A street and things
Dear Editor:
We need to be very grateful for the many good projects taken on by our city leaders, including the new civic center, soon to be finished and surely put to good use.
The city council works hard and diligently ironing out ways to get everything done and remain within our spending budget.
Front thinkers figured out how 4B could benefit the whole town and put it into high gear.
I was hopeful but skeptical, I’ll admit, but am thankful for their good work on this type of project.
Although I am a small town appreciator, I have seen great things coming from the use of that funding for things that will last well into the future.
I applaud all of those accomplishments but do need to speak about a couple of more basic items.
One has to do with the dangerously unimproved stretch of Meadowview Drive in west Cleburne.
The defined catastrophic piece of this street that runs off of West Henderson Street on south of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for about a block in length is as bad as you could imagine and still be classed as a city street.
I understand that some years ago there was some unaltered differences concerning at least one homeowner. Get past that.
Much of this street area has been curb and guttered, but there are several undeveloped lots that would likely be built on if the street were processed and paved, thus bringing in more taxes to the city and beautifying the area.
At least one homeowner living on this poor stretch of street has conferred with the city several times concerning this situation without any success.
The school on South Nolan River and Country Club demands a large amount of traffic mornings and afternoons, leaving some homeowners living west of Nolan River South in a dilemma when driving in or out of their neighborhoods during those times every day.
Although Westhill Drive serves this area with a traffic light at South Nolan River, it seems rational that making Meadowview Drive another usable passage to West Henderson would allow those penned-in residents an alternate route when Nolan River South is so congested.
Certain imagined emergencies also enhance this perspective as very practical.
The other item in mind is how and when improvement to certain streets might be decided.
There is quite a bit of street, curb and gutter replacement going on in Westhill at this time.
I am sure the homeowners there will be thrilled when it’s finished.
I don’t know of the reasons that this replacement is being done but feel that there must be very good reasons.
I read that the reasons for new water meters was that some old ones were not giving true readings on water use, allowing for unfair water payments.
I would also guess that replacing the meters and the streets and curbs is terribly expensive, but our city leaders surely take all of that into consideration when contemplating the tax income needed.
Certain maintenance has to be done and done equally efficiently for all areas of the city. As experienced, light pavement patch jobs don’t last long nor would cheap meters.
As far as Meadowview Drive is concerned, I am not speaking for anyone who lives there, just that I was concerned for my car and my own personal safety when I drove over it this week.
I was reminded again why this route is seldom used and have offered a solution.
May the city consider this street’s rehabilitation a critical issue for several reasons, regardless of past personal decisions.
Monte Swatzell
Cleburne
Parking woes, rude announcer ruin game
Dear Editor:
Friday night football games in Cleburne are enjoyed by lots of hometown people old and young.
I have spent time supporting my children in their performances in the past and attend games occasionally now when health permits.
Sept. 25 was supposed to be a family outing that turned out to be a disappointment because of several happenings.
It seems that because some people in the town, Cleburne ISD and board members are trying to get a new stadium, things are taking a turn to be ugly.
Take the parking to start off.
People have used the shopping center parking lot since I can remember to attend games.
Friday night we were met with tow truck operators relating to us that the businesses did not want us parking there unless we were going into their business.
How many did they tow? The parking lot was full most of the night, and I feel certain the occupants were not inside the businesses.
If you don’t buy a parking pass you are almost forced to walk a great distance or risk your life and your families to run across a busy state highway to get to the game.
So we were frustrated by the time we got to our seats and began to enjoy what was a good football game played by the Yellow Jackets, a great halftime band performance by both schools and a wonderful recognition of the 1959 CHS football team.
I was very impressed with the presentation until the announcer took it upon himself to express some of his views.
He began yelling in the microphone about how Cleburne should be ashamed of the fact that the other team had a crew broadcasting the game back home to their listeners, and Cleburne did not even care enough to have one themselves.
The crowd began to look around asking who that person was, and why did he feel he had to be so rude?
I wonder what our guests thought of this outburst.
He went on to verbally attack people who might have been leaving after the band performance and not watching the remainder of the football game as he felt all should.
He went on to tell the crowd to get off their butts and support football.
Now this hit a nerve for me as this was one of the things we struggled with when my children were in band.
It seems football is put upon a pedestal over anything else. If you don’t support football then you are looked down on.
The band takes second place to football, but where would either of them be without each other?
Check the stands below the press box sometime and see how some people just sit and don’t participate during the games.
This is a social event for some, and then we were subjected to such behavior from an announcer.
I feel an apology is due for this action. Maybe his actions fired up the opposing team to come back and play harder against the Yellow Jackets beating them 33-15.
Helen Threadgill
(former Cleburne resident)
Burleson
Make health records easily portable
Dear Editor:
Let me say it right up front: I consider the U.S. government, under the present administration, to be the greatest threat to the nation that we have ever faced.
There is certainly not space here to develop that idea, but let me address an area that concerns the local practice of medicine that aids and abets the government.
Recently a general practitioner advised that we needed to go to more specialized care for my 90-year-old mother.
As she had quite a history with him, I asked that he forward her records to the new internist.
He agreed, and we filled out paperwork authorizing that action — all perfectly reasonable.
That wasn’t enough for the new doctor, so I spent about three hours researching and filling out paperwork for him — info such as name, SSN, insurance, list of medicines, prior diseases from childhood, surgeries, etc.
I don’t know if his office staff even looked at the records forwarded to them from the former doctor.
At my mother’s first visit I turned in all the paperwork, including insurance information.
But even that wasn’t enough; the clerk wanted to make a copy of the insurance card itself.
We were taken to the examination room by a nurse who sat down at a computer and began to ask all the same questions I had answered in the paperwork.
I said, “Wait a minute, we’ve already given you all that information.”
“Oh, the girls at the front have all that, but it’s not in the computer,” she said.
I told her that if she wanted it she’d have to go get it. She wasn’t happy of course.
When we saw the doctor he began to ask many of the same questions.
I said, “You mean you don’t even review the info you have?”
Unbelievable!
In the course of the exam an issue came up that required examination by another specialist.
When we went to that appointment, we were presented with another sheaf of papers duplicating the info given to the first doctor.
Seems the first doctor didn’t forward any info to them but then the clerk informed me that all the info had to be on their forms. I told her we weren’t doing that again, canceled the appointment and walked out.
How hard is it to develop a form used by all doctors — if nothing else just locally? How hard is it to transfer this info electronically?
I can tell you, it’s not hard. If nothing else do it like the Army did.
As I went from unit to unit I hand-carried my 201 file and medical records with me.
Is it possible that 15 to 20 percent of medical costs today are directly attributable to useless duplication of information that, apparently, is seldom looked at?
Come on, Docs, you’re not stupid people!
Don’t give the government ammunition. Get together and fix it yourselves.
Steve Jones
Cleburne
Cell phones threaten health, lives
Dear Editor:
People are finally beginning to wake up to the most dangerous and pervasive threat to our lives and health existing today.
No, I am not talking about some exotic or rare disease, virus or bacteria.
Nor am I referring to the drunk drivers shown every few nights on TV, going the wrong way and killing up to the entire family in a wreck.
It is the ubiquitous cell phone, which according to Texas state officials kills more teenagers now in Texas than alcohol.
The national deaths caused by texting are in the area of 6,000 a year, which is about half the number of gun homicides.
My life is jeopardized every time I drive out my driveway by a cell phone in some imbecile’s hand.
Yesterday, while waiting for my red light to turn green, I saw a woman drive up to the intersection, stop at her green light, and then drive on through without ever taking the phone from her ear or looking in my direction. You’ve probably seen similar events.
The appalling thing is that nobody is really a good enough driver to handle both a cell phone and driving, whether texting or just talking,
They think they can but the evidence is mounting that nobody can successfully multitask for long without having an accident.
Meanwhile the figures for professional truck drivers studied by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in an 18 month study of driving drunk versus texting show that a texting driver is 23 times more likely to have a wreck, while being drunk increases your accident chances by seven times.
And for those chauvinists out there, it is everybody who is behind the wheel of a vehicle trying to multitask, whether male, female, young or old.
Sure you say, “I do it all the time.” Well someday the law of averages is going to catch up with you because the average driver has three car wrecks in a lifetime of driving, and if you text, multiply that by 23 and you get 69 chances to kill us.
The difficult thing is enforcing such a law after it is passed.
But it is really a very simple and relatively inexpensive matter for car manufacturers to include in the onboard computer a jamming device with a range of say four feet that would preclude cell phone use by the front seat occupants while the car is moving.
Pulling off the road and stopping would stop the jammer and enable the phone to send and receive.
Hand held jamming devices have been around a number of years in Europe.
I debated buying one with a 25 meter radius for $283 for the fun of seeing the looks on cell phone users jabbering away in waiting rooms when their phones wouldn’t work, but they are illegal in America.
European police have larger and more powerful units, which can disable cell phones within a multiblock area during raids.
People of course think they have the right to talk anytime and anywhere they wish, but civilization got this far without some moron disabling or killing me while telling somebody some nonessential information or asking what was the other thing they were supposed to bring home.
Nothing is so important that a person cannot wait until he or she stops the car to call or answer the phone.
Drivers existed for close to 100 years without an in-car telephone, and between drinking, doping, texting and jabbering they are exponentially increasing their chances to kill innocent others.
Call your legislator if you agree.
W.V. Bonds
Cleburne
