The Mess We’re In

The current state of the Waterwood community is worse than it was a little over a year ago when the area incorporated into a city.

Before incorporation, Bexar County and Waterwood Development Company were taking care of the roads.  It’s true they weren’t doing the best job in the world, and that the roads often had potholes.  But the roads were in better shape than they are now.

Waterwood Development was taking care of the roads because they had to and it was only assumed that the money being paid for assessment fees weren’t going towards improving the area.  Now that the Waterwood Park Property Owner’s Association is receiving the assessment fee, the very people who complained about the developer not maintaining roads are doing a worse job.

The city either can’t or wont maintain the roads.  The City Council is more than willing to set up contracts where CPS energy has to pay to access the roads, but the members of the City Council continue to claim that the roads belong to the WPPOA.  The most vocal on the Council on this issue is Alderman David Tremblay, who doesn’t live in the Waterwood subdivision.  Tremblay takes this perspective so that he doesn’t have to pay as much in property taxes even though he uses Waterwood roads to access his house.

Jim Clement, acting as WPPOA president, accepted the offer from the developer to take over responsibility of collecting assessment fees and maintaining the subdivision.  He did this on the assumption that he would simply transfer the land over to the city, without allowing anyone else in the community the right to vote on the issue.

But the city hasn’t accepted the offer of the WPPOA park and other responsibilities which means now the WPPOA might have to continue collecting the $180.  Clement claims people haven’t been paying the assessment fee, but he’s the one who announced via postcard that the fee would be going away.  So the WPPOA must maintain everything, but doesn’t have the money and doesn’t have the leadership.

A perfect example of how the community has less than it did a year ago is the WPPOA pool.  Previously, the pool had been maintained by a caretaker that the developer paid.   Now the pool has been left in neglect and is a breeding ground for frogs and mosquitoes.

It’s an example of there being a lack of responsibility, planning, leadership.

But the deal gets worse.  The community has also lost the park clubhouse.  The clubhouse is filled with so much mold that City Council meetings are being conducted on the front porch, near the new pond.  Before, the developer would have maintained it, but now the responsibility falls on the corrupt and bankrupt WPPOA.

What if the city fails?  It’s a question worth asking because so far the city hasn’t done too many things correctly.  The Council has conducted meetings in a location where people can’t legally access, they’ve all ignored an open records request, and just recently they approved the hiring of a new city marshal without getting the background check that they themselves said was required to finalize the hiring.  Don’t forget that members of the Council and/or the former City Attorney committed fraud, changing a government document in secret.

This sort of behavior cannot continue to go on.  What happens when the city fails and people still need roads to be able to drive to their houses?

And now the the most recent discussion about the park deals with barrels of oil being buried in it.

As a community, we now have less and have to pay more than we did a year ago.  This is the mess we’re in