Well, here’s an interesting decision point. In the last bond issue, we voted to spend $30 million to improve the Cotton Bowl (along with $20 million donated by the State Fair of Texas) in hopes of keeping some/all of the big football games currently being played there. But, of course, we all know how likely it is that the New Year’s Day bowl game and the Texas-OU game will stay in Dallas when Jerry Jones starts dangling his new stadium in front of the decision-makers — in fact, remember that his plans already include a "room" for the Cotton Bowl officials. But in this case, Jerry’s beside the point; we voted to spend the funds on the Cotton Bowl, and I suspect that when we voted, most voters realized that Jerry is building a new stadium to compete with the Cotton Bowl and understood the implications. And still, we voted to aprove the funds. Now councilman Rasansky is openly talking about "being a good steward" of city money and voting against issuing the bonds necessary to fund the improvements — essentially canceling out our vote. In that case, the funds would be diverted to some other "essential" city use, such as repaying other bonds, perhaps, some other public works projects or, if we’re really lucky, maybe another signature bridge (That last one is my own imagination at work – Rasansky and other councilmen haven’t said anything like that. Yet.) Anyway, here’s my question: Should we encourage our council reps to spend the money on what we voted to spend it on, or should we encourage them to be "good stewards" of the money, fold the Cotton Bowl tent, and start asking Jerry for VIP passes to all of the big games he’s going to steal from Dallas?
