Wasted Time

Did you know each new day brings us 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,000 seconds.  When we were kids, my mom used to say don’t waste a damn minute of your life because each second, each minute, each hour, is loaned to us by God.  One day when you meet him, he is going to ask you how effectively you used that time.  I developed the same fascination with time and when my kids were growing up, they would always say, “dad, do you have a minute?”  I would reply with a poem I heard or learned (can’t remember where or who wrote it).

I have only just a minute, only 60 seconds in it;

forced upon me; can’t refuse it;

didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.

But it’s up to me just how I use it.

I must suffer if I lose it, give account if I abuse it.

Just a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it.

When you waste time on a useless task, activity or endeavor you are essentially choosing to squander 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,000 seconds.  Now you are probably wondering why we are writing about time, well lately we have been pondering how much wasted time it will take our City Manager – Wes Pierson, Mayor Jeff Cheney, Bill Woodard, Angelia Pelham, John Keating and the rest of the council to “man up.” 

During the most recent election for council John Keating knowingly spread false accusations about his opponent from any microphone handed to him.  We were curious after knowingly spreading false lies and false accusations saying Retired Fire Chief Mark Piland was fired and the cause of the problem in the Fire Department, will he “MAN UP” now and publicly apologize after reading the 50+ page In-Service notes?  I mean he has the 2011 Climate Report and now 50+ pages of In-Service notes all pointing to the same person – Chief Lee Glover! According to his own soap box moment he should step up and do the right thing for our firefighters and former city employees because in a few years he is going to ask us to vote for him for MAYOR! 

In the world of a firefighter seconds and minutes in a fire fight are very important and as they are risking their life. That is why reviewing these 50+ pages of notes from the mandatory June In-Service Meeting are so important. For them to do the job well they need to understand the training and vision for the department.  According to the most recent in-service notes, the most alarming statement made was that the firefighters still have no idea of Glovers “vision” for the department outside of the Strategic Plan. 

Communication or should we say the lack of communication was the next big topic.  Firefighters have concerns over the lack of visibility and communications from Chief Glover.  It was noted that Chief Glover does not even take the time to send an e-mail to motivate the department after catastrophic events.   They also don’t believe Glover listens or consults with his committees which could help him build relationships with those under his command.

After reading the part about communication I thought back to a recent story on the news about the storms hitting Fire Fighter Row in Celina.  Imagine you are a firefighter enjoying a nice sleep and you awake to alarms and the sound of wind pushing in the walls of your home.  You quickly realize your entire street is in the eye of a tornado and when it is all over, several neighbors who are also firefighters in the same department have their homes destroyed and your normal life just became chaotic in minutes. Would you expect a phone call from your Chief asking how you and your family were doing?  Would you expect an email to go out from the Chief asking the command staff and front-line members to pray and donate their time to help with the clean up or whatever needs to be done? As the Chief, would you grab your clothes and tools and head out the door to support your brotherhood in person? The Frisco Firefighter’s Association showed up, raised money for the families, spent countless days cleaning up and lending hands. How long do you think it took Chief Lee Glover to do any of these things? Tick Tock, Tick Tock the seconds and minutes pass and the hands just go around the clock!

The firefighters feel they are on a path with the Fire Chief and City Manager of do more with less which the In-Service notes say is destroying morale.  The frontline feels they are falling behind and going backwards.  One comment was the firefighters have been left to drowned and the emotional and mental beat down is affecting the whole department.

What will it take for City Manager -Wes Pierson to drop his arrogant attitude, “MAN UP” and simply do his job?  What will it take for the Mayor and City Council to admit the problem was never Fire Chief Mark Piland but a problem of their own doing that was 1000% avoidable?  Rewind the clock and go back to the 2011 Climate Report that we talked about in our article Humpty Dumpty, which stated that then Fire Chief, Mack Borchardt and upper management command staff had run the department into the ground. That report led to the city council demanding he be “let go” but his good ole buddy City Manager, George Purefoy got him a nice and rather large retirement package. Then Purefoy gives him a golden parachute job in the City Manager’s office so the two best buddies could be together forever. Well, Purefoy retired but Borchardt is still with the city, in the same job today, making 6 figures and has a city vehicle? 

The 2011 Climate Report also named Assistant Chief Lee Glover at the time as part of the problem which is why he was not named Chief in 2012, and the city brought it in Mark Piland. Now they want to you to believe Piland is the problem – yet the Association did not go for Civil Service under Piland. There are no 50+ page reports of Piland’s bad leadership and his yearly EVAL’s have him top notch. We are not saying things were perfect nothing ever is but it does seem the department was making changes and progress in the right direction. Now the City Manager and Council want you to believe Piland is a disgruntled employee and the “cancer” that plagued the department, because they had to hide that HR falsified documents. Even though they knew Glover’s past and previous issues (of which there are many) they choose to make him the new Fire Chief. Now that the bubble has burst and the public knows the systemic problems of 2011 followed Glover (old dogs don’t develop new habits) into his role as the current Fire Chief, they want you to believe a new story. Now everything is the fault of the Frisco Firefighter’s Association because they want more personnel to do their job safely and better workman’s comp benefits.

Here is where we are hung up, why, in what world or universe, did the City Manager Wes Pierson or the Frisco City Council think making Lee Glover the new Fire Chief was a good idea?  A wise man once said if you repeat the mistakes of the past don’t expect a different outcome! After slowly making progress and change the last 10 years, in a department filled with trust issues, today our fire department is back in 2011. They are unhappy, the days of fear and lack of trust have resurfaced, have a City Manager who could not give two shXts and a City Council who blames the issues on the men and woman of the association, which is almost our whole department for the problem.

IT IS TIME FOR A COME TO JESUS as my mother used to say with the belt in her hand. Every single member on our city council, minus Brian Livingston have spoken against the men and woman in our Fire Department. Our City Manager has an ego bigger than the State of Texas and according to insiders in several departments, his arrogance is destroying the city from the inside out and he turns his nose up to the concerns of the Fire Department. At this point they will all have to pull a rabbit out of hat to blame next because we are pretty sure they are running out of employees to blame it on as they clean house to cover things up. Want the STEVE AUSTIN “COLD HARD TRUTH” …. The CITY COUNCIL IS THE PROBLEM; THE CITY MANAGER IS THE PROBLEM AND THE CURRENT FIRE CHIEF LEE GLOVER IS THE PROBLEM! Until citizens “wake up ” we will just let the clock go “Tick Tock, Tick Tock!”

Stay Tuned for Part 3…

It’s Official – Texas Atty General

Our team members have filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General in regard to the City of Frisco and Public Information Requests. The city has been notified and we will see how things roll out in the coming weeks.

Time after time we send requests to a city who likes to claim they are TRANSPARENT when really, they are using every avenue to withhold information from the public. We are hopeful the Texas AG will see that the City of Frisco is using their office to weaponize and withhold public information.

Let truth be told!

There’s no place like home!

The other night our grandkids were over, and we thought we should introduce them to the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz.  In The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy found the man behind the curtain, pretending to be the great Wizard of Oz, the spell of the Wizard was broken. The great and powerful wizard was exposed. He was simply an ordinary man, who was just able to perform some clever tricks. The trouble with fantasy is that, for some, the line between delusion and reality is blurred for those people who simply don’t deal in the truth. I am talking about those people with fantastical perceptions of themselves that are so great, that after a while, their fantasies become their reality.

After the movie was over, we played a game of Jenga.  We told them, you must be careful because the game looks easy, but the truth is you must have patience as you carefully remove pieces of wood while hoping the tower does not topple over.  I told them the game requires observation, strategic thinking, and sometimes a bit of intuition.  Seeing young kids hold their breath while each piece of wood comes out, then mesmerized in the moment to see if the tower will topple is greatness.

As we played, I continued to think about the movie the Wizard of OZ and how it describes our city council.  Mayor Cheney is the man behind the curtain, the great Wizard of Oz.  While people in Frisco put him on a pedal stool, he is really an ordinary man who can pull some clever tricks past the residents.  As you continue to read you will find each council member fits a character’s persona.  As we played Jenga I realized we use the same skills in the game of Jenga every other week as we look over the upcoming agenda for the Frisco City Council meetings.  We often find behind every agenda, there is a “hidden agenda”, but you will not find it unless you delicately navigate through the list of items and understand their implications.  We find ourselves asking what is the underlying motive or objective behind certain proposals, discussions, or agenda items?  Much like in the game of Jenga, if you are not careful you may miss some things that could be very important for the tower to continue to stand.

The next morning, we sat down to look over the upcoming agenda for Frisco City Council meeting.  We first noticed under “Individual Items” that both John Keating and Angelia Pelham will take the Oath of Office for their elected places.  Then we noticed right after that they plan to nominate the new Mayor Pro-Tem and Deputy Mayor Pro-Tem.  In our opinion, the political clique who are like characters in the Wizard of OZ, will probably nominate to keep positions the same.  That means Pelham, or Glinda the Good Witch and Keating, who is obviously the Brain-Seeking Scarecrow, will retain their titles since they are the two top Wizard of Oz Enforcers. 

As to why the others would not be nominated, well that’s easy.  They hate Brian Livingston who they treat like the Wicked Witch of the West, since he supported candidates outside the political clique in the last two elections.  Laura Rummell, or the Cowardly Lion, is known as the go along to get along girl and she won’t fight any nomination for fear of getting on the bad side of the political clique.  Tammy Meinershagen who is the prefect Dorothy, is too busy writing a poem for why we need a $300 million dollar performing arts center.  Lastly, Bill Woodard, the heartless Tin Man, just pulled out all the stops to create a larger divide between the city and the Frisco Firefighters.  Probably would not be a good choice if they wanted to “find healing” as Pelham would say with the rank and file of the Fire Department.  

After the May General Election every year, appointments to the City Council committees are brought to the City Council for review. City Council members may be appointed and reappointed to the various committees at the discretion of the Mayor and City Council.  That is why the regular agenda item 34 stood out which is consider and act upon appointments to City Council Committees.  If you remember last year, Brian Livingston was stripped and removed from every committee he served on by the great Wizard of Oz, Mayor Cheney. It was a punishment for going outside of the political clique we told you about above. 

The current appointments to each committee are:

Budget and Audit Committee: Deputy Mayor Pro-Tem Angelia Pelham & Council Member Laura Rummel.

Dallas Regional Mobility Coalition: Mayor Pro-Tem John Keating.

Frisco Square Management District (FSMD) Board is composed of three (3) City Council members and two (2) representatives from the developer per the Local Government Code. The board members currently serving are Mayor Jeff Cheney, Council Member Bill Woodard, and Mayor Pro-Tem John Keating.

Governance Committee: Council Member Bill Woodard, Council Member Tammy Meinershagen, & Deputy Mayor Pro-Tem Angelia Pelham.

Legislative Committee: Council Member Laura Rummel, Council Member Tammy Meinershagen, & Mayor Pro-Tem John Keating.

North Central Texas Council of Governments Emergency Preparedness Planning Committee: Council Member Tammy Meinershagen with Council Member Laura Rummel as her alternate.

North Central Texas (NCT) 911 Project: Council Member Tammy Meinershagen with Council Member Laura Rummel as her alternate.

North Texas Commission is represented by Mayor Jeff Cheney.

Park and Trail Naming Committee is represented by Council Member Bill Woodard.

Regional Transportation Council is represented by Mayor Pro-Tem John Keating.

Animal Advisory Committee is represented by Council Member Laura Rummel.

Frisco Veterans Advisory Committee: Mayor Pro-Tem John Keating, Council Member Laura Rummel, & Council Member Tammy Meinershagen

On Tuesday, the city council can do one of two things.  First, they could choose not to appoint or reappoint current appointees. Secondly, they can review it and make new nominations to the committees “IF THEY CHOOSE.”  What do you think they will they choose to do?  Will they do the right thing and put Mr. Livingston back on the committees or continue this petty behavior?  Is Brian Livingston still considered the Wicked Witch of the West by his fellow council members for having independent thought? 

If they shun Mr. Livingston again who ran unopposed for his seat in May 2023, then they are essentially telling the 14,282 voters that came out to vote for him “YOUR OPINION DOESN’T MATTER!” Just for a point of reference, that is 2922 more votes than Mayor Cheney received the same year. It is also telling the 41,128 residents who voted for Livingston in 2020 that their opinion doesn’t matter.  In 2020, Livingston faced two opponents, if you add together the votes of those 2 opponents, they still were 11, 192 votes short of Livingston. Now compare that to the other seat on the ballot in 2020 which Laura Rummell ran for. He had 24,773 more votes than her.

Lastly on the agenda we noticed items 23 – 26 which have to do with the Boards and Commissions.  Apparently, they are changing the names of some of the committees. The Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) will now be the Hike-and-Bike Advisory Committee.  Bill Woodard, the heartless Tin Man, must be so excited over the change since he is known as the Hike-Trike-&-Bike guy. Then the Frisco Arts Board and Public Arts Program will be renamed to the Frisco Arts and Culture Advisory Committee.  We suspect this may have something to do with the “new performing arts center” the city is trying to sell residents. Item 25 will modify certain provisions governing the Parks & Recreation Board. Lastly, the Urban Forestry Board will be changed to the Frisco Natural Resources Advisory Committee. It’s no big deal they are changing the names we just find it the timing interesting that’s all.

It is time for us to click the heels of our red shoes and chant “There’s no place like home!”  We encourage you to look at the agendas and enjoy the game of Jenga the city plays with us. The city hopes we are not paying attention to the pieces of wood they are moving around but the Whistleblower Team is always paying attention.  It will be interesting to see if Pelham and Keating keep the Mayor Pro-Tem and Deputy Pro-Tem titles. 

It is clear Cheney is setting up the path for Angelia Pelham to be our next Mayor at the end of his term.  I wonder how Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Brain-Seeking Scarecrow, or the Heartless Tin Man feel about that?  We would encourage the other council members (minus Cheney) to think about that fact that Brian Livingston is a pretty popular councilman to his base that elected him.  None of them have come close to the accumulated votes he has received over the years so it will be interesting to see what path they all take on the yellow brick road Tuesday night.

Landon Homes is ANTI-FIRST RESPONDERS

We have told you over and over how Frisco is “For Sale” to the highest bidder, and while some scoff at the notion, we hold steadfast that for a price a developer can have whatever they want in Frisco, Texas.  Leading the helm of that “pay for play” practice is Mayor Jeff Cheney, who along the way went from broke (his comment to a local newspaper) to one of the largest Real Estate Moguls in Frisco.  Guess he is not penny-less now!  With the vote of the council members locked in, each bit of Frisco is for sale piece by piece.

Today we were sent an email from a reader who was upset that they received an email from their BUILDER LANDON HOMES telling them to vote no against the firefighters.  They felt it was a violation of their privacy, and because it was political and had nothing to do with new homes or their home it crossed the line.  That’s right, a builder LANDON HOMES used their sales list and client list to email everyone who bought a home from them and tell them to VOTE NO in our local election. 

According to their privacy policy online Landon Homes respects your privacy and is committed to treating information about you responsibly. It clearly states they collect your information to give you superior service and to provide you with convenient access to a wide range of products and services and customer service surveys. No where in the written privacy policy does it say they will use one’s email for political purposes or to basically electioneer in their best interest.

The irony is the same builders ask the Fire Department to come out to their events and do “community engagement” events but they don’t want to support them back.

Why is it okay for builders to dictate how “WE, TAX PAYING RESIDENTS VOTE?” 

While Landon Homes clients probably agreed to get marketing emails from them for things such as new homes or developments, did they agree to become recipients of political messages?  Is that outside the scope of marketing?

How do you feel about a local builder being ANTI-FIREFIGHTER AND FIRST RESPONDERS?  Would you buy a home from them now? 

Do you think it is IRONIC that the same builders ask the Fire Department to come out to their events and do “community engagement” but then they don’t want to support them back? 

It is no secret that John Landon, owner of Landon Homes has been a donor to certain members of the city council over the years:

Jeff Cheney                      Jan 2020            $2500

John Keating                   April 2024          $1500

Safety First Frisco         April 2024          $10,000              

We have no issue with Landon’s donating to the ANTI PAC as that is their right as an individual.  However, they crossed the line went they entered their business into our political election and told home buyers how to vote!  Ask yourself, what other developers have sent out this same message during this election cycle?  How deep does this corruption go with our builders and city council? 

VOTE FOR CHANGE!  It is time for the residents to take back our city and to have a voice! Don’t be fooled by big-money developers with self-personal interests. Go out and support your Firefighters and first responders Saturday.  Send an email to Landon Homes and let them know to stay out of our elections at onlinesales@landonhomes.com