Welcome to Flowerville

Flowerville?  Where’s that?

Flowerville is where you respect your neighbor and their property yet don’t feel entitled to dictate what THEY do with THEIR LAND.  Many of us have lived in western Flower Mound for years and have seen this small town grow to what it is today.  But something happened on the way to growth.  New people joined the mix, and that’s fine, but they did not believe in preserving the Flower Mound that others had established.  They wanted to take away our rights.  OUR rights to decide how OUR land is developed; OUR rights to decide if we wanted OUR minerals developed.

The current moratorium is a perfect example of OUR rights being taken away.  Barnett Shale drillers have proven to be a safe group yet we impose a moratorium.  For what?  To take away more rights?  Increase setbacks to some absurd level that gets the Town sued?  Like we need that…again! Come on, this is Texas for crying out loud. We used to respect people’s rights. Now we are letting an outside environmental lobby scare our newer residents into near hysteria in spite of numerous tests showing we are safe. I mean seriously, you are exposed to more benzene filling up your car with gas than standing outside a gas well. And if you smoke or live with a smoker, then you shouldn’t even worry about the gas station levels, you are getting plenty right at home.

And the folks in Bartonville’s ETJ, I mean Flower Mound’s ETJ, no, now it’s the area Bartonville’s officials have voted to annex.  Those poor folks don’t know where they are. And they are now saying that 51% of those have agreed to be annexed into Bartonville. I sure feel bad for the 49%.

Even so, candidates and elected officials have recently made pawns out of real people.  Melissa Northern, Al Filidoro, Steve Lyda and Tom Hayden (NFL + H), along with whatever genius in Bartonville started taking their crayons to the boundary map, should all be ashamed.  They have turned people’s rights into political toys for their enjoyment and ego validation.

So Western Flower Mound and those in the midst of the Bartonville fiasco, we are kindred spirits caught in the latest round of political jockeying.    Maybe we should end all this mess and join together.  So, what do you say?  I can see the entrance sign now, “Welcome to Flowerville, the land of the free”.

PS:  Hey Ron Hilliard, you AND your donkey are welcome in Flowerville.

Mark Stewart
Flower Mound, TX