Members of the Brady City Council and their supporters seem genuinely puzzled by opposition to their grand plans for “economic development”. They shouldn't be.

While they are building an “aquatic park”, developing an ATV park for adult-age children to race through the mud on their 4-wheel toys, planting and watering hundreds of willow trees among the mesquites at the lake, improving the walking path along the filthy creek and hanging Christmas lights on the trees in the park, the hard working citizens open their City Utility bills to find a state mandated notice that the City of Brady water system does not meet minimum state standards.

Not only does the water the City of Brady delivers not meet state standards, sometimes it comes out of the tap the color of urine or worse. At other times it has so much chlorine in it that it burns eyes and skin like over-chlorinated hot tub water. This is not a sudden emergency situation. It is the long-term norm for Brady.

Ask long-time residents about local officials (elected and salaried) failing to do their job and the typical reply is something along the lines of “His mother was such a wonderful person”, or “She was such a beautiful child” or  “He is a fine man doing the best he can” or, in one case, “He says such beautiful prayers at church”. All of this may be true and commendable but it does not address the issue of job performance.

The other excuse is that Brady is a poor community. That simply isn't true if you look objectively at the City spending. A survey of Texas cities with populations between 5,000 and 6,000 shows that the average annual operating budget is about $7.5 million. Brady's operating budget is about $20 million. The City of Brady is a big spender by any standard.

The City of Brady built a new multi-million dollar water treatment facility recently. The evidence (contaminants in the output) indicates that it doesn't work. No one seems to know exactly why. Some say it was shoddy design and construction sold to the City Council by a shyster. Others say no one has been trained to operate it properly. Others say the treatment facility works fine but the water mains are old and contaminated. Not finding out the precise cause of contamination and fixing it immediately in inexcusable.

Ignoring contaminated city water while spending millions on frivolous Economic Development projects is worse than inexcusable, it is foolish. The foundation for economic development is excellent, reliable, reasonably priced public services.

Without that, Brady will continue to lose population (down 3.15% since 2000 and down 12.84% since 1990) and eventually die.