Prop 14 - The Centennial Parks Conservation Fund
November 5th elections and a pause for writing here in November.
A quick newsletter this week. First, Prop 14, the proposition to create the Centennial Parks Conservation Fund, is on the ballot for the November 5th elections. The Texas legislature set aside $1 billion from their extraordinary budget surplus last spring and voters now get to approve that at the ballot. It’s much needed money that will allow Texas Parks and Wildlife to seek out and purchase new property to create state parks. To be honest, they really need another $1 billion just to renovate and modernize the rest of the state parks they already have, but I guess we will have to tackle that in the next legislative session.
Early voting is through November 3rd or you can vote on election day, November 5th. Vote yes to create more state parks for Texans!
Many thanks to the folks like Luke Metzger and Doug Deason for getting the legislators to carried this through, as well everyone else who did work behind the scenes! We certainly appreciate the efforts and can’t wait to see more parks open in the coming decade.
And a programming note for November. I’m going to take most of the month off from writing here. I should have an update mid-month on Fairfield Lake State Park as the court appointed commission to determine the eminent domain cost is going to be heard on November 14th. Other than that I will be writing, just not here. November is NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—where the goal is to put your butt in the seat and type out 50K words in the month. I have written in two NaNoWriMo’s before, actually completing one back in 2021. I want to finish that novel I started in 2021 plus work on the non-fiction I started earlier this year. And another non-fiction project has fallen into my lap and so I need to work on a book proposal. I hope I can share more about these projects at some time in the future, but for now I actually need to do the work.
I’ll be back in December with more Texas nature writing and hopefully happy news mid-month with FLSP.
I hope everyone has a great November and don’t forget to vote on November 5th!
Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and can be found on Instagram at @oceanicwilderness. She hosts two podcasts, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and The Garden Path Podcast.
Have great and productive November. And I have voted!