I just wanted to post some very quick notes about tonight's school board meeting. I'll have full video and commentary later, but it's late tonight and I need to get to bed.

1. Public hearing on changing school start and end times: Once again, no board members said anything or gave any clue as to what they thought about it. There were no questions from the board, but some members of the public spoke in favor of it, while others spoke against it. Some of the parents against it thought that having the time so early for elementary school kids was contrary to good sleep habits. I'd like to see us save that money, but I wonder if we couldn't move the times such that elementary starts at 8:00 am, and times staggered so that middle and high school times move later. In other words, take the proposed schedule and shift it back 10 minutes.

2. The board approved a voting location in Frisco for the upcoming election, causing huge cheers and applause to erupt in the audience.

3. The board unanimously approved the rezoning of Delay and Huffines Middle schools - again without any comment or discussion. We knew that would happen.

4. The Board will not call the Trustee election until its March 8th meeting - after the filing period for candidates closes.

5. The consent agenda passed unanimously, with the only exception being a mysterious Item #12, which Amber Fulton requested to be removed due to an unspecified conflict. Fulton remained on the dais during the vote on the item, which was read by President Kyer.

6. After the meeting, my 11 year old son, who was with me for the meeting, commented out of the blue: "Dad, they sure do agree on everything, especially Ms. Fulton. She always moves or seconds everything." I think he's catching on. It's really too bad that they are so opaque in the way they conduct business that the interested public can't see the discussions that must be happening behind closed doors.

The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates the city of New Orleans for the Saints' stirring Super Bowl victory, and reminds them that the "hair of the dog" trick doesn't really help with the hangover.

The Texas Cloverleaf highlights the sentencing of GOP Denton County Constable Ken Jannereth. Probation, anger management, laying off the bottle, and maybe more to come for the disgraced lawman.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is watching 2 Texas Counties fight it out with their DAs over legal duties.

Bay Area Houston says Teabaggers claim illiterate Blacks elected Obama.

Is your gas wet or dry? Despite industry spin, it seems to not matter. TCEQ testing shows Barnett Shale "Dry Gas" health hazard. TXsharon thanks State Representative Lon Burnam for wading through the recent TCEQ testing report to find the truth. Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

This past Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I attended my first Lewisville City Council Retreat - a yearly event where our City Council and City Manager and Staff meet to discuss our local issues in much more detail than they normally would have time for.

There were two sessions on Thursday night that I wasn't able to attend, but these were covered by Council candidate (and fellow blogger) TJ Gilmore in his live-blog of the meeting. My Thursday night video sucked because I was missing my tripod mount and had a crappy angle. But my video from Friday and Saturday turned out remarkably well.

I should note that I shot all of this video in HD, but I compressed it down in order to more quickly post it online. If anyone wants an HD copy of any of this, just bring me a thumb drive or CD-R

About 35 protesters from the group "Texans Exposing Petland" gathered Saturday afternoon along Round Grove Road in Lewisville, TX to raise awareness of what they believe to be the inhumane practices of Petland, a chain of pet stores believed to sell puppies from puppy mills.

These folks said they would be back every week until Petland corrects the practices or closes.


The group's co-founder, Dr. John Pippin had this comment: "Please check us out again at 3:00-4:30 PM this Saturday. We will be blowing the whistle on the recent parvovirus outbreak in the store. We know several puppies died, and those who survived were not reclaimed by the store."

Anyone interested in the group can contact petlandgoingdown@sbcglobal.net for more information.

We had earlier reported about a dozen protestors present, but the group was in the process of finishing up for the day when we arrived with the camera. T.E.P. reports they had 35. We regret the error.

Friends of the Lewisville Public Library will hold a used book sale Saturday, Feb. 6, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the library, 1197 W. Main Street. Shoppers will get to choose from more than 15,000 new and gently used books, CDs, audio cassettes and VHS tapes. All proceeds will benefit non-budgeted library programs. Book and material donations can be dropped off at the library any time during operating hours.

Flower Mound Cares, the group organizing a petition to ban centralized wastewater facilities in the city, has rolled out a website aimed at helping them explain their goals and organize their petition gathering.

The group is currently in the process of securing petition signing venues and once that has been determined they will be organizing the volunteer teams and identifying team captains.

Committee Chairperson Darlene Casey also says the group is looking for notaries and people with mobile internet access to assist with the petition gathering process and donations or loans of things like pens, clipboards, tables, and chairs to setup for petition signing.

Interested Flower Mound voters can visit the website or contact fmcares@verizon.net.

Sorry for the abbreviated format here - Jots being shorter than the "Thoughts on Thursday Night" extended edition. I've been pretty busy with my day job and my side job, not to mention the vast media conglomerate that is the WhosPlayin empire.

Tonight I came home in a hurry to grab my camera and head out to the Lewisville City Council Retreat, being held at our local Hilton Garden Inn. Well, when I got home, the kids had been in the camera bag, and somehow in the shuffle, my tripod's camera mount got misplaced. So I get out there, set up the tripod, get the camera out and realize I have no mount. That means no tripod. Add to that the oblong setup of the room, the distance from the speakers to the chairs, and the fact that there was no sound amplification, and basically that makes for a crappy video.

So in the interest of transparency, I'll go ahead and post them as soon as my computer quits acting up. You may or may not be able to hear anything, and you'll more than likely see the back of John Gorena's head instead of Claude King's face when he's talking.

Police Staffing
On a future post, perhaps I'll do my best to translate some of the formulas and models that Chief Kerbow was using to describe optimal staffing levels, but suffice it to say that we're probably a little overstretched in the patrol division. Increasing the number of officers doesn't necessarily pack the biggest punch in reducing crime, but it would improve response times, which are now at about 7:49 for a priority one call, on average.

T.J. Gilmore live-blogged this talk, so he has more info than I have time to write at the moment.

I did have a very interesting conversation with Chief Kerbow after his talk, just to ask about whether it might be feasible to bring back the Police Reserves program. In Texas, as I understand it, all Police officers must be TCLEOSE certified peace officers, but police departments can only hire full-time officers on the payroll. Police departments can augment their force with fully certified volunteer officers, who attend all the training that full time officers do, but donate a certain number of hours per month - say about 30, but it can vary.

So the thought is that if we could get qualified volunteers, and we could pay their tuition to the academy, their uniforms and weapons, it's not exactly free, but it would be an inexpensive way to augment our force. Kerbow says he could put reservists to work, but I would imagine there would be a lot of details to work out. I'd hate to see such a program cause any morale problems, or an influx of rookie reservists to overtax training officers and others who would have to invest some time to bring the reservists up to speed.

On the other hand, having a reserve program could help out with recruitment, building a pool of volunteers, some of whom might be willing to join the program as a way of getting experience and a foot in the door if positions open on the full-time force. Kerbow said that the lead time for hiring new officers is long because of the training requirements, so this might be a way to help with some of that. I'm not necessarily advocating rushing forward with this, because the details need to be thought through, but I do think it would be good to talk about this some more, and maybe have the Council discuss it specifically at one of the workshops.

Administration Might Be Discouraging Filers

This May 8th, the LISD School Board seats held by Fred Placke, Tom Kim, and Kathy Duke are up for re-election. The superintendant's secretary Cherry Carter, who is responsible for accepting filings for the seats says she has packets available, and can begin accepting them on Monday.

Packets are available during business hours at the district's administration building at 1800 Timber Creek Rd. in Flower Mound. Any qualified and registered voter residing in the district can run.

One of our readers called up the district to inquire about running, and was subtly discouraged from running. Our reader says Carter warned of the costs to the district to have an election when the incumbents have such a strong ground. Our reader got the distinct impression that she does not want anyone to run, and goes on to say that Carter warned of low turnout for the last persons who ran, saying it cost the district tons of money to even hold an election. The reader says "She was nice, but in 'bless your heart' kind of way."

We contacted Carter to inquire about the election, but when we asked about election costs, she told us to submit an open-records request, issued a general warning about printing anything not obtained from the district communications office, then in a show of great annoyance, abruptly begged off the call, citing being "in the middle of getting an agenda out" for Monday night's school board meeting.

Yesterday, District Spokesperson Karen Permetti told us that all 3 incumbents had expressed a desire to run again.

GOP attempts to exclude Democrats from polling locations on March 2nd

Contrary to Texas State election laws, the Denton County Republican Party is putting the Denton Fire Department in the middle of a political power play over the use of public facilities by both major parties in the upcoming Primary Election. The Fire Department agreed to allow both Parties the use of Station No. 4 for as a polling place on March 2nd, yet the GOP is claiming an exclusive contract.

“The GOP,” said Phyllis Wolper, chair of the Denton County Democratic Party,” wants to prevent our Party from using the fire station and possibly other public facilities, claiming it has exclusive rights.” “Assuming such an exclusive clause actually exists in their contracts, according to our contacts at the Texas Secretary of State, such a demand for exclusivity would violate State law. “Facilities supported by public money, such as schools, fire houses and public offices, cannot discriminate for or against one particular political party. Parties have to be treated equally and fairly,” she added. That’s the starting point of democracy.”

“The taxpayer money used by both parties to hold their primary elections comes from the Texas Secretary of State. “We have confirmed again with the Secretary of State’s office who agrees with our position that there can not be exclusive agreements that bar the opposition Party from using the same public facility. I sympathize with Denton Fire Department and those who run other public facilities who find themselves in the middle of a controversy that is so far outside their mission to serve the greater community,” said Wolper.

Michael Burgess likes to hang out with wacko liars. Of course when you have NO ideas of your own, you pretty much have to lie about your opponents' ideas or anything related to your opponents' ideas if you want to score political points. People like Bachman will never be burdened by the facts, as long as they can make shit up that is consistent with what they believe.

But hey, stupid is in the water these days.

Parents in LISD are not happy with the rezoning proposals, which are splitting some neighborhoods in weird ways. As usual, the school board decided not to even give parents the courtesy of a response, hiding behind their incorrect notions about the open meetings act.

Anyone want to place a bet on this? I'll bet you a dollar that the school board passes this rezoning unanimously as currently planned without as much as a comment. If anyone actually gets some dispensation from this, it will be the Highland Village parents, since the tiny city has 3 of the 7 seats on the board, and Lewisville has none.

Speaking of the school board, the elections are coming up, and filing for the seats held by Placke, Kim, and Duke begins Monday. LISD spokeswoman Karen Permetti says each of the incumbents has expressed a desire to run again. If you or someone you know is interested, please contact us, so we can get your story.