Fighting the BS at City Hall is Not for the Fainthearted

My heart is warmed with the outpouring of support for this fight. In less than a week, we have raised nearly 30% of our goal!

Thank you, to each and every last one of you who have been able to contribute to the legal fund, shared the posts, cheered this cause on and have my back.  You have the backs of every family, kid and adult who has ever eaten from our harvest, market days or learned at a class. This farm's project is much bigger than farmer Marie. It's about Food - and we all gotta eat. It's about housing - we all gotta live somewhere. And we all would like a cool place to hang out and bring our families - near home. Well, to get all of that, you need to re-zone. You need to think a bit outside the box and be creative. You have to let go of old grudges. THAT's what this fight is about. 

Anyone who is from around here and pays attention - knows what happened. Watch the meetings, the briefings, and you can't deny this was nothing more than a bunch of personal bias against me, a former opponent to 2 of the members, and just someone the others don't apparently like much. I never even worked with one of the antagonists. But she's gone now. Dropped a bomb and then left.

 

 

Never mind that when I was on council we had one of the most productive councils in years;

• We were successful at getting real raises for nearly all employees, including the FD and PD. 
• We got the ball rolling on a huge mixed use development in Dist. 7, and expanded the city's boundary by annexing more land - AND putting a new Huffines homes subdivision in on it.
  
• We secured funds from TXDot to RE-landscape the exit/entry ramps on 635 and started the ball rolling to re-apply for more funds the next year to fix them ALL. 
• We initiated a government efficiency study. 
• We initiated a street/traffic study along Belt Line & on McKenzie, since the majority of council thought it would be a good idea to put apartment housing AND retail along the round-a-bout. (I thought the traffic impact study times were lame, but I was outvoted.)
• We hired a city manager who has had city management and economic development experience - and it sure looks like streets are finally starting to get fixed once some money was set aside for repairs - something we could never get the old city manager to do.

I'm sure I wasn't perfect - no one is. And maybe my directness is not what some people are used to - but we got stuff DONE!  That was our job.

I never once voted against a rezoning because I didn't like the applicant. I did vote against uses like gambling. I pushed for fewer dollar stores. I pushed for a new supermarket on the east side. I voted to allow a future restaurant (not fast food), at the cost of a new, state of the art car wash - that increased the city's property tax revenue. 

My time on council was in service of and for the betterment of the residents and businesses of this community. 

Now, I'm ready to expand my service by NOT leaving the land I own to some commercial developer who will surely not be as concerned about the old growth trees (remember how beautiful Double D was - before?), and will likely end up making this another trucking/warehouse facility b/c it's only a block off of I20! 

Or how about a strip mall off the frontage road? Full of half empty store fronts, nail salons, taco joints and ice cream? 

 

This is where YOU live. Is that what you want here? I don't hear that when I talk to residents. I hear folks who say this farm reminds them of home. I hear people who love to see the animals and hear the chickens/roosters - see the green space and trees. We need to protect this - not every owner is going to be this stubborn and fight for the land. Trust me, if someone can come in here and convince me they'll do a responsible job with a commercial project, I'll be ok with that - but I don't see it happening, do you? 

Fighting city hall is not gonna be cheap. I don't know all of the ins and outs but I need to go into an attorney's office with some money in hand, not mine out. I don't work for free - I don't expect anyone else to either. I've tried the volunteer places - they're booked ATM. Probably with discrimination cases, etc. I know, it's crazy times. But we can't just roll over. Help us if you can. here's the link. 

If you're worried someone from the city will see your name - make it an anonymous donation - only I'll see your name. I'll never tell if you don't want me to. But I'll be forever grateful. The wildlife, the prairie, the trees, the pond - the future residents and business owners who'll bring cool, new shops to us - will all be grateful. 

Tourism and events have been ongoing since 2008 - no traffic issues....another hypothetical bs excuse - and NOT related to zoning anyway - it's ALREADY commercial.

A new, expanded driveway with plenty of parking and emergency fire lanes, (as required), etc. were built into the proposed renderings. Sorry we didn't draw a little fire truck to scale - but we DID offer an in person tour of the grounds that none of council bothered to come to.... But that's in the details worked out later, anyway, - AFTER zoning is approved - and we determine how to re-plat to accommodate a road, trails, etc., and have a full engineering study done. NO developments are required to do all of that w/o adequate zoning. And neither should we. 

 

 

We want to bring back market days - mixed use, makes sense!

 

This was a deal done in bad faith. It was blatantly obvious.  Please help us be able to pay an attorney. We've got one appt lined up in June and are awaiting a couple of other call backs. Let's do this! 

Thank you. 

Marie

 Eat Your Food - Naturally!