Gaming the system……Sheriff candidate Craig Brady spends more of his time trying to get around the law rather than obeying it. Is that the kind of sheriff you want?
Then he uses his county paid employees to do his dirty work.
When the Attorney General told him to remove his bandit signs from the right of way and even private property, he protested and delayed and used every subterfuge to try to get around the order.
Now he’s putting up more illegal signs supposedly asking you to vote against a constitution amendment. Only problem is his “sheriff” sign is the largest part of the sign.
And to rub salt in the wound, some of his “undercover” narcs are out openly putting the signs out in broad daylight and probably on county time.
I think these are the same narcs that made a huge drug bust last week. Here’s the story.
I was trolling for signs, couldn’t find any and then….poof! Look what fell across my vision about 11:30 in the morning. We took several photos before they ran, then got more when they turned down a dead end street. Don’t these guys have a GPS system?
Do these sign guys look familiar? They should. They are the same ones who were putting up and taking down Brady signs this summer during work hours. They are the same folks that, according to the sheriff’s hired liar, spent a month working on a High Intensity drug case, with paid overtime, in Greatwood.
That case netted the arrest of a mother, her two teenage kids and two others; 19 and 21, for a class B misdemeanor possession of marijuana charge. Each had a $500 bond. Boy, after working that hard for a month, sign duty is probably about all they could muster. Wouldn’t they better serve the taxpayers at real work, not putting up the boss’s signs?
I guess Brady law trumps state law and that’s not exactly the kind of sheriff I want.
County budget woes….Looks like our county commissioners are in the process of bailing out Fort Bend Country Club. Fort Bend County Club, like every other country club in the world, is struggling with hard times. Its next door neighbor, Del Webb, offered to buy the club, but the members didn’t think it was a very good deal. I don’t know what was offered, but the country club was insulted.
But not to worry. County Commissioners voted last week to buy two acres of land from the county club in order to expand the main library in Richmond.
I personally think if the library is to be expanded, then it should be expanded in an area that is growing. Now I know we have libraries scattered all over the county, but I just don’t see throwing more money at the location in Richmond. Maybe we should be buying more sheriff cars (joke).
But at half a million dollars for two acres, the country club came off better than the landowner next to the CAD. Commissioners turned around and paid $1 million for 5 acres next to the Fort Bend Central Appraisal District. (I haven’t had time to find out who owned that land, but I will next week.)
The land next to the CAD is to be used for expansion of its offices. The CAD has tried for years to build a larger building, but they have to get the go-ahead from all of the taxing entities in Fort Bend, which numbers over 100. Getting 100% agreement from over 100 entities makes building a new building impossible.
So the country stepped in and bought the land, will build the expansion next to the already existing building which the county owns and leases to the CAD. The county will lease the new expansion to the CAD also.
Here’s the rub: Expanded space is only needed once a year when tax notices are sent out. Used to be one had to go to the CAD office to protest your appraised values. Now you can do it online or fax a protest with forms you downloaded online. Then you have to either work out an agreement with the CAD by setting an appointment and meeting with an officer or you have to continue to appeal the decision and appear before an arbitration board. That’s when it gets crowded.
I do not understand why these meetings with staff to work out agreements or the appearance before the board can’t be handled offsite–like maybe in city council chambers scattered all over the county and used but once a week at the most. This would take the process to the people close to where they live rather than making so many people try to find the CAD office on FM 2218 in Rosenberg.
But then the CAD has never wanted to make it very easy for taxpayers and only went to the protest online when forced to do so by extreme space constraints.
I was told by a commissioner that the CAD couldn’t hold the meetings offsite because they needed their paperwork. Then my question is why don’t they spend the money upgrading their computer system and putting everything online rather than investing in bricks and mortar.
I really dislike and disapprove of bureaucracy.
Look a little closer…..the new flavor of the week in Republican circles is Herman Cain and he is just as goofy as the rest of the line-up with the possible exception of Mitt Romney. Cain has a plan he calls 9-9-9 which calls for a 9% flat sales tax rate on everything we buy, country-wide. Let’s see. Couple that with the 8+% we pay for state sales tax, and we would be paying almost 20% on anything we purchase.
Everyone with a high school education knows that flat rate sales taxes are regressive because they hit the poor more than anything. The poor would be paying a higher percentage of their salary for basics than would those better off. In simple terms, if the poor person makes $100 a week and has to pay 17% sales tax for a new pair of shoes, it hurts their pocketbook much more than a person making $200 per week buying a new pair of shoes. I know, let them go barefoot!