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mmmdan

Member Since 16 May 2012
Offline Last Active Mar 26 2024 07:53 PM
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Posts I've Made

In Topic: Mapping natural spring water

23 February 2024 - 09:31 PM

I am going to go out on a limb and say that we are not talking about artesian wells around Fort Worth.  I think what we have going on is just water that gets absorbed into higher ground during the rains finding its way out of the ground a little further downhill.

 

Here's the street view from Jan '22 for where I used to live.  You can see the elevation difference between the houses.  The retaining wall is about 5' high.  In this view, you can see the dark line running down the driveway towards the street. The water that creates the dark line is the water that gets absorbed into the yard of the higher elevation house trying to run downhill, but it hits the retaining wall, makes its way to the bottom, comes out at some point and continues running downhill towards the street.

https://www.google.c...i8192?entry=ttu

 

The ground in Ridglea Hills is not really the type to retain water.  This view from Vickery Blvd really shows what it's like under the grass in that neighborhood.

https://www.google.c...1!1e4?entry=ttu

 

It's been too long since I've lived there, so I can't recall for sure how long it lasts, but here is the intersection where once the spring rains stop, water seeps out and runs down the road for at least a month before it finally dries up.

https://www.google.c...1!1e4?entry=ttu


In Topic: Mapping natural spring water

22 February 2024 - 09:35 PM

The same thing happens in Ridglea Hills.  I used to live there on the top of a hill.  The elevation change was so great that I could see over the top of my neighbor's house.  At one point the house was being flipped, and the workers stopped by and had me check for water leaks because there was a constant stream of water flowing down the driveway that appeared to be coming from my land.  Water meter was completely still.  It was just the water in the ground seeping out.

 

There are areas where it will seep for so long that algae will start to grow in the water.  My family helped a lady get to the hospital once after she broke her wrist while jogging because she slipped in the algae.


In Topic: The W. T. Waggoner Bldg

13 January 2024 - 09:13 PM

We live in a country that is not big on worker's rights, especially service workers.  I could see one of two scenarios here where he thought that since he reported it to his management that they had it under control.  Or, I could also see where he was concerned, but since he had already told management, he was worried about going over their head and potentially losing his job.

 

If the smell was that bad, for that long, one would also think that several people were aware of the smell.  This leads to a couple of other conclusions.  One where everybody thought that obviously, someone else must have already called this in, or one where nobody really knew what to do, so continued on in ignorance. 

 

Based on the questions I see in neighborhood Facebook groups, the general public is not well versed in what I will generically call civics.  A lot of questions that are asked can be answered by a quick internet search, searching the city's webpage, or actually reading the information that the utilities send out when you sign up, or reading the bills.  And as more and more people turn to automatic payments on their bills, their chances of reading information from the utilities becomes less and less.

 

I am guilty of driving past a pothole for several days assuming someone else is going to report it, with the pothole not being fixed.  I finally stop being lazy, take the 2 minutes it takes to report it on the city's phone app, and by the next day, the pothole is filled.  And when they close out the request, I know it was because of my report.  The first one I reported, I even had the pothole repair person call me because he was driving up and down the street but couldn't find it.  It turns out that I relied on the apps mapping feature to note where the pothole was without providing much additional information.  It turns out, that the address that the app produced based on where I centered the map was off by a decent amount.  I was pleasantly surprised by how diligent he was about wanting to fill in the pothole I reported.

 

The modern world is very complicated, and most people couldn't care less about how it all works, as long as things are going fine, or are too busy just trying to survive to get into the details.


In Topic: Trash pickup surcharge

07 January 2024 - 08:42 PM

I would propose the city do bulk pick-up twice a month and to allow regular garbage bags to be set out for bulk waste.  They seem to get so bent out of shape about people putting leaves in plastic garbage bags, even after the allowed (2) extra bags next to your trash bin after Christmas and New Years, last year I put a big old contractor bag full of leaves out and they wouldn't take it.  The guys actually cracked open the bag too.  But you can drive your bagged leaves to a drop-off station and dump them in the dumpster there.  I just get tired of driving around seeing mounds of bulk waste sitting out on the curb for weeks on end.  Most places I've lived, I never saw mounds of trash piled up on the curb except maybe some sort of twice a year special pick-up event.  We're getting into tax season now, I guarantee I will see couches and furniture piled up through April, that seems to be a popular way to burn a tax refund rather than let it burn a hole in your pocket.

 

A couple times I've driven through Tanglewood over behind Amon Carter Stadium the weekend before bulk pickup, I've spotted some amazing things out on the curb (no I did not go back and get them).  One house must have gutted their kitchen and the contractors left the old cabinets out on the curb for pick-up.  The old cabinets were nicer than probably 99% of the kitchens I've been in and looked to be in great shape too / were not manhandled at all, just neatly set out by the street.  Another time just a few weeks ago, one of the bigger houses on Lyncrest had a standing metal seam roof installed which itself probably cost well over $100K and they had a pile of leftover roofing sections out at the curb, and it wasn't the cheap kind either.  I'd bet they left a couple thousand dollars of material for anyone to grab with a trailer would have been awesome for a shop / garage / carport.

 

This is another thing that the could be fixed if the city enforced the rules.  Bulk trash is only supposed to be placed at the curb the weekend before pickup week.


In Topic: Escalating cost of living in Fort Worth

07 January 2024 - 08:38 PM

 

I think we use language that makes it seem like it is developers’ faults that there is not less expensive housing — I guess it is easier to characterize the problem as some kind of corporate greed instead of simply the ordinary economic incentive of making investment decisions.

 
It seems to me that everything being built is “affordable” or we would not have an inventory shortage — it is just not affordable for everyone.  Almost nothing is affordable by everyone.  For sure that inventory shortage is making it all seemingly way too high, another reason we can all get behind this idea that someone must be greedy in all of this.
 
Part of this is that we obviously need to do something to increase the opportunities for higher wage employment — that is part of the machinery of a healthy city’s economic engine, and it means figuring out how to shore that employment up at every level, since every earner (the higher the better) is also a consumer that can help activate our economy.
 
Still, there will always be some portion of the population that because of health circumstances or family responsibilities or a shortfall of earlier education / training are unable to have employment or to have employment that is skilled enough to rise above supply to be valued with higher wages.
 
It seems that from basic human kindness everyone deserves to have the dignity of a roof over their head in a clean and safe place, and the city / county / state / federal government is going to have to come up with dollars to do that for them.
 
 

 

 

To pick on the first part of what you said, another way to make things affordable is to pay people more.  Several years ago, the company I work for started outsourcing non-core tasks like trash collection.  Sanitation services used to be done by people that actually worked for the company.  I remember early career people being amazed that the person that went around and picked up their trash made more than them.  But this person had 30+ years with the company.  That position most likely also came with benefits like sick time, vacation, 401k/pension.

 

Now that the job has been outsourced, you know those people aren't making anywhere near the salary or benefits.  They simply can't, because it has to be cheaper for my company to hire another company to do a job that they used to pay people to do.  And the company they hired has to make a profit on their employee's labor.

 

Back in the day, being loyal to a company lead to a good chance that you could live what was considered a middle class lifestyle, which included being able to afford a house.