The usual passivity from T or C city commissioners when the electric department director reported the solar farm hasn't operated for two years. We're just hearing about it now? Cancel the stupid contract for nonperformance while you can!
How many voters understood they were raising taxes when they approved the new flood control taxing district on the November 2024 ballot? How many voters understood there was already a 1.50 mill levy for flood control?
Yesterday, Haaretz, a leading Israeli newspaper, reported that two Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza. That makes eight soldiers killed in the last two months. I try to think about what that means, especially since now that the military situation in Gaza gets less and less coverage in the media.
Riverbend's glacial slow-walk as a legal strategy paid off, scrapping off all but one protestant. It has cornered the market on commercial hot springs, maybe to the detriment of the whole system, with the city and Office of the State Engineer looking away.
The past winter was not kind to us, and we are faced with water shortage in the Rio Grande this summer. I link to several descriptions of where we are and what is predicted. Impacts will be important for farmers, ranchers, recreational businesses. We might get sued again by Texas.
High cost of home insurance is here to stay. I link to several recent articles on homeowners' insurance, its relation to climate change, its relation to banking, to construction, to real estate, to what the state is doing about this problem. I try to explain those relationships.
It was a banner year for gross receipts tax revenues, which nicely fattened the bottom line. Lean years behind and ahead though.
Our President has created a "sovereign wealth fund," which considers all government holdings as assets, investments for return of capital. This business enterprise immediately turns the federal holdings from their original purpose of public service into assets to be used to make money. Public land is now an asset.
"Green" infrastructure is the thing forward-thinking cities put in to address storm-water runoff. Nowhere in sight in T or C's master downtown drainage plan.
Trump's disdain for the woke and immigrants, in combination with his professed unlimited executive powers, has unleashed ICE to target dissidents, intellectuals, artists, scientists, educators and journalists. Border Patrol check stations are to be avoided.
Spending the $3 million in bond revenues, to be done right--to leverage grant and loan money by providing required cash matches the city wouldn't have on hand otherwise--requires a lot of planning and coordination.
The godfather has two godsons: Elon Musk, his court jester, and JD Vance, his thinker. Together, they give the godfather the appearance of majestic distance as they replace the state nationally and internationally with a corporate business. Today, I look at an Executive Order teaching us to think corporately.