What Is Kathleen Hicks Doing In Europe While Fort Worth Loses Its Streetcar?

Last night Fort Worth's City Council voted to stop studying whether or not it made sense for Fort Worth to build a little 6 mile round trip streetcar system, made up of 3 streetcars, carrying around 2,000 people a day.

I was astonished to learn this morning that $821,000 was spent on the now aborted study.

That is a lot of money. Who got that money, I could not help but wonder? They could have paid me $500 and I could have told whoever needed to know that the Fort Wort Steetcar was not a viable idea at this point in time.

How much did Fort Worth spend studying the obviously flawed Santa Fe Rail Market Boondoggle before that long defunct project actually went ahead to its fruitless fruition? For $500 I would also have gladly told whoever needed to know that the Santa Fe Rail Market was a seriously flawed idea based on erroneous misconceptions.

The thing that really caught my eye in this morning's news about last night's Fort Worth City Council streetcar vote, was that Mayor Mike Moncrief had to break a 3/3 tie due to District 8 Councilwoman, Kathleen Hicks being out of the country.

In Europe. On City of Fort Worth business.

I think I live in Ms. Hicks' district.

What in this impossibly strange world could Kathleen Hicks be doing in Europe that is somehow City of Fort Worth business. Who is paying for this junket in this city that can't keep its libraries and swimming pools open?

Is Kathleen Hicks over in Europe studying European Public Markets, getting ready for a Part II of the Santa Fe Rail Market Boondoggle? Remember how that particular boondoggle was supposedly modeled after public markets in Europe and Seattle's Pike Place Market. Yet somehow what Fort Worth ended up with bore no resemblance to anything in Seattle. Or Europe.

Maybe Kathleen Hicks is over in Europe studying how it is that no European city has an embarrassing eyesore across the street from its courthouse, like Fort Worth's Heritage Park, with Heritage Park being one of the few unique things that used to be a good embellishment to downtown Fort Worth, but is now a boarded up, rundown mess overlooking the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle.

In Hollywood you can go on a bus tour of the scenes of various Hollywood areas of notoriety and scandal. I wonder if any tourist dollars could be made by taking tourists on bus tours of Fort Worth's various boondoggles? Maybe Molly the Trolley could be used in this endeavor.