Layla Caraway is a local community volunteer and activist. She is the current Chairwoman for the Northeast Tarrant Chamber of Commerce. She is the producer of a documentary entitled "Up A Creek" detailing the flooding in Tarrant County and is an advocate for regular citizens to ensure their voices are heard.
welcome to this episode of the wolf and
the shepherd today
i am here with layla caraway because the
wolf has
still decided to be on vacation or as he
calls it holiday
so i brought layla in to talk to me
today about
various different things that are going
around here in tarrant county
and by the way we're going to talk about
tarrant
county here in a second but laylah's a
local community volunteer and activist
she serves on multiple boards and
commissions in haltom city
she's currently serving as the
chairwoman for the northeast tarrant
chamber
she's also produced a documentary and
short story based off the
trinity river vision and has worked on
numerous campaigns in tarrant county
and supports a lot of charitable efforts
here in the community so layla thanks
very much for joining me today thanks
for having me
absolutely so talk to me a little bit
about
the northeast chamber of commerce uh
what exactly does it do what area does
it cover
what what is its purpose so for for
everybody listening
a lot of people don't know exactly what
a chamber of commerce really does so
walk us through that
the northeast tarrant chamber
encompasses watauga north richland hills
haltom city richland hills
fort worth keller we don't we don't turn
anyone away but we bring
businesses together and we help grow
those businesses within the community
as well as you know they do a lot
for the community you just meet a lot of
great people in the chamber
and we try to use when you're looking
for businesses you try to look for
chamber members because you become
friends with these people and you
volunteer alongside these people
and we want to help them all grow their
business which makes our communities
more prosperous
and makes all our communities better
when we all work together
so as as a business owner then i can see
that aspect that a business owner might
want to do business with another
business owner
exactly right if if i'm an insurance
agent let's say
and i have a mortgage broker in town you
could pair up with them and say
hey let let's exchange business let's
help each other out
as a general citizen
you know the the guy that's just going
and he's clocking in
clocking out what what can the chamber
of commerce do
for the typical joe citizen we have
individuals that actually do join the
chamber and
it's again to get involved with their
community and to
have those businesses and those contacts
at their fingertips if
you if you need a roofer well who's in
the chamber
that you know gives back to the
community and works alongside us on
projects and
it's just it's a way to bring businesses
together
and communities together and individuals
are more than welcome to join chambers
and
and get involved so it does the chamber
have
like monthly weekly meetings things like
that that the
general public the business owners come
to how does that work
yes we have you could probably
pre-covet you could probably go to
something every day there are different
networking groups there are
monthly luncheons there are monthly
meetings a lot of
uh you know it's not all about work
uh we have you know mixers and
looking at getting younger business
owners together
and learning from them and them being
able to get mentors
of long-term businesses and and
to grow their companies and share ideas
it's a lot of sharing
what's been one of the struggles with
the chamber of getting younger
business owners in there and and i i
know we're in this
covid time right so we can talk
pre-coded in
in current covid but i know younger
business owners is much different than
your typical business owner what's been
one of the struggles for the
younger business owner i think it is a
struggle
because well
you put me on the spot and i'm not
exactly sure how to answer
well well would it be something along
the lines of
you know the younger generation they
struggle to join organizations
that that's been something with any
organization that's out there
and could it be that maybe the younger
generation of business owners don't
really understand
the benefits to them of the chamber of
commerce or the benefits to their
potential customers
i think that's it i think that's it and
i think the more they learn
and if we can get them involved once
they become involved we have some great
chamber members that are very young and
new businesses and i think once they get
involved they see the benefit
it's just that gap of how do you bring
them on and show them
what the benefits could be for them
personally and professionally
so getting them involved and trying to
figure out how to get them in there is
kind of the 64 000
question how do you grab ahold of them
how do you get their attention
to get them involved with the chamber
and what's going on
yes so i'm sure if you look at some of
the business owners that
have been business owners in the
northeast tarrant county
area for for years they're probably you
know some of those crusty old guys right
they're saying you know how do we get
these young guys in here how do we get
them
involved but there's a lot of things
that some of that younger generation can
learn from them and there's a lot of
things those old crusty guys could
probably
learn from some of the the the younger
crowd
absolutely it's a two-way street for
sure and
you know the younger crowd they're
they're more about
you know texting an instant message and
and you know the older crowd has that
more community
feel and meeting face-to-face and
building relationships and i think
i think that's what they could bring to
the table for the younger
business owners absolutely so the
building
i i know i've driven past the
northeast chamber of commerce i don't
know
several times it's right there on 8 20
and 377
right there next to the water and oh
i'm talking about water and i know we're
going to get into what
i i know we're going to talk about water
here in a little bit but
uh so talk to me about
what you do with some of these mixers i
mean that there might be some folks that
are
listening that say you know well what
goes on at one of these mixers and
maybe they're a little bit scared to
want to
attend because they're not quite sure
what goes on so
if you have one of these business mixers
what's a what's a typical business mixer
look like at the northeast chamber of
commerce
so different businesses will sponsor
them so you get to go
to a different business every time and
you know sometimes they're a lunch or
they're a happy hour and you can come
through and meet people
and i would not i would encourage anyone
to
you know follow the chamber website in
the northeast parent chamber
and and what is that website
did i put you on the spot yeah i'm sorry
no we were talking watermelon
yeah no no we're not quite to water yet
so all you got to do is go into google
though and look at northeast
tarrant county chamber of commerce and
we're going to find it
and i'm sorry i'm sorry layla for
putting you on the spot like that
you know like i said we're just talking
here there
there's no trick questions well and
that's the thing about the chamber do
not be
intimidated to come by yourself you will
make a friend or two before you leave
this is a great group of people
some of those older men you know we have
members that have been members of the
chamber for
40 50 years wow yeah so a lot of
you know a lot of the schools so we have
insurance agents we have
a lot of chamber members that have been
involved
in the community in the chamber for many
decades
how did how did you decide to to make a
career make a job out of working for the
chamber of commerce
well i don't actually work for the
chamber of commerce
every year they pick a someone to lead
the board of directors
and i was asked last year if i would
move from the
executive board to lead the board
and i did and it has been the strangest
year ever
in the history of the chamber so so so
when did
when did your tenure start as far as
being the chairwoman
okay so so here here it is i'm guessing
january 1
january 2 right so so you're here here
we are at 2020.
it's all looking up right and and here
goes january and everything's good and
here's february and then
all of a sudden there's this virus
that's
going on and then march hits and
basically all bets are off right so so
what what has the struggles been with
the chamber of commerce with going on
through this coveted mess that that we
have
it's got to be a lot of stuff y'all had
to deal with
it it has been a struggle we had to we
furloughed
the chamber only has about four
employees and we furloughed a few of
those
um we were able to bring them back this
month
that's great yes yes that was our goal
was just try to get through the
the worst of it and um you know
our our chamber members like to be
together and so it's been a real
struggle to have to
cancel all our meetings all our lunches
and
i've been running a lot of zoom meetings
and
are you zoomed out yet a little bit
yesterday i think i had three in a row
it was i know that that is one of those
things that's going on right now is the
is the the zoomed out bit people
zoom was fun when it came out and i
remember
you know skype has been around forever
so so video chatting is
nothing new and then if you have an
iphone
you have the ability to go ahead and do
those video calls through
iphones and then this covid stuff
happened
and it was like zoom was this new
invention but it's been around forever
everybody downloaded it everybody
started using it
and it only took about two or three
months and everybody was sick of it
so i i still cringe when i have to get
on
zoom calls and you know no no offense
i'll see a party foul you didn't turn
your phone off
i actually must have turned it on
instead
but my my my phone has not been
on as far as uh audio or uh
audio alerts for i think going on about
six years now
mine never is but for my job from eight
to five now it has to be yeah
right now i know the one that's fine
no worries sir but go ahead i'm sorry
the one struggle we're having
with the chamber because we weren't able
to have all our events which
produce revenue which part of that we
adopt usually 12 sometimes
more depending on what we raise uh
scholarships for local kids
okay from bisd
keller isd sometimes like st john's in
bethesda
our school main school districts that we
support and
so we're really trying to catch up on
that so that we can
do at least you know we'd like to do the
12 that we normally do and sure
and we have businesses that you know
they'll come in and pick up
an entire scholarship and it's just a
great
way to be involved in your community and
to grow your business at the same time
yeah so when you can't have those events
though that are
fundraising events then it struggles on
that trickle-down effect
because you were probably having dinners
you were having
mixers you were having all kinds of
other events that was there for the pure
reason of raising those funds and you
still have kids
going through high school they're still
graduating they still need
scholarship so that that had to to be a
huge struggle
there with the chamber and so you're
you're trying to work through it though
yes and last week we had our
once a year we do a hometown hero awards
and
the cities and um the non-profits and
this
the school districts they can all
nominate who they would like to
recognize
for you know going above and beyond and
we were able to raise some money that
was our first big event we've had and we
were able
to so going into the hometown heroes
when you say above and beyond what
what do you mean by that as far as above
and beyond what
so like one of the ones from haltom city
this gentleman has been involved in
haltom city his
almost his entire life he back in the
day he had boxing gyms he's taught
hundreds of k he was a golden gloves
champion and
he's hundreds of kids boxing baseball
he was a big driver of us getting
our veterans memorial park in the haltom
city going and we also now have an
all-access
park for handicapped children oh that's
great
and he was the driving force and getting
both of those parks going
so people like that you know we had um
an officer out of watauga recognized for
something they had done
and just people that
you know go above and beyond yeah and
need to be recognized or should be
recognized
right no that that's absolutely
fantastic that
at least the chamber is is looking at
people like that
because i'm gonna guess most of those
people
are probably not looking for the
accolades they're
they're not even expecting the accolades
whenever they get them
and so when they do
get them they're they're happy but at
the same time
they're not expecting it so you know
they
they get a little plaque or or whatever
but
the the stuff they're doing in the
background it's what's important to them
and it's great that the chamber is
is doing things like that so that's
great so
uh water let's talk about some
water so
we've got this trinity river vision
and i've done a little bit of research
on this but not that much and i'm going
to let you
walk me through what's going on with
this because
as we've kind of tried to do our podcast
we're trying to be
kind of dfw centric and then
a little bit more texas centric but you
know
there's people all around the world and
by the way
quick shout out we do have some
listeners that i found that are in
australia
and japan i i found that out two days
ago
that was kind of crazy to hear but uh
so they're all around the world but
we're trying to kind of promote this
around
dfw and in texas and you know because of
me and my co-host who's
on holiday uh is not here but
we're still we're big texas people and
we're north texas people
we we all know about the trinity river
we know what goes on with that but
we have this trinity river vision and
i'd like for you to walk me through
what has gone on with this
what i've honestly looked at in my
little bit of research layla is a giant
mess so walk me through this i have a
friend that calls it the world's biggest
boondoggle
it uh back in 2003 2004
is when it was brought to fort worth
city council
and it cost about 365 million
then is what their cost was
we are now over 1.16
billion i believe is the cost so from
2003
to 2020 we still don't have bridges
there are no canals the channels haven't
been dug
there's no development we basically
have nothing in 17 years
17 years 17 years since this started
yeah and where where you started to get
involved was because of some
flooding in haltom city walk me through
that and i want to encourage everybody
to
look up the documentary up a creek
and like i said i watched the
documentary today
very interesting documentary you were a
producer of that
documentary you're very obviously
heavily involved in that documentary
and i want to encourage everybody
listening to
to look it up it is online and
so so walk me through what happened
that got you so involved because i do
remember and i'm not trying to
kind of set you up here but i do
remember in the documentary where you
said you never wanted to get involved in
the middle of this
but because of what happened you felt
you had to get involved so so walk us
through that
so pretend you're you're talking to
people that haven't seen this
walk us through that so in 2007 we had a
great deal of flooding that entire year
i think through june
there were we had 42 inches of rain in
this area
so when it continued to rain in june
there was a two-week period where
all hell broke loose um
a little girl drowned in a trailer park
up off
denton highway in 8 20. and then two
weeks later
my backyard began to fall into big
fossil creek
and literally i lost 50 feet of land in
seven days
wow yeah we were the focal point of the
news
every channel was there morning noon and
night
um police fire all day
every day you know with that's that's
where i got involved it was my crash
course in media and politics
i had not been involved in either and
didn't ever plan on being
but when i started piecing things
together and the more i learned i didn't
know what a
water board was or what they did and
i started piecing all this together and
found out that our congresswoman's son
was over this project for the trendy
river vision
and this is where all the money was
going that was
called being called flood control
and the more you dig into that the more
you realize
there's not really any flood control to
this in the corps of engineers
they have their study that came out
around that time
said the levees could be fixed for
and don't give me lying but i want to
say it was about 10 million dollars
the levies could be fixed as a part of
flood control but this trendy river
vision
when i started digging back back then it
started off being called
central city and it was an ear mark
on a bill that had nothing to do with
anything else
an earmark on a bill at the federal
level or the
state level federal okay and
um it was called central city then and
then it was
called there was something else in
between there
trinity uptown and then it was changed
to trendy river vision
and now it's changed to panther island
so it just it through the years
everything changes
except uh the taxpayers
are the ones paying for this really
absolutely
all of it is funded by the county
the city has a portion they're trying to
get the federal funding
this is all developers will be able to
make money off something the taxpayers
have paid for
if anything ever gets built do the
taxpayers know that they're
paying for this the majority of them
don't
they they are just told we're getting a
river walk
in fort worth and everybody's like oh
that sounds great and
yeah because everybody's been to san
antonio walked around the river walk
there and said oh well we need one up
here in fort worth
so that's what they're looking at it's a
tourist trap to
to bring some money in right it's how i
would look at it
yes and that's what the vision was
but there were so many just missteps
along the way
and there still are to this day you know
you have a lot of
a lot of families um involved
and hired and spending your money
and
[Music]
the documentary i actually made with a
friend
who was his
business which was a 20-year photography
business successful photography business
in fort worth was being imminent domain
by the trinity river vision and he
and a group of businesses right there
that were being taken
on white settlement they joined together
at one point
and created a group and came up with an
alternate plan
to still do the same thing cost less
money
took less existing businesses and
they were told that wasn't going to
happen
okay and usually any of these projects
the corps does
they have to have an alternate plan you
you submit two plans and they were told
that this one didn't need an alternate
plan
congress it so that's a a federal
law federal rule whenever somebody's
gonna put something together there's
gotta be a plan a plan b
basically is what you're saying but for
this one
they didn't have to have a plan b no
they did not
wow yes okay and that's just come to
light in the last few years which
i'm i have to give the media some credit
these days because
in the last couple years they've really
started digging
you know the the critics of the trinity
rivervision
all these years were people were saying
they're crazy
they're against development and
now people are telling all these oh you
were right the whole time
these guys that started this you know
before i came along in 2007 there were
you know the don woodards and clyde
peach and
bob lukman and steve holler and there's
group of guys in fort worth that
they knew what was up way before anybody
else and almost everything they said
was going to happen or wasn't happening
has it's the truth yeah so they were
basically the fortune tellers that
nobody wanted to listen to
but now all of a sudden everything they
were talking about is coming true
yes yes so i i remember
going over to a friend's house who lived
in azel
and i left downtown fort worth and i was
driving down henderson street
and heading that way and i can tell by
the look in your eyes you
know exactly the route that i'm taking
and i called him on the phone and um i'm
driving over to his house and
i said what what are all these
big things sticking up here out of the
ground
he's like what are you talking about i'm
like well i'm at
you know henderson street and i'm i'm
driving over here he's like
oh those are the bridges to nowhere and
i said this sounds like a
simpsons episode you know when they they
made the escalator to nowhere i'm like
what's going on here i've never heard
about
any of this and you still drive by today
and it it
still just looks like this failed
construction project but i think a lot
of people around
tarrant county
don't really know what's going on with
that and they don't realize especially
the citizens of fort worth that
have are you know responsible for this
they've got their
taxes going towards this nobody really
knows what's going on with that i mean
how crazy is that
that we can actually have something here
that isn't going anywhere
and and we're worried about uh the
flood abatement like you were talking
about i've seen the plans i i kind of
looked at
some of those uh pictures that now we're
gonna
create this panther island or whatever
and i'm like oh
that kind of looks pretty but at the
same time
it's kind of ridiculous at the same time
and it's just this big dirt hole in the
ground
and that that's where we're at right now
i mean are we ever going to
recover from this and by the way
i i did look into some of the numbers
and now we're
over a billion i i think and
there's still nothing to
be really shown from it uh i think
there's a brewery that's open panther
island brewery
yeah i'm not saying they're a sponsor
but i like beer so panther island
brewery if you want to give me some beer
let's talk about that but you don't have
to actually be on the island you could
be panther city brewery you could change
that
you know i'm i'm not trying to throw
stones there but
what about the uh the tax
increment financing district that that
was a
big topic in your documentary yes
and we made the documentary because i
wanted to
put it together for an easy way for
people to explain because that's how i
learned so i wanted to go back to these
guys and say okay tell me this
tell me this so other people could get
that
concisely from these people and the
the tax increment financing district
they're called tiffs
and they can take a certain area
and take all the money the tax from that
and just put it into that area
so you don't have that money which
should be going to all of fort worth
you don't you no longer have that money
for police and fire
and all the things that you know you
need the money for to run a city
right it's just going back into that
district
and on top of that they can still turn
around and sell bonds
they passed uh one last year for 250
million dollars
i'm sorry it may have been the year
before for 250 million dollars for flood
control
and for for this same area yes
yeah okay so so here here's some news
so how are they doing this how are they
getting away with it
i think i'm sad to say but
you know we have the star telegram is
who covers
it and you know case in point they wrote
an article a few weeks ago about
the bridges being done ahead of schedule
okay they were started in like 2014.
so i'm not sure ahead of whose schedule
because you know i've had people look up
and send me
you know it took a year to build the
golden gate bridge or so forth
right we have these
but these bridges over a pretend
island that they now want to build we
can't do
in whatever it is well no you say
six years that this has been going on
more than that yeah and that's kind of
ridiculous
but they had a big um explosion
and party kickoff for when they started
the bridges
and now i want to say that was 2014 and
we're still looking at brit
half finished bridges over dry land and
you know those businesses down there on
henderson and
white settlement the ones that got to
stay you know they're struggling
they're still struggling several of them
had to sell
several of them bought them and
wasn't there some issues down there with
eminent domain
yes there were 90 businesses 90
businesses with imminent domain in and
what's happened there
now it's just blank or
what's going on there some of them moved
some of them
went out of business you know we had
mckinley
works they were a huge boundary that had
been there
i don't know how many generations of the
mckinley family and
you know that's gone and you know you're
racing parts of history you're putting
people out of business
you know angelo's angelos is down there
they struggle
every day you you just keep oh the
barbecue joint
yes i i love angelos and and they're not
a
sponsor by any means but i've been to
angelo's right
they're off white settlement and i've
drank plenty of beers there and i've had
lots of their good barbecue but they're
struggling because this
yes they have i did not know that yes
wow
okay now i i will tell you the last time
i went to angelo's
it seemed difficult to get there yes
because of
all the road construction and everything
else so
i think a lot of people forget about the
fact that when you
tear up roads when you have a bunch of
detours
what that does to a local business and i
mean you being
involved with chamber of commerce you
know that there's
certain businesses that can operate off
of a computer
and everything's online but a restaurant
they can't do it that way no i mean they
can't so
i i didn't know about angelo's with that
and
that makes total sense but i didn't even
know
that this whole mess right here
was affecting them that that's crazy yes
and
they there was a there's a mechanic down
there and he's been featured on the news
you know they just if you're if you have
to go through that mess and there's only
one way to get there i mean people are
going to find
other options it would make it that hard
for people to
visit those locations they're going to
go somewhere else
yeah that they absolutely are but and we
live in a culture right now where we
have
tons of different options of what we
want to eat what we want to
listen to what we want to watch you know
we got netflix we got hulu
we've got all this and and so we don't
even have to worry about hollywood
anymore
to put out a movie in fact i was talking
to my wife today
apparently tomorrow night we're gonna
watch
father the bride part three on netflix
because they they put this out so so
there's
all kinds of things that we can now
watch we can now look at we can now
listen to so what
what can something like the
northeast chamber of commerce do what
can
you do to tell everybody
to pay attention to what is going on
uh other than a random facebook posts i
know you're
adamant with this and i appreciate your
just absolute passion towards this
that's why i wanted to have you on the
podcast
what can joe citizen or
jane citizen do
to correct this mess is there anything
they can do
what what can we do i think the citizens
of tarrant county
one need to be aware that they're paying
for all this and
what it's costing them and has cost them
over the years
and you know if you want a
history lesson in how all this goes not
only
up a creek the film but if you go back
and search on the fort worth weekly
they've done some tremendous articles
about
what's really going on and how much
money is involved and how many
failed projects there have been along
the way and
whose family members work at the water
district and
the water district the trwd is
really the big player in all this they
had a
bill passed back in i want to say 2006.
it's a house bill 2639 and it gave the
water district
the authority to
take property to loan money
to borrow money i mean they have more
authority than people
even have a clue about people don't know
what a water district is and now they
have this one that's
pretty much gone rogue they're right now
trying to get even more authority
so people should follow that at the fort
worth city council
meetings the council pushed this off
they delayed it at the last meeting but
the
trwd has gone and asked for even more
authority
for and land along the water trwd
stands for the tarrant regional water
district okay
and that would be the way to fix it we
did
do some um elections with the trwd
we had someone elected for a few years
mary kelleher
she was very instrumental in getting a
several things done of course being one
vote out of five it was
it was a long four years for her sure
but
you know this this whole floating the
river i don't know anybody who would do
it but apparently there are people that
get in the trinity river
and hey i i always remember the joke
that you could go
fish in the trinity river but you could
never eat a fish
that you caught out of the trinity river
no
and mary was very instrumental in
getting them to test the water before
these events because
no one was testing the level of e coli
and bacteria dangerous bacteria in the
water
so some events were actually canceled
because of the levels so
she was also able to get
there was a clause in their
trwd rules that basically at the bottom
of it said the general manager can
change
anything in this at any time and so she
was able to get that
taken out and good some records released
she tried really hard for a long time to
get
open records that that's the whole thing
the the waterboards should be more
transparent
and more people need to know what's
going on and i believe they have another
race coming up in may
and if you follow mary kelleher on
facebook i'm sure there will be
announcements coming on that soon of
who's
running and who's not related
sure to anybody else on the board that's
right
and you know fort worth and old city
and there's a lot of that uh
you know the the old buddy system
and that's the way with a lot of cities
and especially in texas it's
it's that that old boys club right
you know you you've got these these guys
get around
and they say well i'm going to shake
your hand and i'm going to buy you a
beer here
or we're going to belong to this club or
or that club
and and all that goes on and
in today's day and age you've got
so many people that realize they're
pumping their money into
certain things when they pay their taxes
they they go
and they buy a 12-pack of miller lite
and they pay sales tax on that and
they're not quite sure where all that
sales tax money goes
or they they pay you know their
different taxes or property taxes or
they pay their water bill
i mean my wife and i today we were
arguing about our new water bill from
the city of fort worth
and our water bill was 74
75 bucks and now it's 300
because they installed new meters
into our water and said well these are
more accurate
and these are this is actually the
amount of water you're using
i'm saying well no i'm not using any
more water
why are you charging me so much more i
said okay
let's shut the sprinklers off then i'll
let the grass die
i i don't care i'm not gonna pay all
this money
to the city of fort worth and i didn't
even
prompt you on that but this
literally happened two hours before
i sat down with you and i'm sitting here
saying that
this is ridiculous the amount of money
that we're pumping into here
just so somebody can have this fancy
little island yes a a fake island
right there in in fort worth that we
don't need we
we changed fort worth
we put so much emphasis
on sundance square we
changed i-30 i know you remember that
we we moved that around we've done all
that
and now we we've got to change all this
and then
by the way even if we do this
panther island thing and it actually
comes to fruition which
i don't think it ever will my friend
who's in his 80s
said it's not going to happen in his
lifetime and it may not happen in mine
yeah absolutely but but even if it
does it's not going to fix some of the
other problems that it was
actually tagged effects correct you know
and
and this kind of goes back to you know
when
when you had the flood issues and
you lost basically your whole backyard
right it's it's never gonna fix that
so where do we go from here
if if you had a magic wand layla if if
you
literally had a magic wand you could say
i i'm gonna wave this magic
wand and i'm gonna fix all of this mess
what would you do i would turn the
tarrant regional water district
upside down and shake the building and
start over
get a whole new board and get a whole
new can can we do that
you can the how do we do that so the
voting
area so that election is in may and
it's the top vote getters every other
year there's either three seats up or
two seats up
and it's the top vote getters you're not
running against somebody for a spot it's
it's a strange election they used to
hold it back on a tuesday in february
when nobody knew
oh that seems very convenient it was yes
and um so people just have to pay
attention because
it's only while the tarrant regional
water district
services 11 counties they're supplying
water
to 11 counties only a portion
of tarrant county can vote and like we
live in haltom city our water comes
from trwd through fort worth fort worth
is the wholesaler
and we can't vote why is that because
the district is all gerrymandered and
rigged
drew and when i asked at one point why
is haltom city not included because it
literally goes around us the boating
area
and they said they didn't elect to be a
part of the water district
well the water district started before
haltom city was
incorporated so there's a there's a
little change there but the thing is
they keep the tax rate for the trwd
fairly low on those people in the
district that can vote
but they can raise the water rates all
the way across the board on everybody
else
so these water rates your you and your
wife are
discussing we were actually looking at
our water bill before we
came here too the water
it's not all going to water and you know
we have several issues that's what the
water board was founded for was water
supply and flood control
some recreation was added at some point
this is not
some recreation and we have no panthers
we have no island we
we need to put the focus back on water
supply and flood control uh
at one point we sued oklahoma and tried
to take
they're kidding yes probably well
years ago i think we should take
oklahoma's water
because they're not good for anything up
there
they can keep their beer we'll take the
water is that how that works well they
they they finally got real beer up there
oh so
yeah but but what are they good for you
know fake casinos until
texas decides they're going to have
casinos then oklahoma's going to go
bankrupt
so yeah let's be honest there i mean
you know that's what's going to happen
if texas ever decides
we're going to legalize gambling
oklahoma's dead yes my my parents
go up to windstar at least once a week
and i think my mother probably
funds one percent of windstar
because of what she does up there but
you know
if if we could literally
just get rid of oklahoma i think we'd be
i think we'd be good yeah what what
you're saying is basically
texas just needs to be its own nation
which which is one of
one of my things you know i love texas
so let's just be our own country
i'm in so well
layla thank you very much for joining me
today i i
really appreciate the insight here i i
hope that
our listeners out there eat even though
a lot of you guys aren't in
tarrant county and we haven't explained
that yet so i need to go ahead and
explain that so when i was
texting layla uh she was texting me
back and forth about coming onto the
podcast and
for some reason our iphones
decided to make terran all in
capital letters and so she sent it to me
and she said
well i didn't mean to yell taran at you
and when i
i read the message i didn't really think
too much about it and i was typing my
own message back about tarrant
and when i hit the send button
apparently my phone decided okay
well i'm going to capitalize taryn i do
not know why
tarrant is such a curse word that
you have to yell tarrant it's just a
county in texas but apparently it must
be a curse word so
so maybe our friends at apple
are just upset with tarrant county just
like
layla is as well you know so they look
keep up the good fight uh
tell everybody what what you've got
going on
is as far as you know if if there's
something that you would like our
listeners to
to look up and all that good stuff
yeah i think on facebook if you'll if
you'll follow
mary kelleher she's a great resource
spell that k e l l e h e
r she's a great resource she was on the
one
she was the one who was on the water
board and she was always the four to one
vote uh
i think a couple of times she got one or
two of them to vote with her but
mary is a great resource she really
keeps up with what's going on at the
water district and this is my plug to
try to get her to run again
so we will be looking for all the
support we can get
okay come on mary 20 21. yeah let's do
this yes
she i think i think she'll be ready she
uh she's a very big
proponent of the people and doing what's
right she owns a farm
out in east fort worth and she floods a
lot
wow and that's how her and i actually
met and
we had been friends about five minutes
when i said hey do you want to run for
the water board you have to decide in
two days and
and she did and she's just she's
tremendous
i don't know anybody who's met mary that
doesn't love her and love her honesty
and
she wants to give this board back to the
people and that's exactly where it
belongs
now as we close
in watching your documentary upgrade
there was a little girl that lost her
life
let's let's close with that and and tell
me
what happened with that
uh kind of kind of a sad story
but i'd like people to know
you know what happened with that story
so she was four years old and it
actually wasn't
raining in haltom city the water they
took on was from
keller and the the flow just
couldn't handle down there where they
were living and
after all this happened i pulled some
maps from the
north central texas council of
governments which is
the cog i pulled some maps and it showed
her whole
street underwater which
you know really upset me that we
we knew this was gonna happen and we let
it happen and
a four-year-old child lost their life
for no reason
for basically over greed because we're
trying to cram more people and
more spots that are more dangerous and
that's what really got my attention
and the way those people that area is a
trailer park
and the way those people were being
treated
i was you know i was kind of being
treated a certain way but the way
those people were being treated and they
had lost their homes their cars
a little girl they had lost everything
down there it just really angered me
that we weren't doing the right things
and the focus
wasn't in the right spot and so i felt i
had to do something so i took a
screenwriting class i bugged
bob lukman until he made a documentary
with me and then we
i did write a short follow-up story
that a portion of it is in a local
book the the panther city review that
they put out every year
um the documentaries at the creek the
short story is without a paddle
so it's all coming full circle
and that's one thing i wanted to say
we're talking about sad things
uh one of the greatest things through
all this are are the things i've learned
and the people i've met
and fought despite alongside of and
last night we lost one of those great
guys
ross kessig really great guy
that has just done so much for
fighting this and liberty and
he's just a really young guy really
young family
really great friend and we're going to
miss him on this journey for sure
absolutely well laila i
really appreciate you joining me today
on this this has been very informative i
encourage everybody to
look this up get involved and
you're going to be able to find layla
with any of the social media links or
the the northeast chamber of commerce or
what's going on with the water district
and all this good stuff so
leila thank you very much for joining me
on this podcast
and uh hope to talk to you soon
maybe we can have a follow-up when all
this stuff gets
fixed and and we'll have more of a
happier podcast
when when we realize that
hey you know people need to get involved
people
need to look at what's going on
and in in this day and age of
the media just kind of
shying away from the true story and
everything especially media
right now people like you were
not able to tell the whole story
it's all about this 45 second
snippet of something that
that goes on or yes like you say a sound
bite
that this is obviously more than a sound
bite so
i i hope people get involved that this
is
a very important part of you know the
dfw metroplex
and i appreciate you coming on the
podcast so
thank you so much i really appreciate
that
awesome