TEXAS LIVING!

Here we go, election time! What a difference between Texas and Washington, not only on how well North Texas supports, roads, parks, schools, but also how elections are held, and how the voting booth works. Earlier this year the City of Allen and the Allen Independent School District passed huge bonds for City and School construction. I did have some issues with the City proposal for new facilities and when I e-mailed City representatives and got “bull-shit” responses, I voted ‘no’ on a couple of the bond proposals. Hey! I worked in local government for almost 33 years, and I know crap when I see it in an e-mail! Anyway, today Donna and I voted for three County bonds and fourteen State propositions. For the Collin County proposals, we supported proposition #1 which is for $235,600,000 for road construction. Yep! You read it right, over two hundred million dollars! We also supported the bond for $17 million for parks and open spaces. I guess we’ll see how our support stacked up when next Tuesday’s election result s are known. These money proposals are much different than how capital improvements for roads, mass transit and schools were supported, or not supported in Clark County by local politicians and citizens. The other big difference for us was the ‘early voting’ concept as compared to absentee voting in Washington. Texas uses absentee voting only if you are ill or on vacation, and you have to register each election, whereas we loved having continuous absentee voting in Clark County. Early voting here was just that! You could stop by the City Municipal Court for two weeks prior to the election and cast your ballot. The other thing that was different for us was the electronic voting vs. the ‘chad’ card. When we mentioned to the three volunteers that we really liked, and missed the absentee voting, they were very disinterested. When we said how convenient it was, they suggested we could use their curb-side voting option! We’re guessing because they were an older generation, they, like older Clark County residents enjoy the camaraderie of going to the polling booth!