Main Street

There are many boards and committees in Gonzales.  Many of them play some very important rolls in our day to day life.  They maintain order to our daily lives, they bring jobs to our community, they work on bringing money to the town in many different ways. 

To me one of the most effective boards we have is the Main Street Advisory Board.  It's has brought together our community in ways that I don't think any other board has.  It's brought us things like our recent Christmas parade, the Friday night concert series during the summer, and our 4th of July celebration to name a few. 

They are constantly listening to the public for what they've done right and what they've done wrong to make next years event better.  They are creative in their thinking.  They have gone back and revamped what didn't work before to get them to work this time. 

I've written about them before and hopefully will have cause to write about them in the future as they bring our downtown into the spotlight and in doing so bring our community together. 

They've had a member step down after many years of great work, and there is an opening.  The city put the above ad in the paper, the way it should be, asking for help in this committee.  If you're a thinker and a doer, and want to be part of this board, don't hesitate, get your application into the city.  Bring some fresh ideas that will be heard to a board that is making a difference in our town.

God Bless,
Dennis

Traffic

I remember about 15 years ago I was at the stop light by McDonald's and there were 6 cars going the same direction at the light.  When I saw then Mayor O'Neal a couple of days later I told him he'd better get a handle on the traffic before it got out of hand.  Joking as I was at the time, it appears I was onto something and didn't even know it.

Now I know that the increase numbers of 18-wheelers have had some impact, especially on Sarah DeWitt and 183.  The city council even created trucking routes to keep 18 wheelers out of the town, and on those 2 streets.

But that's not what I want to address. 

Several times last week I was almost hit by someone running red lights.  Not one of those was an 18-wheeler.  The first one came off of St George and turned right as I was coming from KCTI.  I had to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting the car. 

Second was by the courthouse when some ran a seriously red light at high speed on St. Louis.  I was already into the intersection (on a green light) and had to slam on my breaks to prevent this pickup truck from ruining my life. 

Now there have been others in the last couple of weeks of people running red lights, but those 2 were not only the closest but the scariest to me.  I'm talking heart pounding, pull the car to a stop and take a deep breath type of close. 

So I've been watching.  I think at least part of it's been that we as a group are not the best of drivers.  We drive like we're the only ones on the road and it's not a big deal, and 15 years ago that kind of driving didn't matter.  There wasn't a car waiting at every corner, so by default we could drive through a lot of intersections and it didn't matter.  Now note I have referenced "we" in this statement.  Until I started teaching my boys how to drive, I was very much in that group.  There is nothing like having a teenager in the car, who by their very nature know everything, and you're trying to tell them not to drive like you are if they want to pass their driving test, to make you change the way you drive.  I'm about to start on #3 teenage about to drive. 

I've also noticed that while teenagers drive like teenagers, especially right before and after school and during lunch, that the lack of driving skills is not limited to teenagers. 

This weekend one of our mainstays of Gonzales, Mr Burchard, was medi-flighted out of here because of an accident.  I don't know the details, but what I do know is that to many people I know have been in accidents over the last 6 months.  That these are local people getting hurt and yes, even killed because of people not paying attention to their driving, or in to much of a rush to wait for a stop light. 

If you're not able to drive in this traffic then you are just as much to blame as those going to fast.  Get off the road.  I know it limits your life style, but when you cause an accident and someone else gets killed what is that trip to Walmart going to mean to you? I know I've heard it 1000 times in the last couple of years, "it's just down the block" or "we're on the back roads after we get off 90a".  This from unlicensed kids driving while their parents are in the car, or worst letting the kids drive without them, and from people, 1 elderly and one who had medical problems and shouldn't be driving.  To young and to old or sick but the laws don't apply to them. *can you hear me rolling my eyes?*

I'm begging you, slow down.  Stop at lights and stop signs.  Pay attention to what's going on around you.  Be responsible about your driving. Don't drive if you shouldn't be (for whatever reason). 

The 18 wheeler deal is a whole other problem and it's just as serious.  But not much 'we' can do individually about that.  The council and police will have to handle those.  BUT we CAN and MUST take care of the problems I've listed above.  I'm tired of hearing about people I know in accidents, and am scared to death, wondering how many we'll have to bury before we'll change the way we think.

God Bless,
Dennis

NJHFR

The following is a note for our city council in reference to Item 9 on the agenda for the meeting tonight 12/4/12.  

Mayor and council members,

I’ve come before this council over the last several months with concerns about JB Wells Park, and tonight because of item 9 on the agenda I’m missing my sons band concert to be here and speak against this agenda item.

I want to make it clear that I love the fact we have a grade “A” arena that people from around the state seem to love to visit.  It obviously has attracted national attention for the national jr high finals rodeo to even give us a nod to accept a bid from us.  I think our arena is a great asset to our community, and could possibly in the future provide even more benefit to our community.

But with all that said I have extreme misgivings with the proposal for us to pursue the NJHFR finals.  I wish to go over some of them right now. 

           1)      The last several times that the current budget of JB Wells has been brought before the council and questions have been asked about its’ financial status, our city manager has not been able to give us any real numbers.  We still do not really know what our current level of management is able to do for not costing tax payers money.

If I’ve seen the budgetary information posted in your packages correctly JB Wells spent 99% of their budgetary funds in about 6 months.

Our current concessions is on a probationary period because we’ve still not been able to get that under control and managed properly.

            2)      Our city manager has told us that we are already short on manpower for current events.  That the current ‘small’ rodeos are causing stretching our manpower to swap arenas and get prepared, so is it even feasible for our staff to manage something of the magnitude of the NJHFR Finals?

             3)      Let’s take a look at the requirements

a.       1200 stalls.  If I’m correct that’s approximately 6 times our current size.

b.      30,000 sq ft under air building, a 2,500 sq ft under air building,  along with 9 meetings rooms with under air accommodating between 20 and 100 people.

c.       A dance floor for 1000 people.  Last I saw Herman Sons has a capacity of 275, so something 4 times the size of Herman Sons.

d.      A minimum of 550 camping slots, preferably 800, PLUS 150 trailer drop off locations.  So read between 700 and 1000 slots.

e.      A shooting range for 500 individuals

f.        Parking for 8000 people a day.  Even at 4 people a car that’s 2000 vehicles. 

g.       400 golf carts

      h.      The sanitation facilities, bathrooms, showers, etc that will need to be built to handle this one event. We still haven’t built the bathroom promised the soccer players several years ago at Independence Park, and you want to accommodate 800 families with facilities at JB Wells Park.

And that’s just the start.  We definitely don’t have a hotel that even has 175 rooms in it, and even with the hotels on the books, you’re going to have a hard time getting 175 rooms.  That would be over 3 entire hotels at the size hotel we have in our community.  

Now looking at these requirements I want to make a correction to the Agenda Item Briefing Data that was prepared for you by the city.  On page 2 under budgetary considerations there is listed $0.  Unless the city has found Aladdins’ Lamp and still has 3 wishes on the genie, or found their fairy godmother who is willing to perform some bipity bopity bo and make all this appear then this information is grossly understated.  These things do not magically appear without huge financial and man hour investments. Additionally it has already cost us in time and money spent by the city attorney and employs per the agenda item.

But that’s just the start, once these facilities are built we now have continued financial responsibilities to maintain these facilities. 

Have we even considered the environmental impact of doubling the size of our community for a month?  Water is never in great supply, especially in June and July.  Trash, Manure, road damage, and other impacts would be significant during this time period, all at a cost to the city.

Security and health also falls under our part of the bargain.  With police already stretched thin we want to double our size and problems for a month?  Have you visited the ER and seen the issues we have there, without adding 8000 more citizens to be injured for the month.

In addition I’ve read all the financial impact information provided by the rodeo association. I want to point out a couple of discrepancies.

            1)      Gallop NM is over 3 times the size of Gonzales and has a budget of over $100 million dollars.

            2)      A quick google search shows over 100 restaurants listed in Gallup

            3)      2 full theaters running 7 days a week along with bowling alleys and 3 other amusement parks listed for entertainment. 

            4)      2 trailer sales businesses 

            5)      7 new car dealerships 

            6)      Dozens of hiking trails

            7)      Etc, etc, etc

And that’s just a start.  The $5.2 million impact that was created in Gallup is almost impossible to reproduce in our current economic state.  To call it a pipe dream to bring that kind of economic impact to our community would be nice at best.  We do not have the businesses in place to sell that much, so let’s not pretend we do.

But what upsets me as bad as anything else is that this proposal, like every other proposal concerning JB Wells expansion, is ‘popped’ up on the city council agenda with a short fuse deadline.  This project is 10x bigger than the biggest event we have in Gonzales, and you are expected to in a few minutes understand the entire scope of this project, repercussions, and true financial pitfalls that you are being asked to support.  This should have been in front of the council in July, not December, just over 2 weeks before a proposal deadline is looming before us. 

And I haven’t even gotten into the part of the JB Wells PARK that has not been completed and never will be completed if these facilities are increased to the size required to host the national finals.  When are we going to focus on our taxpaying citizens and their needs and desires?

I was at the ‘vision planning meetings’ we had a couple of months ago. I know that the NJHFR is a vision that this community has.  But if you’ll remember that vision was 20 years from now.  Time enough for us to truly plan.  Time for us to prepare.  Time for us to make sure that we have a successful NJHFR.  Who knows, maybe even time for us to expand what is now JB Wells Park in acreage so that we could accommodate not only a rodeo this size, but the parks and trails that the citizens of Gonzales could truly enjoy and use and were promised by this council.  

Please don’t put the cart before the horse tonight by approving this proposal.