Lane.
If you want the city to go in a new direction, vote Cathy Hirt.
If you want to waste your vote, vote Dan Barrett.
If you really want to waste your vote, vote Nick Zebrun.
I have known Mayoral candidate Cathy Hirt for thirty years. Cathy is extremely loyal to her country, her state, her city, her family and her friends. She knows how to put her nose to the grindstone and get things done. She is direct and honest and she has a humility about her that would be why you would not know that she also speaks four languages fluently, was a Fulbright scholar, and earned a doctorate degree in Public Policy as well as a law degree. For years, Cathy has been devoted to improving Fort Worth neighborhoods and is very intent that Fort Worth provide its citizens the services necessary to live a good life and move forward as a community.
Almost all retired city employees do not have cadillac retirements, including Civil Service. We get by, just like everyone else. That being said, Cathy Hirt has my vote because she is intelligent, independent and industrious. Watch out for Nick, he could be a rising star.