Congratulations

Mayor Fry, Councilmembers, Sample, Johnson, Yehle, and Heathcott

The voters have spoken and West U is in very capable hands.

I wish you well,

To all of you who followed this blog, thank you,

with warm regards

Jim

Thank you for your vote

Listen to the children of the British School sing The Star Spangled Banner with the Houston Brass Band.

Correction - I did NOT receive a Bronze Star for Valor

The issue of the Village News today  reported that I received a Bronze Star for Valor when I served in Vietnam.

I was awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service.

My candidate profile on this blog is correct and is the one I sent to the Village News.

It is important to me that I correct this mistake.

Partisan politics

West U politics should be non-partisan. Can they be non-partisan? Depends on who you ask.

There is a website, www.instantnewsWestU.com. I have no idea how many people visit that site but there is a lot of chat activity there. It occurred to me that I was being offered free advertising to join in conversations.

I was happily blogging away on the restrictor issue when, out of the blue, I was being attacked for being dishonest. One of the bloggers went to facebook and discovered that I am a “very, very, very, liberal democrat.” Yes, I am a democrat. I don’t know how many “very’s" I rate.

My politics are no secret. Over the years I have had many yard signs in my yard. I don’t have any in my yard for this election. But in all the years I did have signs, I can think of only two republicans that I supported. Bob Fry and Bob Kelly.

For this election, I support both Fry (a republican) and Segal (a democrat). They are well qualified, decent, honest candidates. We will be well served no matter who becomes our mayor.

But back to the accusation that I am dishonest because I am a democrat. From what I can discern, the blogger who called me dishonest was upset because a true liberal could never be in favor of eliminating wasteful spending. Hence because I took a “conservative” stance on the restrictor issue while at the same time being a democrat I was by deduction, dishonest.

Go figure. You can't argue with logic like that.

Happy Mother's day to all of you wonderful mom's

To celebrate this day I encourage you to write a letter to our two U.S. Senators and our Representative urging them to increase our foreign aid to projects that directly help poor people.

Go to Bread for the World's website to learn more about this offering of letters.

Rebecca (the world's greatest mom) and I wrote six letters today at church. There are many mothers in the world who need our help.

Jim

Why am I the only candidate with an opposing view?

 I have an extensive background in financial modeling. I know and understand how modeling works. You never run just one model. At a minimum you do at least 3, best case, worst case, and most likely.

I used to run several more so I could do a sensitivity analysis on the marginal effects of various assumptions used in the model. Back in the old days we used the acronym GIGO – garbage in garbage out – to highlight the futility of bad assumptions.

Our engineer used one run of the model for the restrictor. I would call his assumptions a best case scenario. No flooding in Brays Bayou or Poor farm Ditch when the College St flood basin is flooding. At the City Council meeting on April 25th our engineer said that this was not good practice and we should do more.

Yet Steven Segal cut him off before he could explain how we could get better information.

It  perplexes me that I am the only candidate to oppose spending money to remove the restrictor. This is a somewhat complicated issue and I have laid out the facts. 

The other candidates refuse to address what I say. I am trusting that you, the voter, will vote for me so that there will be at least one council member not following the pack.

Would I vote to allow cars to park on sidewalks like this?

NO

West U Resident, Ken Hoffman, sent the following question to all candidates.

If you are elected, will you direct the police to enforce the law prohibiting parking on the sidewalk - and to enforce the law without having to wait for a resident to squeal on a neighbor?

At the candidates’ forum, all of you said you were against people parking on the sidewalk. Will you pledge to something about it, and not buckle when some people complain about getting warnings and tickets?

My answer – Yes, I will make that pledge.