Coliseum Vote Spells Trouble For Mayor And Council

For the most part, the mayor and council members pulled a full-court press to abandon the Coliseum, and the results were less than spectacular.

You can call it a "win" if you want, but I'll tell you straight up, that a 52% to 48% margin is a clear sign that nearly half of Lubbock has no trust in its city leaders.  The difference was around 525 votes and that's NOTHING in a city the size of Lubbock.

If there is a vision for Lubbock, it's not being explained properly. We've once again elected caretakers and not folks who have any clear ideas of how to grow the city. We have out of control sprawl, areas of town being abandoned and the downtown revitalization of a building that is going to be an ongoing monument to wasteful spending.

The mayor benefited this time around by having weak and very underfunded competition. The district one councilman won by 22 votes (!).  If I was either of these folks, I'd start making plans for my career after politics NOW.

I've written about this topic a number of times now, but I don't think we're going to fully realize the impact of this decision for many years. It's okay that we decided to move forward with their abandonment, it's another thing that we don't have a plan for their replacement.