Community Involvement

So, the taller and grumpier residents of YPS Manor went out to see about the concerns of our fellow neighbors and community residents here in Legends Ranch. I even took notes! So in my attempt to be more of a social creature and less of a misanthropic hermit, I'm actually going to try to be polite. It didn't work so well last time, but today's a new day.

Anyhow, a group of concerned residents are not satisfied with the POA and how it's being run and the response to their concerns. So, they all got together and decided to organize the residents to try to pressure the POA into compliance.

As a side digression, one of the problems is the current makeup of the POA. Our POA, since the subdivision is not completely built out yet, is still controlled by the developer. The developer has different goals and concerns than the actual residents. This is not, in my opinion, something susceptible to change quickly. Best option is to wait until the remaining 200+ houses are sold. Tedious, but the alternatives are time-consuming and expensive. Expensive, as we shall soon see, is an issue for the residents.

Anyhow, the concerned residents have two major issues. The first issue strikes me as legitimate, the second one far, far less so. Issue the first is the finances of our POA. Some numbers were tossed out yesterday that frankly, looking at the financial statements posted on the web, don't make any sense. I'll have to do some digging and see WTF is really going on here. However, if we are collectively ponying up over a million dollars a year to the POA, the POA had damned sure better be exercising some fiduciary responsibility. I have no problem with anyone who wants to understand the disbursement of the monies, especially with an eye to improving how the money is spent.

The next major, and to my mind illegitimate, gripe is the traffic petition. Mommy & Daddy Busybody can't keep their precious snowflakes out of the street. Polite, dammit, polite. Let me try that again.

Some of my fellow residents are concerned about the lack of traffic enforcement within the subdivision. Since the roads in the subdivision are privately owned and maintained, the county has no authority to enforce the Texas Transportation Code. Apparently, this is unacceptable to certain folks in the subdivision. So they have started a petition to allow the county to come into the subdivision and enforce the law. Anybody want to guess my position on this? Anybody?

Man, you people aren't any fun. Coming as a complete shock to all my loyal readers, I think this is the worst idea I've heard since...well, truthfully, since the n00b opened his yapper last time. Repeat along with me one of the painful lessons of history: if you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane. If the County Commissioner's Court accepts our petition, they will decide whether or not we pay for the privilege of allowing the cops in to write us tickets. If they agree, we will also never be free of the agreement. Gee, a commitment to help fund the county that we can never break and have no control over! Wow, this sounds like a spectacular idea! Umm, not so much, thanks. How about no? Does no work for everybody?

Now, maybe I missed it in amongst the comedy over at the Yahoo group, but I haven't seen anybody provide me with any statistics that justify the need for traffic enforcement. I get a lot of anecdotes about people not stopping and driving too fast. Since I doubt many of these people have radar guns, I have to question how they know how fast people are driving. Since we're apparently paying a fair sum of money to have constables sit around and not enforce the traffic laws for 4 hours every night, maybe they could gather some data on how many vehicles they see breaking the law relative to the total number of vehicles. Why not? They're apparently keeping a list of the "problem drivers" in the subdivision. If they're already doing the work, let's see the data.

Frankly, the meeting last night was not to "provide information". The meeting was to convert everybody to the positions the organizers held. The information presented was cherry picked to portray the organizers' position in the best possible light. Anyone presenting an opposing viewpoint was dismissed as "ill-informed", even when the organizers had nothing but hand waving to support their positions. All in all, I have to say we got off to a rousing start at engendering bad feelings and creating acrimony. If this is what a POA is good for, I'm glad I've missed out all these years.