Cocoposts

Giving Sprawl a Pass

The El Paso Times story won't surpise some people but others will be moved just by the title (East El Paso Sprawl:  Boom Strains Services, City Coffers) as it represents admission of a problem that the building industry still flatly denies - the high cost of suburban growth to tax-funded systems like water, schools and police.

First, we don't have sprawl, Doug Schwartz, Southwest Land Development CEO

El Paso developer and chamber representatives repeat familiar homebuilder memes about growth paying for itself in sales tax and choice bits of flimsy about how the market is always right and the big picture is all net gain. But the story contains pesky specifics.

John Balliew, El Paso Water Utilities vice president of operations and technical services said "The company recovers less than a third of the full cost from developers" (...)  Now if the development is outside the service area, the recovery cost can be as low as 10 percent, said Felipe Lopez, a utility engineer who administers development agreements for new subdivisions. The rest is "passed along to all the other customers," Balliew said.

Thinking of Writing

You can get very good at finding excellent places to write but never actually sit down and do it. Trust me. The writing perches I've found are nearly perfect. Multiple comfortable quiet spots for work and concentration. Too perfect.  When time comes to write, time never comes. The more time available to write, the more time  goes toward unprecedented acts of neighborhood involvement, previously unheard of demonstrations of familial outreach, long postponed property stewardship tasks involving the hiring of multiple handymen, and reading.  But mostly reading, reading, reading.

Writing is like breaking a lock with a hammer - banging away at some draft believing there may be a good story within the words but getting annoyed with the trouble and effort.  So many other things need doing.  And there sits a stack of books by writers who've already opened the locks for you.   

The latest: Jonathan Franzen's novel, Freedom. It was most enjoyable and not as time consuming as it might have been if it were any less wonderful.