Commentary
By Bill Peterson
Who would have though a little ol' city council campaign in Kyle would cook up the possibility of political impropriety winding through a Wimberly Webmaster, the City of Austin and the state comptroller's office?
The Kyle Police Department (KPD) and council attorney Sheila Limon connected Kyle Klips and its website, kylenewsletteroftruth.com, very strongly with Kyle rabble rousers Sherry Anderson and Maxine Weatherford, who also led an unsuccessful charge to recall then-Mayor James Adkins in 2003.
The investigation by Limon and the KPD established a weaker connection between the publication and former council candidate Serena Starkey, who ran against Councilmember Todd Webster while the publication landed on city doorsteps during the weeks leading to the May council election. Webster easily won his re-election.
The investigation, directed by the Kyle City Council, points almost certainly to state campaign ethics law violations. The publication clearly was designed to encourage voters to vote against Webster and spent more than $500 to do it, but didn't register with the Texas Ethics Commission, as required by law.
But that matter will be decided elsewhere. The city council is forwarding the case to the Hays County District Attorney, the city's ethics commission and the Texas Ethics Commission.
Commentary
By Bill Peterson
Until the H-E-B in Buda opened at the end of 2000, Buda residents in need of serious grocery shopping drove to the corner of Manchaca Road and Slaughter Lane, where they could pick between an H-E-B or an Albertson's.
Not a difficult choice. Albertson's notoriously overprices its inventory, while H-E-B runs a well-liked, two-percent profit business. Even when the Buda H-E-B opened, many locals ended up at the Manchaca Road version, anyway, because the Buda H-E-B crowded way too much.
The grocery scene in Buda is about to change again, in a big way.
First, the Albertson's at Manchaca and Slaughter is closing Saturday, one of several Central Texas stores the company is shutting down. Almost nobody will miss it. High prices there would compel customers to throw up their hands in the middle of their shopping, leave their carts behind and start over at the HEB across the corner.
If you decided to hold your nose and go through the checkout, you never knew how long it would take even if your were the third shopper in line. Even after they dolled up the store a bit some years ago, the experience was never pleasant.
By the way, the Albertson's is holding a "blowout" sale to close out its inventory. Be careful. Even when signs tout "70 percent off!" many of the items aren't marked for price. In many cases, the base price is as high as possible, making the savings almost negligible.
This week, a shopper picked up a couple bags of frozen vegetables, priced 82 cents each at H-E-B. At Albertson's, they were priced 50 percent off. Then, at checkout, the veggies rang up at $1.57, so the real purchase price ended up 79 cents. The shopper rang up a grocery bill of $414, which came down to $175 after discounts. But the savings probably were about $100 off that same trip to H-E-B, rather than the $238 savings touted on the Albertson's receipt.
A couple weeks after the Albertson's closes, Wal-Mart opens on North Main Street in Buda on Aug. 16. The Wal-Mart is a controversial project, about which more will be said later. To the present point, this particular Wal-Mart will sell groceries.
The new store stands to benefit Buda and Kyle consumers in a couple ways.
First, it's an alternative to the Buda H-E-B, which is so packed at evening rush hour that shelves empty quickly and it's impossible to get around. Correlatively, those who avoid the crowds by shopping at a Travis County H-E-B can now pay sales tax at a Hays County Wal-Mart.
Second, lots of chatter has it that the Wal-Mart will force H-E-B to reduce prices, which would be an achievement, because one never hears complaints about being taken at the H-E-B.
Kyle will be green with envy, of course, when Buda has two big grocery stores and Kyle has none. But H-E-B Plus will open at Kyle Parkway and IH-35 a year from now.
