Mertzon City Council September 2 2025

Agenda Analysis | Meeting Review | Meeting Documents | Commentary | Last Meeting

This August 20, 2025 flood at the entry to City Park speaks louder than my words about why I am opposing further development of City Park by Irion County. Two inches of rain fell in 20 minutes, meaning Mertzon experienced a 100 year flood in very short order. A larger Community Center in City Park is only going to increase the stormwater runoff seen here.

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A. Agenda Analysis

1. Meeting time: Note that this meeting is on Sept. 2, Tuesday, not its regular first Monday of the month. 2. Spring Creek clean up, item 5: Perhaps a Councilman will know whether these kind of clean up sponsorships have any staying power. The State does this on some highways, but I never see folks out picking up on those parts that are sponsored. Maybe if the Lions Club agrees to do the "round up" of the businesses and coordinate a regular clean up then this can turn into something permanent. 3. Everything else: Items 6, 7 and 8 are standard agenda meat and potatoes.

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Once the development of this city block is complete in a few months, 75% of it will be impervious cover owned by IC ISD. All of the runoff from this city block ends up in City Park. But before it reaches there, it must pass over my property. In April 2019 I recommended that the City, Irion County and IC ISD coordinate and come up with a development plan that would not threaten City Park - and local residences - with more stormwater flooding. That coordination never occurred, and one consequence today is that failure is compromising how the community wants to use City Park.

B. Meeting Review

1. Meeting documents. Here.

2. Creek clean up, item 5: No representative of the Lions Club appeared, though Councilman Crutchfield, a member of the club, spoke briefly on the intent of the measure. The matter was tabled with agreement that more homework was needed from the club...like what ground rules is the club willing to agree to with the City to make this successful.

3. The rest: The rest of the meeting was standard fare - nothing of note for these pages.

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My daughter tells me all this rain has made this is a “mast” year for the oaks. Apparently so.

C. Commentary

Not all is broken with democracy, regardless what we are being told by our state and federal elected officials. An idea for another way to see, perhaps attributable to the writer John Updike, comes to mind: At any moment, an old world is passing, and a new world is coming into being. We have sharper eyes for the fall than the rise because the old world is the one we know.

The majority of us know, intuitively, that pluralism - the concept that a diverse set of views can co-exist peaceably in government - is foundational to democracy. (See my commentary here where I support a community with many faiths.) That foundation, today, is not the old world passing. That foundation assures that, in time, there will be a civil correction in course.

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Copyright 2025 G. Noelke