Lubbock Left

Sunday’s A-J included an editorial from Lubbock Mayor David Miller. I’m surprised because it’s not that bad of an editorial.

A few points that I like:

• He recognizes that Lubbock citizens want “time to build consensus on what our taxpayers believe is needed to position our city for the next 100 years.” Good.
• He regognizes the importance of maintaining our core streets like 34th St. Also good.
• He wants to address Lubbock’s ridiculous teen pregnancy and STD rates: “Doing nothing is no longer an option.” Absolutely.

I am pleasantly surprised by the Mayor’s editorial, but, as always, deeds will speak louder than words.

The Lubbock City Budget that passed on Thursday with a split Council includes a one million dollar transfer from Lubbock Power and Light to the City.

Abel Cruz over at El Editor has, I believe, the correct perspective on the million dollar transfer in his editorial. The voters already spoke clearly about the separation of LP&L from the City Council and the manner in which franchise fees will be paid to the city. What happened Tuesday at the LP&L Board meeting and Thursday at the City Council meeting was not what voters had in mind, and it smacks of a time when the City would raid the coffers of LP&L whenever it was politically convenient.

All I can say is that I hope this is a one-time incident. The City Council and the LP&L Board should work out an equitable franchise fee system that makes economic sense and respects the wishes of Lubbock voters.

As you might expect, Organized Labor — the folks that brought us THE WEEKEND — throws a great party, especially on Labor Day!

The Lubbock Central Labor Council had its Labor Day Picnic yesterday, and about 100 people showed up. Council members DeLeon and Klein both made appearances, and Commissioner Gutierrez was there too. Guy Watts, brother of Mikal Watts, was there with some Watts campaign staff as well. (This is the second Watts campaign visit to the Lubbock area that I’m aware of.)

I think organized labor is needed more and more in America, and in new fields. I would love to see an IT workers union, for example. Unions are one of the few remaining checks against the power of big business. Government hasn’t been doing the job lately for some reason…

…Hey! Have some pictures!

And of course, being organized labor, there were plenty of adult beverages to go around. :)

Let’s play “Good Idea, Bad Idea” with the Downtown Redevelopment Commission / EDAW tentative list of recommendations for downtown Lubbock:

(from today’s A-J article entitled “Downtown project slow but in works“)

• Creating two large parks - one near the arts district in proximity to the Memorial Civic Center and the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts and the other near the Depot Entertainment District - as well as several smaller pocket parks.

  Good Idea
  More greenspace is always good. There are enough empty lots downtown to make this a really easy one, anyway…

• Creating a corridor that will link the performing arts district with the Depot Entertainment District. Such a corridor could include sculptures or other elements that will define the area.

  Good Idea
  Another easy one. Once the Marsha Sharp freeway project is done, it will be important to have good access through downtown to 19th st. Let’s hope they make it very pedestrian-friendly as well.

• Renovations and/or expansion to the Memorial Civic Center.

  Good Idea
  Well, it’s a good idea as long as they don’t waste money doing it — there’s no need to demolish any existing part of the Civic Center. New paint, new carpet, maybe add on to the building.

• An office project geared toward attracting high-tech investment.

  Good Idea
  And I honestly don’t know why some enterprising developer hasn’t already done this project.

• A collegiate baseball hall of fame.

  Good Idea
  I guess. Makes more sense than a Visitors’ Center, anyway.

• Mix-use residential housing.

  Good Idea
  Would fit in nicely with more greenspace.

• A movie theater.

  Good Idea
  Someone finally listened to the people at the public comment meetings about downtown redevelopment. This was the one thing that everyone could agree on for downtown. What would be really cool is building an Alamo Drafthouse type of theater that served beer and good food. Something like that would fit in really well in the Depot District.

• A multi-purpose arena.

  Bad Idea
  It breaks my heart that the City of Lubbock already missed its chance to partner with Texas Tech to build a multipurpose arena. This is the kind of project that is probably too expensive for the City to do on its own. Maybe the City can partner with some other entity to build one 5-10 years from now.

Also:

He said the only idea pulled from the plan to date involved the construction of a baseball park.

Good Idea
The Baseball stadium was the least popular idea that I can recall from the public meetings.

Perhaps we will end up with a sensible list after all…

While she may make the occasional gaffe, I believe that Councilwoman Linda DeLeon really has her district’s best interests at heart. Case in point:

Council members gave little indication Thursday night what they would do about Citibus, though they asked general manager John Wilson how much his costs have gone up since the last fare increase in 1996.

Only Councilwoman Linda DeLeon, who has said she supports raising taxes for such things as Citibus, said she would oppose a fare increase.

(from lubbockonline.com, emphasis mine)

District 1 has many residents who ride the bus on a regular basis. It may be that the City has lost so much federal money for the bus system (on account of our population growth) that there is not enough to fund Citibus, but a fare increase should be our absolute last option. Raising fares is a regressive tax in disguise.

Way to go, Linda!

KCBD 11 just broke the story that the second petition to recall Linda DeLeon has failed by 23 signatures.

I’ve heard that the news conference on Wednesday will detail each rejected signature along with the reason it was rejected.

Edit: Sue is right (in the comments) — the A-J is reporting that it failed by 16 signatures.

Greetings, those of you who followed a link to here from El Editor’s local news channel! If you are looking for my initial analysis of the DeLeon recall petition, it’s in four parts:

Part Three (the meaty one with numbers!)
Part Two
Part One
Part Zero

Thanks, Bidal and Abel, for running a great paper and website with hard-hitting local coverage!

Dig it. I have finished the data entry finally. I came up with 558 signatures, while the petitioners report 557, so I probably got someone’s scribble in there for the benefit of the doubt.

I’m beginning my analysis and will probably call in to the Chad Hasty Show to share some of my findings. For now, here’s what I got…

First, below are the dates of the petition drive, along with how many signatures were collected each day:

7/17/2007 — 5
7/18/2007 — 4
7/19/2007 — 16
7/20/2007 — 5
7/21/2007 — 8
7/22/2007 — 2
7/23/2007 — 10
7/24/2007 — 17
7/25/2007 — 30
7/26/2007 — 13
7/27/2007 — 27
7/28/2007 — 12
7/29/2007 — 12
7/30/2007 — 16
7/31/2007 — 22
8/1/2007 — 10
8/2/2007 — 14
8/3/2007 — 1
8/4/2007 — 16
8/5/2007 — 16
8/6/2007 — 21
8/7/2007 — 13
8/8/2007 — 26
8/9/2007 — 27
8/10/2007 — 29
8/11/2007 — 55
8/12/2007 — 118
8/13/2007 — 7

I’m not sure if the 9 signatures from 7/17 and 7/18 will count, since the petitions indicate that they were issued on 7/19. Of course, that may have to do with the disagreement over the Spanish translation on the petition. Anyway, as you can see, the organizers really waited to the last minute to get it all together. Not a good sign.

Furthermore, 107 signatures were turned in without certificate numbers to go with them. If those signatures cannot be matched by name+address to registered voters within the district, then the petition will fail. 558 - 107 = 451 = not enough signatures. I believe that 494 is the magic number of signatures needed. Again, not a good sign.

The petition represents signatures gathered from 366 distinct households, for an average of about 1.52 people per household. The average age of the signers is 49 years old, and the median age of the signers is 48 years old. The minimum age of the signers is 17 (that signature won’t count), and the maximum age is 93. 117 signers, or about 21%, are age 65 or older.

162 signers, or 29% of the signers, affirm that they voted for DeLeon in the 2006 election. 312 signers indicated that they did not vote for DeLeon in 2006, and 84 signatures did not indicate whether they voted for DeLeon in 2006.

Looks like the success of the petition will probably be close either way.

Made it through 209 names so far in the data entry portion of my little project. Hopefully tomorrow I will have the rest finished so that I can start my analysis for real.

For disclosure’s sake, I’m not in favor of the recall election. I am in favor of the people’s right to circulate a recall petition and to have it counted fairly as many times as they care to try. I really believe that Linda’s constituents value her 20+ years in public service in spite of the latest hiccups which have more to do with public relations than with policy.

And yes, I also wish that City Secretary Becky Garza had allowed watchers from each side of the issue to be present for the validation process. (I have worked with Becky Garza in the past and have been impressed with her professionalism, but I believe that prohibiting watchers was not the right decision.) At least the petition itself is available to the public, along with the reasons for each rejection, when the final count is released next week.

Onward.

When it comes to analyzing this second petition to recall Linda DeLeon, the data entry is killing me. I’ve designed my database, but I’m only about 1/10 done entering the information from the petition. So far I’ve put in 50 names.

I have determined how to calculate the number of households on the petition, the age of the petitioners, and how many petitions were gathered on each day. For the 1/10 of the petitioners so far, the mean age is 54.16, with over 20% of the signers 65 and older. The 50 petitioners so far are divided into 33 households. So far the two busiest signature-gathering days were 7/25 and 7/26.

I’m aware that the above statistics are meaningless while I only have 1/10 of the petition in my database, but that’s the kind of information I’d like to gather to satisfy my curiousity.

One bit of news that is meaningful now: there are enough petitioners missing voter ID numbers to disqualify the petition, assuming that the City Secretary cannot verify those voters. That’s not a good sign for the petition organizers.