09/16/2023
It occurs to me I have neglected to post much about what is going on from my perspective as a Councilman. One subject I have not said much about lately is the Code Compliance crackdown over the past few months in Elmendorf. I got chewed out by a parishioner from St. Anthony’s that the City has an agenda against the church and that was why the church gets cited so much.
That is not the case from what I can see. I am going to tell it like it is about being on the Council and people can like it or not. When you come in, you inherit everything that was ever voted in before you. The ability to change much of it is limited. Just learning what is in place is a challenge. I have read through the ordinances but, honestly, not everything sticks and I guarantee I don’t like everything I have read. When citations are written, they are for ordinances that have been in place for years. The text was not written by people here in Elmendorf. They are inspired by the things that home insurance companies want, from what I can gather.
Elmendorf will never be anything near a Norman Rockwell, white picket fence, town. I have lived here all my life and I know my folks. We are laid back and not much on appearances for the most part. If we were anything else, we would be somewhere else. People who have moved here from somewhere else and want to impose their “somewhere else” on us do so at their own peril. Or you would think that; when no one takes an interest in local government, you get people in who likely don’t reflect your views and that is just the way it is. Vote them out – well, first someone else has to run so there is a choice and there has not been an election for any city office since 2019 – or live with it.
Do we collectively want to live in a dump? I really doubt it. The standards in place are not that bad unless you are way behind. If you are way behind, then this year was no year to catch up – it was dangerously hot all summer. I tried to help the church catch up by pulling vines off the chain link fence on Kilowatt Road and around the corner on Cassiano Road. Personally, I don’t consider dead vines on a fence to be that much of a problem and I told the City Administration that. Regardless, I pulled them off down to eighteen inches.
I don’t know if I will do it again. I ended up with an abrasion wound on my right big toe that took two months and some surgery to heal. I have developed hammer toes since my knee replacement years ago and that condition advanced to the point that doing all that climbing up the bit of an incline on Cassiano and the pressure from the stance you assume to get down and pull at those morning glory vines just pushed me past the point of no return. The Rotting Years are not golden. I got that line from a friend telling me what her mother told her.
I pointed out to the City Administrator that the City’s own properties weren’t up to the standards imposed on the rest of us and he agreed and that would be addressed. The lots were cleaned up but the vines? Other things came up like a 3 AM water leak that happened fifteen feet in the ground. That occasion pointed up the fact that the City needs a track hoe. That is something else we will deal with.
Which brings us to water; you turn on a faucet in Elmendorf and water comes out. There is no accounting for taste – everyone is different about the taste, the quality, the cost or our water but we get water out of the tap. That is not the case a little ways south of us. Aqua Texas in Eagle Creek and the Picosa water district in Wilson County both have had big problems with the drought, aging equipment, and whatever. Those folks can tell their own stories. That has not happened in Elmendorf and that is a good thing.
You take the good with the bad.
