TEXAS LIVING!

OMG readers! Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys have released pricing information for the new football stadium, set to open in 2009. I had told good friend Sandra Steigman I was hoping to get on the wait list for the ‘cheap’ seats. Now they haven’t released those prices yet, but here’s an indication: the priceiest club seats, and that’s for single seats, not a suite – a season ticket owner will pay $340 per seat, per game, and that friends, is after paying a one-time fee of up to $50,000.00 for the ‘right’ to buy tickets for that seat for 30 years. The Cowboys say they want to sell all 80,000 seats as season tickets. So much for the common man getting to see a game! The rich get richer! Jerry Jones is laughing all the way to the bank when you consider parking fees and concession purchases! I gotta tell you, I love my big screen, and it will be much cheaper to buy a bigger one to watch the games (and everything else) than but a football ticket. And I don’t have to sit in traffic! And my long-neck bottle of Lone Star in my fridge will be pennies on the dollar! Heck! We can probably buy a new fridge too! NEW SUBJECT - TOLL ROADS! I’ve mentioned in earlier postings about efficiencies, or lack thereof, of moving traffic to reduce congestion. Some time back I read in the Battle Ground Reflector newspaper that the current City Mayor, John Idsinga, was promoting that Clark County have the 50 year vision for a road connecting Battle Ground and Camas on the Columbia River. It is a great idea, and in fact, it is bigger than that. It is absolutely imperative that current elected officials think bigger, and think more than 50 years out. Probably sooner vs. later, all of Clark County and the south shore of the Columbia River will look just like the banks of the Willamette River in downtown Portland do today. And that will mean more river crossings. I read in yesterday’s Clark County newspaper about the traffic issues in Puget Sound and the rejection by voters for increased taxes to fund road construction. “What now”? The article went on to talk about the European company, Cintra, that had recently paid the State of Texas over $2 billion (yep, with a ‘b’) dollars to the right to build SH 121 and operate it as a toll road. I think that is in error, but that’s a different subject. Anyway, back to Mayor Idsinga’s comments. Someone needs to have the vision of building a toll road diagonally from Woodland to Camas, through Battle Ground, which is geographically the center of Clark County. With the ‘up-front’ money Cintra pays, that money could be used to buy the right-of-way, and then let them fund the construction and maintenance through tolls. We have now lived in North Texas for 2 years, and I love the toll roads! They are convenient and we don’t have to use them, they are only another option to move around. And then of course, the new rage now is higher tolls during peak travel times! And a final comment for today! This past week in the Dallas Morning News was a comment that President Bush had now gotten involved in the Barry Bonds steroid scandal. The comments went on to say that because the President had previous ties to Major League Baseball as a team owner, he was aligning himself to become the Baseball Commissioner after his term of office. Holy crap! I can't imagine! Nuff said!