Karen Hall

Today’s Eagle has an editorial about the efforts of Karen Hall. Karen is an icon of grassroots activism. She has almost single handedly taken on the city of Bryan over the issues of annexation. She has been more tenacious than most teams of lawyers, yet she has done it on her own, including education herself to do the legal work and running for public office. If we could get everyone in the Brazos Valley who gives lip service to grassroots efforts, to contribute one tenth the time, effort and creativity that Karen Hall has, we would have a very different community.

Karen has a very legitimate beef with the city of Bryan about annexing land without providing the service that they are required to by law. It appears that with Karen’s case we are seeing the sort of conflict of interest that can exist between our justice system and other governmental bodies that allows citizens to be steam rolled.

There is also a flip side to this issue. That is that cities in Texas have their hands tied by state laws in fighting sprawl. Highway 21 coming into Bryan from the east is a good example of the sort of unplanned ugly sprawl what can happen with this lack of control.

The problem here is not Karen. It is the city of Bryan. The city has a responsibility to live up to its obligations, period. The city should be especially vigilant about those obligations when failure to do so will turn public opinion from such greatly needed progress.

With its highway frontage roads and sprawling polluted cities, Texas is known across the nation as what can happen when governments have no sense of. The city of Bryan has often been the poster child for this bad example.

States that do the best job of controlling metropolitan sprawl give authority to the counties to play a role in planning. It is my understanding the County Commissioner Kenny Mallard is seeking such control for Brazos County. While these sorts of controls can protect us from ugly and unhealthy sprawl, they can also be the source of back room favors for strategically generous developers. Like most other aspects of governance the best preventative is citizen oversight.

From: http://polbrazos.blogspot.com/