Annotations for Topic: Local Governance

Uh, oh man. , well, don't get me started on the city council , uh, uh, some of our politicians are, how do I say this? A lot of our politicians are self-serving, and they, we feel a lot of people in town feel like they're just look for ways to spend our tax money. You know? I mean, it's like, you know, we're, we've always been a pretty meager town, and I know we grow with the times, but I mean, you know, our, our little city hall and everything, uh, they're building one now that is this huge building. And,

you know, everybody's kind of going like, man, do we really need a city hall that big? But then it's, and, and, you know, it's a mixed bag of being bad and good because, you know, they got this huge city hall, the taxpayers are paying for it, but we've got a public library in it, and it's going to be a big library, you know? And, you know, I think that's great. 'cause that gives people that hadn't got access, uh, to computers and stuff. And it gives them a chance to go in there and educate yourself or, you know, read a book or, you know, and, and like I say, it's kind of, it's, it is pro and con. There are some things that are good about it, and there's some things that are bad about it. The only other, uh, bad thing that I would say about it is the fact that, and this, this is just my age, uh, telling off on me, is the fact that we're growing way too fast.

the projection of this, this area is that there, they're, they're the next 10 years, they're planning on building 400 houses a year. So it's 400 families, and that's supposed to be the trend for the next 10 years. So let's, my boy, my math is terrible right now. So 10 times 400, that's, uh, 40,000 or 4,000 mm-hmm . It's 4,000 families. It, they got to do something with the infrastructure because it ain't right to people to shut their electricity off or to sell 'em. And, uh, the, the only, and the thing with the building, the buildings and the housing is that the city council, the, and this is, like I say, this is just my age.

The, the city council does not allow anything less than about a $275,000 house. Uh, you know, there, and there are companies out there that would come in and build $1[[]],000 houses if they could. Uh, but, you know, our, our city fathers and stuff all will that'll attract the criminal element because they got these substandard houses. Well, , I live in a substandard house. I mean, it's, I got 1800 square feet, that's, you know, and, and I, I, I work on houses and stuff, got five, 5,000, 6,000, 8,000, uh, square feet in them. And, you know, and it, it just amazes me. It shocks me sometimes that, you know, what, the value of things has gone up so much. I mean, this, this lot. I live on a corner a lot. And when me and my wife bought this lot, uh, my brother lived next door,

Yeah. Well, the political leadership is traditionally pre-con conservative, but also, and I'm not conservative, but it's also been relatively sane compared to what you see in some, some conservatives today who I don't regard as conservative, all of us, but reactionary. Um, and we don't have too many of the, of the book burners or the, uh, that lot, you know. Um, there's some around, we defeated one for the school board recently, but you're, you're onto 'em. You can spot 'em. Uh, so we've, and the, the county government in Tarrant County, you know, it was led by Republicans for a long time, but they were moderate Republicans. Uh, the latest county judge is not so moderate, and he's having a difficult time running the county. Mm-hmm. However,

that's also partly the fault of our own commissioner, who is a Democrat. And she's pretty difficult to get along with herself. So it's not, not all of them. Uh, so the county government, I think I would say has deteriorated recently. Mm-hmm. And Mark is caught in the county government.

You know, our our mayor recently switched. He was a, got elected as a Democrat, but switched to a Republican while in

Uh, so I got to know state leaders too. I was also involved in the community, um, well, in Texas, really, as well as the community in the labor movement. You know, I'm writing a book on labor, um mm-hmm. But I did more than that. I, um, in 66, I got together with a head librarian at UTA, just the same semester. I arrived there. And, um, I put it to them that we ought to create a labor archives in the library, collect labor records, give the library some distinction. Mm-hmm. And he agreed with that. Uh, most all libraries have an archives of some kind. And, uh, of course you gotta build it around something. So we originally built it around labor. There was no other labor archives in the state. Now, [[...]] had some labor records, but they weren't collecting them, and they weren't doing anything with them Really. Mm-hmm. But although they preserved them,

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cold calls. Yeah, that's right. That's what all of 'em are. Um, so I've been involved with the labor community and the political community. I know, I know a lot of, or used to know a lot of politicians and labor leaders and, um, in this community and others. And I think it enlarged my vision of life. It, uh, I didn't wanna spend all my time among academics, and I treasure them, but I treasure all those labor and political leaders I met, and a lot of lawyers to be mm-hmm. Um, 'cause lawyers were in the labor movement and in politics. So

I'm a, I'm a government major at ut so I talk a lot about politics with my, uh, friends. And I'm also in Plan two, so it's a common topic of conversation, and I don't think people understand the labor influence really at all. Like, um, the [[...]] were just at the R and c, or at least the, uh, president of the [[...]] were. Um, and, uh, like a lot of my friends who were pretty politically involved in know anything about that or why that mattered. And I, I, so I think it's really, really cool that you worked on that.

Use that. We didn't call him that to his face. Um, but he, um, he just marched to the beat of his own drummer. He didn't care what any of the faculty thought about anything. And of course, the administration ran routine, um, ple on what the faculty thought of the dean. So every five years we would get to say how terribly he was and turn that into administration and delineate all these complaints. Never had any impact until finally after 15 years, after three evaluations, he, the administration finally decided to get rid of them. Um, usually a dean of liberal arts has the toughest job of all the days. 'cause the liberal arts faculty is generally more rambunctious, more political, if you will, than engineers and business. So,

Pop music? Well, for me it was the sixties with, uh, Peter Paul and Mary and, uh, the Chad Mitchell Trio. And, uh, uh, the Beatles came along. I I was more enamored with folk music, but some of the Beatles were spoken be, um, and, um, well, I was with labor leaders once, a couple of 'em, I don't know where we were. We went into this tavern outside, probably outside of Austin, somewhere around Flew to real or someplace like that. And they were having a, a country singer come in. I'm more into folk than country, but they're related. And anyway, they were dragging me along. And, uh, we had the place to ourselves and we were up in a balcony, open balcony. The performer was down on stage. He had just gotten married. And he, uh, he asked us if we would sit with his wife.