Sim Portnoy is leading a group of citizens in the fight to save these trees. They feel the road can be repaired, and sidewalks installed in a way that the beauty of the trees on Church Street can be saved. This would cost less than the removal of all the trees, and is prudent with the cities current economic condition. Sim was removed last night from the council meeting, and it was covered by our local CBS station, you can view the video from the cbs11.com website, with additional comments from the blog for Citizens of Corinth for Transparency website.

With the passage of this, Sim is still determined to fight. The group will be meeting at Meadow Oak Park located at Meadows Oak and S. Corinth Street at 12 Noon on Saturday, May 23, to discuss how this can be fought.  If you miss the meeting or cant attend, please contact Sim Portnoy via email at citizensofcorinth@yahoo.com.

Corinth City Hall has been haveing quite a bit of political problems over the last few years, and it looks like even after the recent elections, they have not shaken off their problems.

For Corinth the following is being reported;

Voting Citizen’s 790 which is a good turnout compared to past elections and still way short of the over 12,000 registered voters.

Mayor  – Mr. Paul Ruggiere (452)  over Shanon O’Brien (319).

Council Place 2 – Jim Mayfield (416) over Sherry Schneider (321).

Council Place 5 – Bruce Hanson (520)

For Hickory Creek the following is being reported;

Council Place 1 – Lynn Clark (278)

Council Place 3 – Chris Gordon (279)

council Place 5 – Eric Wiser (320) – Randy Wahl (37)


For Lake Dallas Texas the following is being reported;

Council Member Place 1 – James Harper (92) – Unopposed

Council Member Place 3 – B. W. Brooks  (89) – Unopposed

Council Member Place 5 – Karl Hammond (107) – Richard Martin (73)

Proposition 1 – Yes (137) – No (17)

Proposition 2 – Yes (106) – No (53)

Proposition 3 – Yes (84) – No (76)

For Shady Shores the following is being reported;

Mayor – Olive Stephens (257) – Jerry Williams (189)

For the ones that lost, we congratulate you on being concerned enough to run.  For those that voted kudos’s to you. You are probably one of the less than 5 percent of the population that decides the local political direction. Maybe next time, you could make a effort to get at least two people to vote that did not in the last election.

Politics are not for the squeamish of heart. People who run for office do so for a reason, sometimes for taking a political career path, some times to further ones personal agenda, and quite often to set something right the candidate feels is wrong.  And apparently more often than not, none of these actually serve the general citizens, and we end up getting to pick the lesser of the evil’s. As quoted by Ron Williams in one of his movies “Politicians are like diapers, they should be changed often and for the same reason.” While that is not always true, it just seems like it is so.

Corinth: Very heated race, and turnout should be good. Residents can vote at Corinth City Hall.

Hickory Creek.
Residents can vote at City Hall.

Lake Dallas:
Residents can vote at City Hall.

Shady Shores: Residents can vote at Shady Shores Town Center.

Please feel free to log on and post your questions, we will then present them and post back their responses in this thread. Please in your questions, post what position you are asking of, such as Lake Dallas, Councilman place 3. If you have a good relevant question that should be asked of all the candidates,  just put general question in the top of your response.

In addition, those that would be interested in attending one of the meetings to present questions, and post their responses, please put Willing to attend “xxx meeting” in your post, as I personally will not be able to attend all the meetings due to my work activities.

If you note any inaccuracies in the posting below, be sure to use the contact us form for for sending in corrections. It has been rather difficult to locate information on some of the local city websites.

Current Positions being voted on in May:

Corinth: Mayor, place 2 and 5. Good recap by the Denton Record Chronicle about the candidates.

Candidates for Mayor: Sitting council members Shannon Bryan and Paul Ruggiere.

Candidates for place 2, Jim Mayfield and Sherri Schnider.

Place 5 will be Bruce Hanson, who ran unopposed.

Friends of the Lake Cities Library are having a town hall meeting April 21, 2009 at 6:00 pm, at Corinth City Hall, Chamber Room.

Lake Dallas: Place 1, 3 and  5.  Plus voting of amendments posted in the Lake Cities Sun .

Place 1 candidates:   will be James Harper, who ran unopposed.

Place 3 candidates:  will be B. W. Brooks, who ran unopposed.

Place 5 candidates: Rick Martin (incumbent), and Karl Hammond.

Hickory Creek: Place 1, 3 and 5.

Place 1 candidates: will be Lynn Clark , who ran unopposed.

Place 3 candidates: will be Chris Gordon, who ran unopposed.

Place 5 candidates: Eric Wiser (incumbent) and Randy Wahl.

Shady Shores: Mayor, place 2 and 3.

Mayor candidates: Olive Stephens (incumbent)  and Jerry Williams.

Place 2 candidates: Polly Carter (incumbent) and ???

Place 3 candidates:  Sherry Star (incumbent) and Betty Brown.

The Friends of the Lake Cities Library has
coordinated a town hall meeting where all of
the candidates will be open to questions from
the public.
Lake Cities Library Website.
Location: Corinth City Hall
 Chamber Room
(3300 Corinth Parkway; Corinth, TX 76208)
Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Time: 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM.

Parks of Corinth Website.
Location NCTC campus.
Date and time: May 5th at 7 PM.

In addition, I think it is also a good idea
that you formulate some questions too that would
be specific to the lake cities area and post them
in advance as well.  I think that the more
information we can get out there about each candidate
the easier it will be for our residents to make
informed decisions.

Many people I come meet say that they don't take
interest in the local election because they don't
have enough information about the candidates. 

Thanks for your efforts and quality dissemination
of information.

Due to a incident with a neighbor, we had to review some of the local regulations that the town of Hickory Creek has concerning animals.  Some of the regulations appear to be outdated, vague, or to be poorly written.  We will try and see how we can approach the town on getting this updated.

Here is the text directly from the regulations.

Sec. 2.01.003     Nuisances

(a)     The keeping of any animal which, by frequent or long-continued barking, crying or noise, shall disturb any person of ordinary sensibilities in the vicinity shall be considered a nuisance.

After doing a bit of research we did find some interesting excerpts from Homeowner’s Rights and it looks like the “ordinary sensibilities” is basically left up to the judge to determine. Just what we want to do, spend money to determine if our neighbor has “ordinary sensibilities”.

Now it seems to me, that this could be written to be a bit more concise, to both protect the pet owner, and complainant.  For instance, why leave it to only one person to complain, quite a number of cities require that two complaints be filed by different households. This reduces the possibility of using this law as a form of legal harassment.  Others require noise to be over a certain decibel limit. To me, it appears that the laws are written to be vague making the courts, or other officials make the determination, but maybe I am being a bit facetious here.

Well enough with that one, while this was brought up, lets go over another that this action brought up.

Hickory Creek requires that you register your pets (dogs and cats) yearly (though there is no fee). The ordinance also specifies that you must have rabies shots yearly. Never mind that most rabies shots (other than the initial shots) are good for three years. Or that studies have shown that in reality their good for over 5 years. So lets review the law, and see what we can recommend.

First the ordinance:

Sec. 2.01.001     Definitions

Currently vaccinated. Vaccinated and satisfying the following criteria:

(1)     The animal must have been at least three months of age at the time of vaccination.

(2)     At least 30 days have elapsed since the initial vaccination.

(3)     Not more than 12 months have elapsed since the most recent vaccination.

Now, I don’t know about you, but all my animals have the three year vaccinations. These cost the same as the one year, which are only done on the first vaccination. While we can not tell when a peculiar ordinance has been written, we feel it is outdated.

Laws where possible, should be written to stay current with changing technology. We do not believe that any of the council members or our mayor is a veterinarian, so where do they get the information to create such ordinances that effect all of us?  Most likely from other cities. But doing just a bit of research myself, we found what would be superior, and is updated yearly, from The American Veterinary Medical Association called  “Model Rabies Control Ordinance“.  After reading the preceding link,  you will see that it will change only one section of our local ordinance, and reflect current and future definitions of what “Currently vaccinated” means, as specified in the “compendium of animal rabies control document“  as written by the Center for Disease Control, they know a thing or two about rabies.

Abiding by the letter of the local ordinance, this will cost me a total of 90 dollars additional over a three year period for my three pets, doesn’t sound like much, unless we ask you to pay it.  It also has been shown that over medication of rabies shots causes all kinds of problems in animals, if you don’t believe it do a bit or research on the web. It would also reduce the cost for the cities to issue tags that are valid for the duration of the rabies tag.

So now that we have gone over this, we get to do the fun part. We will document here on the site, our experience with trying to update a local ordinance. Hopefully this is more fun than having all your teeth pulled at once.

Here is the site where Hickory Creek keeps their online code of ordinances.

Honestly I believe that the web is the key to realizing a true participatory democracy on a federal level in a country as big as the U.S., so this is certainly something to take notice of.  This may be just the first small step, but at least it's a step in the right direction.  Along with the THOMAS [thomas.loc.gov] system, which gives the public easy access to bills, legislation, and congressional voting records, the web is gradually increasing the level of transparency in government. perhaps in the near future online referendums can be conducted, if not for deferring policy making to the public, then at least to poll public opinion on key issues.

This kind of interactive digital democracy eliminates any ambiguity as to what the general mood of the public is, how the public feels about key issues, and what the will of the people is.  It’s vital for an online dialog to be opened between political officials and their constituency, especially with the growing gap/disconnect between the political elite and the daily realities of the common man.  At least then the politicians can’t plead ignorance.

The unofficial results for the Lake Dallas Mayor elections currently show Karl Hammond with 700 votes, Maria Zulch with 331 and Tony Marino 917 as of 8:00 pm.

Update on the Lake Dallas Mayor race, the Dallas News is reporting that their will be a runoff election on Dec. 13th between Tony Marino and Karl Hammond.

Also reported by the Dallas News is the passage of both bond propositions.

Of course there are many sites, and a mirad of TV channels to check on how things are going. So we will not go into any election coverage. But when its over, we will update the current political positions page, and expand links to contact our representatives.

We hope you do not leave politics just because the elections will be over. I personally feel we are entering a new era. We as a nation, need to keep in touch with our elected officials, even when we don’t personally need something done by them. Try and keep abreast of what is being decided by our representatives, and let them know how you feel in a nice letter, fax, or email.

Politicians only are very often reactive, they are like us, they only fix the squeaky wheel. But if we as a community let them know how we feel on the issues that they are facing, they will know at least we are watching.

We at LCIG will attempt to keep abreast of what they are doing, but we do need some help. If you follow any of the local politics, attend the town council meetings on a regular basis, or follow either the Texas house and senate, we could use your help. Just use the contact US page and let me know how you can help us all keep up with whats going on in our local, state and nation.