Opinion

Dear Mayor and City Council members:

The mayor of Woodcreek, Gloria Whitehead, must resign!

Texans have been witnessing things that would have been unthinkable until now: Surge teams, testing of nursing homes for COVID-19 and the National Guard helping to disinfect nursing home facilities around the state.

As Tropical Storm Cristobal moved north in the Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatan Peninsula toward Louisiana, the weather system’s potential impact on East Texas grew and Gov. Greg Abbott on June 5 addressed the situation in a news conference.

The U.S. Department of Defense has tapped Texas State University to conduct a study assessing the threat of Chagas disease to military bases.

We moved to Wimberley from Austin in 2019 and transferred all our insurance to a local agent – Byron Echols of State Farm. Last Sunday night, 05-24-2020, a windstorm blew down the largest tree next our house which fell across our deck. Although the expense to cut the tree up & fix everything was going to be high, our deductible is even higher. When we spoke to Mr. Echols, he said he would come out & take a look. He came out the next day and told us he would be back at 9 am the next morning and he would cut the tree up. He and his helper, his young son, Hollis, showed up promptly with their chain saws and cut and removed the tree. They cut pieces up small enough to fit our wood burning stove and even sliced a section in half for my wife to create a bench. If you type “above & beyond” into Google, it brings up all kind of info on an English electronic music act but it ought to bring up Byron Echols. We should’ve moved here sooner!

As COVID-19 unfolded, and I began to see the shortages of toilet paper and eggs, it got me thinking. If the pandemic has showed us anything, it is how fragile our food networks are. You need a strong immune system and that requires nutritious food, clean air, water, and sunshine. So I have expanded my raised beds and now consider them Victory Gardens. I’ve looked around my yard and considered what more I could do with my sunny spots: Is there space for one more fruit tree?

I struggled watching my parents turn away volunteers. It was the morning after the flood and shock had sent in. A few family members were there, none really having any clue what to do or where to begin. It took me over an hour and a half to get from one side of the river to the other, so in retrospect it was just before lunch time when I finally arrived. I brought bottled water, bread, peanut butter and jelly. They were all relieved that someone had thought to bring food. I had also brought my wheel barrow, shovels and chainsaw. It was there soon after that the first volunteers showed up and were not allowed entry.

While I stay home, trying to not catch The Plague, two things are driving me a little nuts right now. No, not having to eat my own cooking every day, and no, not even our national health crisis, but a couple of things, both having to do with development overreach. And I think these are some very bad ideas.

I just wanted to take a minute and tell you about my recent stay at Windmill Ranch during my visit to San Marcos. My name is Brett Morgan, I am a police officer, and law enforcement trainer for Virtual Academy (https://virtualacademy. com). As I am sure you are aware, Saturday, April 18, 2020, San Marcos Police Officer, Officer Putnam, was killed in the line of duty during an active shooter situation, while two other officers (Officer Mueller and Officer Stewart) were shot and wounded. I decided to come to San Marcos in support of the San Marcos PD to offer support, and cater several meals for them as they navigated through the following week. I live in Fort Worth so I decided to go through AirBnB as a place to stay during my visit. I also brought my family along with me and we ended up staying at Tom’s AirBnB’s Windmill Ranch. I had not met Tom previously but as prompted by the registration process I explained my reason for the visit, explaining that I was there to support the SMPD. Tom immediately responded that he wished to comp our entire stay as a supporter of law enforcement, and particularly a supporter and friend to the San Marcos PD.

We are leaving town after almost thirty of the best and most interesting years that we have spent in more than eighty years of living. We came to Wimberley at the tail end of 1991, just in time for the first hundred year flood of the five or so we have experienced since then. I am not sure that the traffic light at River Road and RR 12 was up at that time, but it was the only one.

Kudos to those who are trying to make life bearable in this time of pandemic restrictions. Social distancing and shelter-at-home requests can winnow our days down to stuck-homeon-the-farm basics, so it was a wonderful surprise to find that the San Marcos Public Library is still making the effort to provide library materials to its patrons. Through sensible procedures, they have chosen to remain accessible to us while still safeguarding their employees. Their website (through City of San Marcos, click on “Departments”, then select “Library”) advises that holds placed online will be put on a cart when ready for pick up out front between certain hours.

In the April 23, 2020 edition of your newspaper is an article quoting a Kinder Morgan spokesperson. The article is highly critical of my report regarding contamination in a water well proximate to the drilling mud spill by Kinder Morgan. However, most of their critical remarks are incorrect, misleading, or out of context. The bottom line is that based on the data at the well owned by the Albright family, 4 of the sampled values (those for aluminum, arsenic, beryllium, and lead) are carcinogens for which the sampled values greatly exceed drinking water criteria or regulations. As a footnote,