This is update from Fort Worth League of Neighborhoods recent Newsletter:
The League of Neighborhoods distributed a questionnaire relating to neighborhood issues to each Fort Worth City Council candidate.
We have now POSTED their written responses to your neighborhood concerns!
Please Visit our website (www.fwlna.org) and click on the Candidate's Name. The FWLNA has posted all submissions that were received by the deadline of April 15, 2009.
These are the 10 questions the candidates responded to:
1.) For several years, the Fort Worth City Council has been pursuing a policy of increased density for the central city: more vertical apartments and condominiums and more commercial development near downtown and nearer traditionally single family central city neighborhoods.
a) What policies and programs would you work to establish to ensure that single family neighborhoods are not further encroached upon and that the quality of life in these neighborhoods improves?
2.) The Trinity River Vision project plans show that the project depends on a tremendous amount of high end downtown housing development. Tax dollars will be used to develop the land for this use.
a) Do you support the Trinity River Vision?
b) Should Fort Worth develop this housing given the fact that not all current downtown housing is occupied?
c) How do TRV and the expenditures on it affect Fort Worth's neighborhoods?
What groups besides realtors, developers, and title companies benefit financially from TRV?
3.) Do you support the use of eminent domain for economic development projects?
4.) Neighborhood planning is an integral part of a City's sustainability.
What can you do to ensure that neighborhood planning becomes a big part of what City Hall does with and for neighborhoods?
5.) City efforts focus on developing NEW affordable housing but we don't hear as much about what the City could do to assist neighborhoods where existing affordable housing already exists, i.e., older and historic neighborhoods.
a) What should the City do to support and revitalize the large amount of affordable housing that already exists in central city neighborhoods?
6.) What is your philosophy on zoning?
a) Should neighborhood interests trump commercial development or institutional interests?
b) Or should commercial development or institutional interests trump neighborhood interests?
7.) At City Hall, citizens hear elected officials repeatedly say, (on whatever the issue; gas drilling, zoning, economic development, etc.) "We are working to balance the interests of the neighborhoods with other kinds of development."
a) Do you believe that there must always be a "balance" struck in all situations or are there times when the appropriate action is to tip the scale to ensure that the citizen (taxpayer) and neighborhood interest comes out on top?
8.) Gas drilling experts have said that we will not know the environmental impact of gas drilling in Fort Worth for many years to come i.e.; emissions into the air, potential pipeline leaks under parks, near homes, under the Trinity River, etc.
a) What should the City do to revise its ordinance and gas drilling practices so that the impact of gas drilling on citizens and the environment is as negligible as possible?
9.) Would you support working with the Texas Legislature to craft legislation which would end the ability of pipeline companies to use the power of eminent domain to lay gas
transmission pipelines on urban residential property in Fort Worth?
10.) How should state legislation regulating urban drilling be revised to benefit the citizens of Fort Worth?