I love the Smell of Victory in the Morning


Yeah, a local issue, but it's not really is it?
.

Look what popped in my mailbox today.


THE MORNING AFTER
Sunday, May 13, 2007

Exactly 2 or 3 months ago, 3 people on a back porch in a small hilly town came up with a foolish idea. One of the largest road building firms in the world, the old Texas Highway Department, now affectionately known as TxDOT, wanted to visit our county, bearing a gift better than a shiny red bicycle on a Christmas morning. The gift was valued at $172,000,000.00, for it was 19 miles of highway; 1% of the existing roads in the county, working out to an average of $9,000,000.00 per mile.

"Bush's Brain" had just visited the nearest college campus to give an invited speech on communication skills, and a few older folks, throwbacks from the forgotten 60s, showed up to the speech, to bang trashcan lids and unfurl banners. The two parties never saw each other, but hey, it was a good excuse to take the day off and ventilate.

The intensity of getting within 300 feet of the "Brain" seemed to carry over to a new objective, that of stopping Caterpillar tractors from grading hill country folks off the hillsides, and into the clear creeks. Three became four; four became six, and six became a dozen; scruffy, dirt and gravel road folks trying to keep concrete and chain saws away, at least for a while. Teachers, business owners, retirees, families, newcomers, old timers, church goers, students. Later- goat ranchers, inspiring documentarian, journalist, "little old ladies", retired politician, graphic artists, old activists, and of course, the best of them all- treehuggers.

No one endorsed this gang; not municipalities, politicians, agencies, organizations, mayors, state reps, neighborhoods, open space and parks lovers, water leaders, another similar land preserving anti-road group, newspapers. An ex-mayor, accountant, and retiring councilperson bravely put up some of the 1st yellow and black signs, and spoke fondly of our county and town. Other than that, nobody, no one, zero, nada, bye-bye.

Soon, a few others looked around, and when no one was looking, planted their own signs, and then other signs began to appear. Email was the cheapest affordable means of communicating the message- "spend money responsibly, not greedily; keep some roads now, but improve them safely later; keep the tract home companies away for the time being; preserve the precious aquifers and groundwater; and most importantly- not allowing corrupted politicians, state agencies, engineering firms, developers from telling the county citizens "what WE must do now, because this is the best, last chance."

The other side, referring to themselves as "the future-now", and piggybacking or being piggybacked by a conservation entity, started off slowly, not thinking it was going to be a fight at all. No signs, ads, articles, whatever, except an emerging sense that there really was a serious anti-concrete gang spreading the silent message: "this is a rat, a dead fish, a trick, a bad deal, and a pack of coyotes trying eat our kids".

Slick mailers, lobbyists, organized one-sided meetings, robo calls, pollsters, endorsements from "which way is the wind blowing politicos", newspapers, more lobbyists from highway concerns, ministers, maximum allowable contributors. The cost? Last heard between 50-100k, but truth be known, it will never be fully known. The tide was starting to turn against the "future 1 & 2."

The scruffy little caliche corp., aka "rage against the machine"; "we're gonna win this thang"; "the hill country battlers of '07"; "cedar insurgents" and officially Citizens for Responsible Roads- www.responsibleroads.com - raised $6,000 from fellow intense, articulate, honest , hard-working, and passionately concerned and responsible citizens. The rest was wisdom, fearlessness, relentlessness and long, hard work. Our "anti-road spokesperson", our "wealthy" retired activist, kept us cool, calm, and collectedly on task, on mission, on message. % point by % point we gained, the other side slid. "Money does not talk in Hays County, the people do".

Toward the end, the "future 1 & 2" pollsters were telling them they indeed had fallen behind the insurgents, so all stops were pulled out- paid college kids with homemade signs not knowing why they were waving at cars; weird signs with questions like, ..."scared to pull out?"; leftover signs from a county road and parks bond in 2001, with painted and taped over attachments, and on and on. But the best was saved for last.

The Friday before the election, a pink flyer was distributed door to door by "future 1 & 2". It was an "Extremist Alert". Yep, an "Extremist Alert", saying the "Extremists are trying to dictate our future....."; calling our leader a "former aide to Nixon"; and claiming a valued ally referred to residents as " ... pigs feeding at the trough." The "Extremist Alert" claimed the "Extremists consistnetally (sic) was lieing (sic) to citizens". The caliche faced VICTORIOUS, EXTREMISTS could not afford a band at the hastily called happy victory party. The pink "extremist alert" flyer was the night's entertainment.

The Citizens for Responsible Roads will never, ever be able to thank all the hard working, hard talking, hard emailing, wise thinking passionate supporters out there. Consider yourself and what you did as the reason for victory. It's what YOU did.
Yep, y'all, sometimes "the good guys really do win".

-- Hanlon


www.responsibleroads.com

Posted: Mon - May 14, 2007 at 07:40 PM            

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