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BY LESLIE WIMMER
November 24, 2008
For newly elected State Sen. Wendy Davis, a tough background and concerns about issues in her community led her to a career in public service.
Davis on Nov. 4 won the District 10 election against incumbent Kim Brimer, who has a 20-year state legislative tenure, by about 7,000 votes of the about 300,000 votes cast.
Prior to running for the District 10 seat, Davis served as a Fort Worth City Council member representing District 9 from 1999 through 2008.
She credits the circumstances surrounding her upbringing to her passion for public service.
Davis and her three siblings were raised in Richland Hills, and she graduated from Richland High School in 1981.
“I was raised by a single mom, my mom has a sixth-grade education, she raised four kids working an hourly wage job,” Davis said. “And, of course, no one in our family history had ever been to college before, and my family, like so many families I represented on the City Council and will represent on the state level have the same story. They have those desires for their family for the future, but don’t know how to connect into that system.”
After Davis graduated from high school, she got married at 18 and was divorced a year later, having become a single parent herself and struggling to pay her way.
“I lived in a mobile home community in southeast Fort Worth for a few years and worked two jobs, a full-time job working for a doctor during the day and I waited tables at night at my Dad’s dinner theater. When my daughter was about 2-years old, a nurse came in with a brochure on Tarrant County Junior College for a paralegal program.”
Davis took paralegal night classes at the Junior College for about a year, then decided she wanted to be a lawyer instead.
Eventually, she transferred out of the paralegal program and started taking general studies classes, got a scholarship to Texas Christian University and graduated No. 1 in her class from TCU in 1990.
After TCU, Davis went to Harvard Law School and graduated with honors.
“While I was in law school I did an internship with a legal services center for two years, and it was meaningful to me,” Davis said. “The people I worked with were sure that’s what I was going to go forward and do, stay in the public service arena. Frankly, I wanted to make money for the first time in my life.”
Davis spent five years working at a law firm, but found the work unfulfilling.
“That’s when I ran for City Council, which I lost the first time,” she said. “I ran again three years later, and when I won that seat, I found that it really brought everything together that had been part of my background and gave me an opportunity to feel like I was giving back. It made me feel like I was making a difference in the world, which is important to me. I was using my own personal struggles which was helping others who were struggling. My background had given me a really big heart for caring about what people were going through, and my education had given me the ability to be an analytical thinker and a good representative, and that came together in a way that was really my calling.”
Kathleen Hicks, City Council member representing District 8, said she learned a lot from working with Davis about the importance of tenaciously supporting projects in her district.
“From the work that she did along the West Lancaster corridor, which is transforming before our very eyes, a new public art piece will be up by the end of the year, and really pushing for the revitalization of the southern end of Downtown, I can’t say enough about how engaged she was and how involved she really was,” Hicks said.
Transportation and economic development and were among the issues Davis pushed for during her time on the City Council, said Frank Moss, council member representing District 5.
“She is very passionate about a lot of things, quite a few things, but really passionate about economic development, also human issues as they relate to city employees and making sure they received appropriate benefits,” Moss said. “Also, she was pretty tough on controlling the budget and operating within the budget.”
Some of the tough issues Davis took on during her years on the Council included a vote against a senior citizen property tax freeze and opposition to changes at the Fort Worth Zoo.
Davis also took a lead role in bringing the Omni Hotel to Fort Worth and supporting development along West Seventh Street, Moss said.
Davis will be sworn in to the State Legislature in January and plans to take on issues including transportation — specifically supporting the Rail North Texas inititive — air quality, the state franchise tax, creating jobs and the re-regulation of higher education, housing insurance and energy utility companies, she said.
For now, she doesn’t have any specific plans for her career in the future, she said.
“I’m trying to learn to be a state senator. I’m really proud to have that role and I certainly didn’t do it with the idea that I would advance politically,” Davis said. “When you start doing that, you tend to compromise what you need to be doing for your district because you’re worried about your own political future. I’ve always tried to be brave and disregard my own personal interests on behalf of the people I represent, and that’s what I want to do on the state senate, and that’s what I’m concentrating on.”
http://www.fwbusinesspress.com/display.php?id=8938
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FORT WORTH — For the first time, Fort Worth officials unveiled a plan showing how a limited streetcar system could be built, including preliminary routes and a way to pay for it.
It would still take about five years and $250 million to build the 12-mile system, and there’s a significant funding gap, according to Andy Taft, chairman of an 18-member task force that studied the idea.
But the plan is significant because it shows that a streetcar system is possible, he said.
"The committee identified within a pretty tight margin how we could possibly do it," Taft said. "It’s where we take Fort Worth, Texas, to the next step."
The task force and city staff recommended hiring a consultant with transit experience to help with the project. The plan recommends starting with a limited system:
A loop in downtown Fort Worth
A route along West Seventh Street to the Will Rogers Center and the University of North Texas campus
A route down South Main Street with a spur to Evans Avenue and Rosedale Street, and a connection to the medical district along Magnolia and Eighth avenues.
The plan has broad support among the City Council — whose members inspected similar systems in Seattle; Tacoma, Wash.; and Portland, Ore., earlier this year.
Being left out
Council members Kathleen Hicks and Sal Espino, though, questioned why the original routes left out low-income neighborhoods on the north and southeast sides of town.
"That area of the city has the highest ridership of public transit," Hicks said.
Future routes would run further along East Rosedale to serve southeast Fort Worth and along North Main Street to the Stockyards on the north side.
The trains would run on existing streets and are designed to supplement buses and other forms of transit. It would be a separate system from commuter trains, such as the Trinity Railway Express, that run on existing railroad tracks and are intended to carry large numbers of people over long distances.
Working together
Councilman Joel Burns said it’s important that the different systems work together.
"It’s got to be right outside the door. That’s the way you get a nurse who lives in Bedford to ride the TRE, get the streetcar and take it to his or her job at the hospital," he said.
The biggest source of capital funding — $89 million — would come from the existing tax increment financing districts that already pay for extra amenities. The downtown improvement district also would kick in money.
About $97 million would come from the city, Tarrant County, gas well revenue and hotel taxes. But that level of funding would require expanding the tax districts and possibly changing state law to allow an increase in hotel taxes.
The funding gap — $64 million — is equivalent to the cost of three miles of track, Taft said.
MIKE LEE
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| FORT WORTH — The yearlong effort to write new rules for gas drilling within city limits will continue for another week while City Council members study two issues.
Members approved most of a new drilling ordinance Tuesday night.
But they were divided on what sort of setback to impose on sites with multiple wells and on which buildings should be protected by the setback provisions. They opted to hold another workshop before voting on that section.
"I don’t want to get in a hurry and shoot ourselves in the foot," Mayor Mike Moncrief said.
Contentious provisions
The council appointed a task force in November 2007 to review the drilling ordinance amid public outcry that drillers were encroaching on homes, parks and other sensitive areas.
The task force recommended tougher noise standards for wells and compressors, reduced emissions from drilling sites, city permits for pipelines through residential areas, restrictions on open pits and a new board to review permits for wells near homes. The task force also exempted the Trinity River trail system, stores, restaurants and malls from the setback requirements.
Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks asked to reconsider protecting some of those buildings.
Members voted 7-1 to approve all the ordinance except the provisions on multiple well sites and public-building definitions. Councilman Carter Burdette voted "no," saying he didn’t want to reopen discussion.
Under a multiple-well permit, a site can be drilled multiple times after getting approval from surrounding property owners just once — even if new homes are built inside the setback. The trade-off is that the setback — 600 feet unless all surrounding landowners agree — is much larger because it is measured from the boundary of the site instead of the well itself.
The task force wanted to make the multiple-well permits mandatory for drillers that put more than one well on a site, rather than allow multiple permits for individual wells. Existing sites would be grandfathered.
Setback reduced
City staffers decreased the setback around the pad sites from 600 feet to 525 feet, though, touching off protests from neighborhood groups.
"This is an issue about how many homes . . . have the opportunity to participate in a public process about something that’s about to happen in their neighborhood," said Jim Bradbury, a neighborhood representative. "Please keep it at 600 feet."
Tolli Thomas of the Southwest Fort Worth Alliance urged the council to strengthen the board that will oversee gas drilling.
"This is an industry that absolutely will affect our neighborhood property values, health and safety," she said.
Greg Ricks of the Woodhaven Neighborhood Association said the regulations might hurt neighborhoods by cutting off the money and jobs that drilling produces.
"I think we need to be an example of a community that does not have a NIMBY attitude: 'not in my back yard,’ " he said.
Some council members, echoing gas industry representatives, questioned whether requiring the pad site permits might lead operators to simply drill on more sites.
"I’m going to have to find . . . another 20 to 30 well sites," Councilman Jungus Jordan said.
Hicks said the grandfathering provision would mean more wells at a contested site on Scott Avenue without more input from surrounding neighbors. Lowering the setback for multiple well sites would also affect residents near sites along Berry Street and at the old Masonic Home.
"We’ve gone and said to people over and over, if there are more wells, they’d have the right to come talk to this council," she said.
The council will vote on the setback issue next week.
Other council business
Jeff Halstead, Fort Worth’s new police chief, was sworn in by Moncrief. Halstead starts work this week.
Mike Lee
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The Fort Worth City Council Tuesday night passed tough new restrictions on gas drilling.
The ordinance includes new noise restrictions, new licensing requirements for pipelines and even stricter landscaping guidelines.
Gas drillers, who are in the process of slashing budgets, are not happy with the new rules. But city leaders say it balances money and jobs with quality of life and better protects neighborhoods.
"I think obviously people are receiving royalties, and the Barnett Shale is here to stay," Mayor Pro Tem Kathleen Hicks said. "But at the same time, as the council representatives, we owe our constituents the best."
The vote was 7-1.
The council delayed a decision on part of the ordinance, which would set new limits on how close certain types of drilling can be to homes.
By SCOTT GORDON
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Pipeline valve station: The Fort Worth City Council voted 5-3 for a proposal to allow a pipeline valve station at the entrance to Marion Sansom Park on Lake Worth at the intersection of two pipeline easements through the park.
The city Parks Advisory Board had deadlocked 4-4 on the proposal. Representatives from the Fort Worth Mountain Bike Association, the League of Women Voters and the Lake Worth Alliance argued against the valve station Tuesday, saying it would set a precedent for other parks.
City staffers said Tuesday that there is a valve station at the Fort Worth Nature Center, and other parks have transformers or other utility boxes.
Barnett Gathering, the pipeline subsidiary for XTO Energy, agreed to reduce the size of the valve station from 40-by-40 feet to 20-by-20. Alternative routes were impractical or would require the pipelines to be trenched instead of bored, spokesman Walter DueEase said.
"The fact is, there’s a lot of surface use of parkland by utilities," said Councilman Carter Burdette, who represents the area. "This is not any kind of precedent in that sense."
Burdette was joined by Mayor Mike Moncrief and Councilmen Danny Scarth, Sal Espino and Frank Moss. Council members Kathleen Hicks, Joel Burns and Jungus Jordan voted against the valve station.
Staff change: Assistant City Manager Joe Paniagua will retire at the end of the year after 23 years. Paniagua won’t be replaced, so his duties will be divided among the remaining assistant city managers, City Manager Dale Fisseler told council members.
Gas pipelines: Council members delayed a vote on a pipeline through a neighborhood near Texas Christian University. The pipeline, to be built by Chesapeake Energy’s pipeline division, has been planned to serve a well on the TCU campus, but the well hasn’t received a permit yet.
High-impact gas wells: The council approved two permits for gas wells close to homes. One well, at 293 Bonds Ranch Road, will be 263 feet from the nearest house and will affect 11 houses. Burdette said XTO Energy has obtained waivers from 10 of the 11 houses, and the other house is in foreclosure. The second site, in the 3800 block of Hemphill Street, will be about 395 feet from some apartments and is within 600 feet of more than 60 homes and other protected buildings. XTO has obtained waivers from all but four of the property owners, a company spokesman said, and the president of the nearby Worth Heights Neighborhood Association spoke in favor of the site. — Mike Lee
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Two lawmakers from Congress sat side by side in east Fort Worth this week, celebrating the rescue of a National Register historic property that nearly met its doom.
The mayor came, too.
So did the mayor pro tem.
But only one of eight local TV news stations sent a reporter.
If you’re proud of east Fort Worth and the legacy of the Masonic Home and School, and you wanted to know more about its $10 million rebirth as the future All Church Home for Children, then you had to catch it on one fleeting WFAA/Channel 8 newscast, or read it in the Star-Telegram.
It was the same treatment two weeks ago, when only two TV stations mentioned the rebirth of a historic Polytechnic Heights storefront as Texas Wesleyan University’s new bookstore and community center.
If I lived on the traditional "east side" — everything east of Sycamore Creek — I’d wonder what it takes to make news.
Too often, the east side makes unwanted news: bodies found, test cheating at charter schools, cocaine busts cleaning up a marketplace known as the Fish Bowl.
With the time and space devoted to Tarrant County news dwindling sharply in recent years — replaced by coverage of every Dallas sneeze by Michael Hinojosa or Angela Hunt — we now see almost no news about the hardworking east-side neighborhoods between downtown and Arlington.
Did you realize that Polytechnic High School might be on the verge of a complete realignment and maybe a new purpose after 102 years?
Did you realize that the All Church Home, a children’s charity older than the more famous Edna Gladney and Lena Pope homes, will grow by 50 percent when it expands to the east side and the old Masonic property on U.S. 287?
Did you realize that Texas Wesleyan University had been on the east side for 21 years when Texas Christian University set up shop on the south side?
Did you realize that the east side is home to four of the eight local English and Spanish TV news stations, yet not one of the four ever brags about east Fort Worth?
Did you realize that the east side has more natural beauty than most of Tarrant County put together, from the Cross Timbers woods to the Tandy Hills prairie?
"It’s very frustrating," said Mayor Pro Tem Kathleen Hicks. She represents parts of both the east and south sides.
"Even with the downturn in the economy, we have a lot of positive things happening. But we can’t get that word out."
The east side is more stable than it has been in decades, with the return of small retail stores and particularly small restaurants like those on East Lancaster Avenue and the new AJ’s Chicken and Waffles on Brentwood Stair Road, owned by gospel radio host Antonio Johnson.
"Fort Worth always showed me a lot of love, and it just made sense to put my first restaurant on the east side," Johnson said Thursday, bragging about his banana-nut waffles and sweet potato pie. "People tell me this was a vibrant area. Looks like it’s becoming one again."
U.S. Reps. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, and Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, might agree.
At the All Church Home event, almost a miraculous save for historic preservation, Burgess reminded guests that he also came to town recently for the groundbreaking of the new VA Outpatient Clinic on the south side.
Even in a slow economy, he said, "every few days, I’m down here with congresswoman Granger, opening something new that’s great for Fort Worth."
All sides of it.
Bud Kennedy
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FORT WORTH — All Church Home for Children made it official Wednesday with a groundbreaking that celebrated plans to turn the historic Masonic Home and School of Texas in east Fort Worth into the faith-based nonprofit’s new campus.
The nonprofit: The 93-year-old All Church Home for Children provides services to families and children suffering from a wide range of problems including drug abuse, child neglect, behavioral issues and homelessness.
The site’s future use: The nonprofit plans to eventually have 100 staff members and 60 residential beds at the Masonic Home site. Chief Executive Wayne Carson said he wants to build playgrounds, a bike trail, a welcome center and eventually two new group homes. He said he wants the chapel to be used for a wedding business that could generate funds for programs. The nonprofit estimates that it will need to raise $10.6 million for renovation and construction.
Carson said the buildings’ distinctive architecture will be preserved in the renovation. The nonprofit’s logo will be superimposed on the Masons’ insignia.
Construction and renovation schedule: The nonprofit plans to start renovating the chapel and program office building in 2009, the administration building and residential programs building in 2010, and the classroom/gym building in 2011. In 2010, it also plans to start constructing the reception center. Staffers will move in as their space becomes available.
Historic property: The distinctive Masonic Home buildings and chapel made up a campus that schooled displaced children for more than 100 years. Its last class graduated in 2005.
Land donation: The nine buildings on 19.5 acres were donated to the nonprofit by developer Michael Mallick and his wife, Valerie. Carson said he will honor the Mallicks’ donation by having a commissioned painting of them hang in the new administration building.
Surrounding land: The site is surrounded by 64 undeveloped acres zoned for commercial use, and 106 acres zoned for single-family houses. The land is owned by Happy Baggett, president of Synergy Property Group in Fort Worth.
Baggett said he plans to develop 550 residential lots and sell them to a developer. The dozen or so abandoned homes will be demolished, he said. On the commercially zoned land, he plans a big-box retail anchor store surrounded by a pharmacy, bank and restaurants.
Groundbreaking ceremony: About 50 people attended the ceremony, including Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief; City Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks; U.S. Reps. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth; and Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville. For its new campus, Burgess gave the nonprofit a flag that flew over the U.S. Capitol.
PATRICK McGEE
http://www.star-telegram.com/metro_news/story/1073636.html
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By GENE TRAINOR FW Star Telegram
FORT WORTH — Political, community and Texas Wesleyan University leaders celebrated the $1.2 million renovation of a 5,000-square-foot historical building Friday as a prelude to the revitalization of a Polytechnic Heights neighborhood.
The refurbished building will house offices, a dining area and a community center. Its reopening coincides with more than $2 million in renovations of buildings across the road in the 3000 and 3100 blocks of Rosedale Street. The university bookstore, operated by a private company, will be the first tenant in mid-January, said Phillip Poole, a partner with the TownSite Company, the developer of the $2 million-plus project.
"It's good to see it come back," Poole said. "It's nice to be a part of putting it all together."
The 5,000-square-foot Texas Wesleyan building at Rosedale and Wesleyan streets will be named after Maxine and Edward Lawrence Baker, the parents of Texas Wesleyan Trustee and Fort Worth philanthropist Louella Baker Martin.
The building was constructed in 1927-28 and housed a dry cleaner, a grocery store and a bank.
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| Mayor Mike Moncrief and Mayor Pro Tem Kathleen Hicks will lead the festivities during an Oct. 25 Naming Ceremony for a new municipal building going up as part of the Evans and Rosedale Business and Cultural District Revitalization Project.
The ceremony naming the building the Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods will begin at 10 a.m. at 818 Missouri Ave. The building's namesake was a highly respected Fort Worth educator and community leader.
The center will house the city's Code Compliance and Community Relations departments as well as offices for Police Department staff and Community Prosecutors. Completion is scheduled for late 2009.
In Fort Worth, Mrs. Peace's name is synonymous with commitment to service and passion for education. She earned degrees at Howard University and Columbia University, returned to Fort Worth and taught at I.M. Terrell High School for decades.
Mrs. Peace also served as a counselor, dean of girls and vice principal. After retirement from the public schools, she served at various Texas colleges.
She was the first African-American woman to have a professorship at a four-year state-funded Texas institution named for her: the University of North Texas' Hazel Harvey Peace Professorship in Children's Library Services.
Quick facts on the Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods:
- 36,800 square feet
- 1,200-square-foot public meeting room
- Five aluminum sculptures by artist Floyd Newsum Jr. will hang in the building's two-story lobby
- 67 parking spaces in the adjacent lot and 146 spaces in a lot across the street, accommodating future development
- The city's first building designed to meet the Leadership in Environmental Excellence Design (LEED) Silver standard
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| | Kathleen Hicks Campaign ~ P.O. Box 15921 ~ Fort Worth, Texas 76119 ~ 817.810.0007 ~ khickscampaign@sbcglobal.net ~ Dr. Clarence Brooks, Treasurer |
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