The 800 Pound Bird



Mayor Price cried "ouch" when she broke her collarbone

earlier this year in a bicycle accident.  Constituents cried

"ouch" when she broke a campaign promise. 



Betsy Price on her worst day seems to be a better mayor than Mike Moncrief. We like her push for recycling, her rolling town hall meetings. Even though she personally was OK with lifting the moratorium on gas waste injection wells within the city limits, she listened to the public, changed her mind, and on her watch injection wells were banned from Fort Worth.

All that said, however, there’s a big ol’ turkey gobbling around in her closet: the gas well ordinance. When she was running for mayor, Price said she approved of gas drilling within the city but that the health and safety of residents had to come before gas company profits. Here was her promise at a candidate forum: “As Mayor, my first and foremost priority will be the health and safety of our citizens in Fort Worth. That means we need up-to-date, independent testing when it comes to gas drilling. We need to study our current zoning and ordinances in relation to gas drilling … .”

Well, that has turned out to be just a lot of gassing. The city council did take a peek at the ordinance in the last year, when changes were proposed. But then drilling opponents charged that the proposed changes benefited only the drillers. And the drillers said that if the regulations got any “tougher,” they’d take their rigs and go home. And in April, Price and the council decided to do absolutely nothing about the holes in the ordinance that you could drive a drilling rig through.

What happened to caring about the health and safety of your constituents, Mayor? Bike rides and fitness campaigns won’t do much good when all those deep breaths are full of foul pollutants.

Bloggers Note:  Let us not forget that Mayor Price also promised Fort Worth citizens (during her campaign to be the Big Cheese of the city), that she would allow the voters of our fair city to decide on a larger city council.  I seem to recall the following intelligent statement from her concerning the subject; "I was for that before I was against it."  Now there is a revelation of biblical proportions!