Laurel Heights

INFALLABILITY...MAYBE ...

INFALLABILITY…MAYBE IN RELIGION…NOT IN POLITICS

The Catholic Church teaches that the Pope, the visible head of the Church on earth, when speaking on matters of faith or “Ex Cathedra” is infallible. The term infallible means that the Pope cannot ere when speaking on such matters.

Those of us mere mortals and especially our elected officials and NGO directors and leadership do not enjoy such a distinction when it comes to governance. There is no “Ex Cathedra” infallibility discipline applicable here. Our leadership over the years has proven it is indeed very fallible when it comes to matters of sound fiscal management and good judgement and we as the electorate are also responsible for not making these officials truly accountable.

As we approach the new century we are seeing a new groundswell for changes in the way we conduct our community business. More and more community/neighborhood association leaders are being polled by elected officials to endorse changes in the way our City operates. We are seeing the advent of trial balloons that call for changing the term limits of our City Council and Mayor, making these term limits changes retroactive so the incumbents can benefit from the changes, and advocating payment for these elected officials. So far we have not seen a movement to a strong mayor form of government and the elimination of the City Manager form of government which many seem to suggest we have outgrown. SAWS continues an unrecognizable management of our water resources by approving a contract with Alcoa Aluminum that will find us ratepayers paying for water we already own and entering into such a contract that will again raise the user charges to ratepayers ad infinitum.

We have all read the headlines…San Antonio is now the 2nd (second) fastest growing city in the U.S., it is now the 3rd (third) “fattest” city as determined by obesity, and continues to languish at 38th as measured by average wealth.

We are human and we all make mistakes so lets try and curb these errors and resolve to stop acting like we have unlimited resources to play with: the fact is we don’t. We need to refocus ourselves as a community and stop making it our mission to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

I am reminded of a fact that came to light as a result of all the notoriety surrounding the newest version of the film Titanic…that the comfort and splendor afforded the First Class passengers was subsidized by the shipping operator as a direct result of the multitude of ticket sales to steerage passengers.

Let us stop allowing our elected and appointed officials to make multi-million dollar errors on the backs of us steerage taxpayers and ratepayers. Lets do the honorable thing and try to improve this community measure of wealth…38th place indeed. In this period of almost unprecedented prosperity and economic explosion little seems to have trickled down in this community. Let us make a resolution to support our council and elected officials in their efforts to protect and not waste our resources, to lower our user fees (especially to the poor and aged), to increase urban services city wide, and to practice proper cost-benefit analysis in an open atmosphere and not protect the “First Class Passengers” at the expense of those of us in steerage or we may end up just like the great Titanic.