Rockwall City Council 17 August

The happiness of society is the end of government. - John Adams

Action Item 2:

District Attorney Kenda Culpepper needs some help prosecuting drunks! She wants the city to loan out the services of our municipal judge in issuing warrants to draw blood from suspecting drunk drivers. Presbyterian and Lake Pointe hospitals will be doing the blood draws. All local police agencies are on board.

Consent Agenda.

1 and 8 pulled.

Item 8: City's ETJ moving north into Collin County. Matt opposed as it eventually the city will annex the ETJ and put part of Rockwall into another county.

Appointments.

1. New P&Z chair Michael Hunter presented a couple things from last weeks meeting: HCA portable buildings and Zoning of the Zoo.

2. Flood plain. Summary: Lady bought a house in 2006, in 2008 she went to refinance and discovered the property was now considered flood plain. Built in 1984, re-surveyed by the city and FEMA in 2006 (Ongoing prior, but the 2006 study is the one that affected this house.) After much effort and expense she was able to get the structure certified out of the flood plain to lower insurance.

Then for the next hour all the intricacies of flood plain mapping were discussed.

City engineer Chuck Todd stated "several hundred" were affected by the changes.

David Sweet and Matt Scott thought the city should have done a better job informing those who would be affected by the changes. And by better, I think they mean "a".

Basically, it seems if you live near a creek, pond or lake, you were probably affected.

If only the city had enacted "green" initiatives sooner!

3 and 4. Bond issuance stuff. Rockwall has good credit. A motion was made and passed (but I don't really think they know what the vote was about!)

[Councilman Russo for some reason started playing hide and seek under his desk. Not sure who was "it".]

5. Fella needs to extend his 212 agreement with city (forgot to file and now has to beg.) Passes 6-1 (Matt opposed)

Then for some inexplicable reason, Mayor Cecil skipped the public hearing item and moved into action items, confusing many.

Action Items.

1. Destruction of "dangerous property" in LRE. Land owner cannot afford to repair or demolish the structure himself, and is willing to allow the city to do so, after which a lien will be put on the property to recover the money once sold. Seems to me the owner shoulda sold the land, cuz now if he sells it, he'll be out $3k!

Of course, if he had put a plastic yellow fence (as was done on a burned up home off 552) instead of relying on a chain link fence to keep people out, that would have been ok!

Mayor Cecil realizes his mistake and goes back to public hearing item.

1. Heritage Christian Academy SUP thingy (see previous CP&Z posts.)

Margo had questions about fire safety. Chief Poindexter said the portables are safe, do get inspections, and are the same as those used by the PUBLIC schools.

David made a motion to approve for 1 year only, so that the school can go through the laborious process again next year.

Glen made note that he would like to see the portable "gone from the landscape". Not sure if he included the public school's portables in that.

The school needs $700,000 to finish out a building that would replace the need for the portables.

No one on the council volunteered to help.

3. Build a new radio tower for city use. Margo wants it pretty.

4. HOA Subcommittee again again. It was disolved 7-0. Then there was talk of forming another one. Some folks were named to be on the council subcommittee and a citizens committee.

"Naming people to a committee out of executive session?", I proclaimed in my head.

"Naming people to a committee out of executive session?", Mayor Cecil proclaimed .5 seconds after my thought!

The new committee will form some rules the new HOA's could adopt to have continuity in rules amongst HOA's.

If only there were some sort of council in the city that could create uniform rules that could be used by all citizens without the need for some smaller governing body to dictate behavior.

6. Apparently fence permit laws aren't restrictive enough. Here's the rule regarding permits:

Sec. 6-125. Permit required; applications; fees.

No fence shall be constructed within the city without the owner or person in control of such premises, or his agent or contractor, having secured a permit therefore from the building official of the city. Applications shall be made and a permit issued on forms promulgated by the code official for such purpose. The fees for such permits shall be as established by resolution of the city.

You don't need a permit to fix your fence (at least according to what I read) but the need must exist!

Imagine! People just going out and fixing their fences without an unqualified government agent to oversee the project!

City staff will keep looking into the issue, or as Cliff states: more clarity needed. (To me, when an elected official says "more clarity", I always hear "greater role".)

6. David Sweet and Matt Scott don't like people parking on grass in front of homes. I suggest they don't do it, then.

Mr Scott believes if you have a driveway, you should use it: "That's what it's for." (I wonder if we will soon start looking at people who use garages as storage rooms and not used for cars.)

Also, when Mr Farris made an objection, noting that some may park in the yard to wash a vehicle, Mr Scott responded that no one does that! It would kill the grass! (I believe I heard once that Mr Farris went to Bryan Adams HS. I too lived near BA for a couple years and can attest to the fact that people do wash their cars in grass. As a kid in Garland we were forbidden from washing cars on the driveway and always did so in the grass. If only it were true it killed the grass and I hated mowing the lawn, which was always so lush and green, especially the place where we washed!)

And this is not directed at Lake Rockwall Estates, because Mr Scott made a point to say this is not directed at Lake Rockwall Estates.

"There is no reason for this!"

And when objections were raised by other council members: "We don't want to penalize folks with legitimate issues [for parking in the grass]."

I always like it when a government body gets to decided what is "legitimate."

Mr Sevier also pointed out that he "hated" cars parking in the grass, to which I suggest he also not do.

Mayor Cecil said that if there is an ordinance, it must be enforceable (which this would be hard to do.)

Regarding enforcement, the "dog tethering" issue was mentioned as another that would be hard to enforce, and therefore no ordinance against tethering exists in the city. I found this last week in the animal control ordinances:

(e) Tying dogs. It shall be unlawful for any person to tie or tether a dog to a stationary object for a period of time or in a location so as to create an unhealthy situation for the animal or a potentially dangerous situation for a pedestrian as determined by the supervisor of animal control.

The movement to control parking behavior morphed into just banning parking on the grass in the front yard of a home. Which staff will look into again.

Amazing after 150+ years since founding, that now it's a problem.

Some other points:

-I left city hall and went down Storrs to Clark. 5 homes had cars parked in grass (culvert) in the front yard.
-All of the objections (which were called rare) I could point to from the short drive from the corner of Texas and Tubbs to my house on Perch.
-Is the grass culvert "front yard"? (I have to mow it.)

This is just a pet peeve that a couple council members have and are now excersing powers to change behavior they do not approve. Amazing to me how concepts like liberty and freedom are so championed by the people when it comes to federal and state issues, but in small local issues, freedom and liberty are ignored or even ridiculed by those in power.

Freedom isn't doing what you want. It's others doing thing you don't like.

Dr. Thomas Sowell has an excellent column about this from a few months ago.

This also reminded me about a lady celebrating her 100th birthday a couple years ago. When asked her secret for long life she responded, "I spent the first 50 years minding my own business, and the last 50 staying out of other people's business."

Get over yourselves.