The new policy of combining civic services of Colleyville, Keller and Southlake may make the bigger government fans of Colleyville Bubble Life happy, but I just ran into the downside of supersizing. Like many Colleyville residents, I fondly remember the super and cheerful services rendered by Michelle at the old Colleyville Animal Control. If we accidently trapped a skunk in the course of trapping and relocating squirrels and raccoons out of our attic, a phone call to Michelle resolved our problem without stinky results.
Last night we set up a trap in response to raccoon-like noises in our attic. To our disappointment, we got a skunk instead. We called the joint Animal Control. They told us that pick up/haul off of any animal was now $30.00.
It’s not so much the fee itself, but that such services used to be provided as part of the non-trivial taxes we pay to Colleyville. But the philosophy now seems to be that in addition to taxes, you are going to be whacked for fees for services that were previously covered as routine city services.
I’m certain that city officials are much happier at this new ‘fee for service’ arrangement, but I’m not so sure the citizens are, or should be, so thrilled.
Thanks for reading,
Dick Young
Colleyville citizen since 1982
2 Comments
Gregg Rondeau
I find it amusing how often anti-tax /anti-government citizens gripe about any of the fees, service downgrades, potholes etc. that they caused. Especially in a fairly affluent city like Colleyville.
David Medlin
….that they caused…. When the Tarrant Refional Water District received the oil and gas revenues from the wells they own from Lake Bridgeport and Eagle Moutain lake they could have used it to pay down debt or increase infrastructure. Instead what did they do?
They redirected the money to the Trinity River Vision for economic development…err levy control. So in essence we are helping to subsidize the city of Fort Worth. This works much the same as the Dart system in Dallas most of the taxes come from the suburbs and goes to the benefit the city of Dallas. Now Dart has come back and dramatically raised the fees Colleyville pay for buried utilities that go under the tracks. These rate increases were not a result of any increased costs to them what so ever, but because they can. Complete shakedown! But that’s nothing compared to the increases we will see to subsidize our own Amtrak called Texrail.
The “regionalization of our decisions” means less say so for our citizens in this supposed representative form of government that we should have.
At a recent pre-council meeting, I watched as the Mayor pushed to change the way abulance services would be billed. The reason? Because the other cities in the region are doing it. I could understand his point of view when it comes to cross city services, but not when it comes to services provided by our fire department to our citizens. We pay for the ambulance, and for the fine fire department already. Why should someone have to pay again when they actually use the services when they paid all along to have those departments there in the first place.
The most ironic part of your comment is when you consider it probably costs at least $50 to even process the fee, it really shows how well thought these things are.
We aren’t causing the things you mention and we have every right to hold our elected officials accountable.
Wake up and get informed!