School Bond

Well, the school board is working on another bond, and this one should be a whopper. With almost all of the local districts passing or working on a bond, including our rivals across the tracks we are getting on the wagon so to speak. I have viewed the facilities report from the NISD website and it looks like we need at least a couple of new schools and upgrades on all the rest. Of course there is talk about a new or renovated stadium, because PNG is upgrading thiers. No matter how you feel about the stadium, I think everyone should seriously consider voting for this bond. Although the schools are in pretty fair shape for being an average of 60 years old, which is a testament to the NISD maintenance department, it is time begin replacing them and getting the rest up to par until they can be replaced. There are people still moving into this area, especially with all the jobs coming , and we need the room and a safe enviroment. If the stadium becomes an issue, maybe it needs to be a seperate issue on the bond.

What Nederland needs.

Recently there has been a discussion about how Nederland is changing , and not for the better. There have been suggestions that we are about to be overrun by Section 8 housing because the people owning the apartments, rent houses or homes don't care about who they sell or rent to. There are definitely some people that aren't picky, and some troublemakers have moved in. I am of the opinion that we are not overrun yet and can do some things to stop this before it gets out of control.

The biggest thing is attend your City Council meetings and get out and vote!! If a council member is not performing up to snuff in your opinion, vote for someone else!! We have some old men in there with old ideas that either don't see what's happening or don't want to see. The turnout for the last few elections has been miserable for a town that has 17000 people. There have been some younger candidates, some that I don't agree with personally that have run and basically get no votes.

Someone made a suggestion of banning the building of anymore apartments in the city. The city manager suggested that it would take a long time and would involve re-zoning the whole city. That doesn't make any sense to me because most of the apartments are in "residential industrial" zones that are not zoned for apartments anyway!! IMO we need to enforce the zoning that exists and that will greatly cut down on apartments, and also not re-zone any other area for apartments.

Also, we need to toughen up and enforce the ordinances that we have on the books regarding the state of homes in the city. There are already ordinances regarding high grass and broken down vehicles in front yards, but neither one of these are enforced much except when there are complaints.

These would be a start in keeping Nederland the city that we are proud of.

City of Nederland website: http://www.ci.nederland.k12.tx.us/