By Meredith L. Canales
Staff Writer

Although a park named for the late U.S. Sen. Frank Madla has been in the works for a while in Helotes, the City Council decided at their last meeting the latest effort to finance it was not feasible.

Aldermen David LeGendre and Ed Villanueva met with a representative from Texas Parks and Wildlife to discuss the project, said LeGendre, adding, I think we came out of this meeting (knowing) the money that’s going to be required from us up front is something we don’t have.”

The money in question is a matching grant from Texas Parks and Wildlife that would pay 50 percent of the actual expenditures, up to the support ceiling of the grant, and would be reimbursed during the project period as billings were submitted.

Though LeGendre and Villanueva left the meeting knowing the city didn’t have the finances to support the grant, they said they were open to other options to make Madla Park a reality.

“We also talked (in the meeting) about continuing to work together to acquire property for this park,” said LeGendre. “Actually, (the representative) did share with us some of the properties they had looked at.”

Saying he was “happy to see what was presented, LeGendre added, “I think we could do something along the same lines for that same property” with grants, donations or conventional financing.”

“The meeting actually expanded my thoughts as to how we could pursue other properties and the financing therein, or perhaps even the possibility of getting property donated,” said Villanueva.

Though the Helotes-born senator died in 2006 in a tragic house fire that also claimed the life of his 5-year-old granddaughter, his son is still living and involved in the process of making the park a reality.

“I did call Frank Madla Jr. and spoke with him about this a week ago because I have a great deal of respect for his father,” said Alderwoman Cynthia Massey. “I told him we had all done everything we could to figure out a way we could do this for the city.”

According to Massey, the late senator’s son was sympathetic and understood the city did not have the funds for the project without up-front help.

“This grant … was 112 pages long,” said Massey. “For our little city to take on something like this, first of all, we just don’t have the money.” 

Special to the Northwest Weekly 
 
UTSA’s Prefreshman Engineering Program has opened the application process for the Summer 2009 session. The mathematics-based summer program explores career opportunities in engineering, the sciences and technology.

Interested students and parents should speak with their math or science teacher or school counselor for an application or additional information. Also, applications are available on-line at PREP-USA.org. The application process closes Jan. 31.

Students become eligible for PREP as they complete the sixth grade and remain eligible through the 11th grade. The program offers four summers of classes and activities teaching advanced mathematics, problem solving, computers, principles of engineering and other sciences.

Hands-on activities, field trips and visits from professionals expose the students to college life and career opportunities. Labs often include building model bridges, programming robots, analyzing water resources and building basic electronic devices.

The PREP 2009 summer session is June 15 through July 31. PREP is taught at 11 local college and university campuses, with different PREP years assigned to each location.

Tuition is $300 per student, but many schools provide funding for students to participate. School districts may award elective credit.

For more information, call 458-2060.

By Miranda Koerner
Staff Writer
 
Within the past year, we have seen the best of times. We’ve also seen the worst of times.

We’ve seen the first African-American elected president. We’ve seen increases in medical technology once only dreamed of. We’ve seen communities bind together to move towards creating a healthy environment for not only humans but the creatures we share it with.

But, we’ve also seen the stock market fall and our 401Ks plummet. We’ve seen retirees weeping as they struggle to find new jobs for which they are overqualified.

We’ve seen hurricanes tear across the East, fires burn the West and a nation of people losing their homes as they spiral into debt.

We’ve seen soldiers go to war never to come home. And we’ve seen the economy slide into a recession and its people into depression.

The magazines will be full of celebrities telling you why they are grateful and how they’ve helped the economy by flying coach. The television stations will be quick to show you the homeless and the terminally ill children, reminding you how much better you have it than them.

But that isn’t gratitude.

Gratitude is defined as the quality or feeling of being thankful or grateful. It is not defined as guilt or comparing yourself to others.

H.U. Westermayer said, “The pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have ever been more impoverished than these who, nonetheless, set aside a day for Thanksgiving.”Those who have seen the good and the bad understand the meaning of gratitude. Our grandparents knew that a cake meant a celebration, not an everyday occasion. They knew that going out was a treat, rather than a right. They knew that hard work and paying one’s dues was an expectation, not an exception.

We of the I-phone and Internet star generation do not know bad times. We know how popular we are on YouTube, how many hits our blogs get and how unfortunate it is our boss doesn’t recognize our brilliance and give us that raise to afford a 3,000-square-foot house a year out of college.

Our bad times are that our parents didn’t let us go to Mexico for Spring Break senior year or let us hold our wedding at the country club. If we’ve had a terribly bad life, we had to work and go to school. Yhe horror!

But in the bad, thete is always some good. If the Pilgrims, who traveled across an ocean to a foreign land without technology, modern medicine and electricity can celebrate their thanks, so should we.

Even if we have to resort to buying our clothes from thrift stores and scrounging for coupons, we have a lot to be thankful for. We have freedom that men have given their lives for, that no country has ever matched.

We have an abundance of food and our fingertips on the pulse of technology.

And we have each other. We have our friends and neighbors who help us out when our car breaks down and we can’t afford to fix it until next Friday. We have our families who give us a hand and a hot meal when we need it. And we have our community to create a net of hope and safety for our families.

If we are to experience bad times, then let’s hope we continue with the good we have learned after the bad times have passed, particularly for those of us who are learning for the first time. For if we learn to be grateful for the good, perhaps we can stave off the bad.

Happy Thanksgiving.
 

By Meredith Canales
Staff Writer
 
With the country in the throes of an economic recession, Leon Valley is certainly not immune.

Though San Antonio’s unemployment rate was 4.9 percent as of the third quarter, according to Will Garrett with the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, while the rest of the country is hovering closer to 6.5 percent, Leon Valley Librarian Joyce Trent said the majority of the people who come in to use the library’s Internet connection are doing so to look for jobs.

“We have started to have so many people that we’ve had to institute time limits for them to use the computers,” she said. “Most of them come in here to post resumes or search for employment. It’s kind of sad really.”

Though they knew they needed time limits for the public computers, the library staff and Trent had to come up with the best way to enforce those time limits. During their search, they found a piece of software called Fortres Grand Time Limit Management System. According to Trent, it does more than just enforce time limits.

“When you are timed out, it erases all of the things that could cause a security breach,” she said. “For instance, if you’ve checked your bank account balance, without the software, the next person could come along and conceivably get into your online bank account, or even your e-mail. With this, it erases all that information and puts the computer back in the same state it was in when you logged on to it.”

Current time limits are set at 90 minutes, with the library allowing users to have up to two sessions per day.

“But if we notice that there are lines of people waiting, we can reduce that time to an hour if we need to,” said Trent. “That way we can accommodate people who are waiting to use the computers. Or if someone is there and has used the computer for 90 minutes and no one else is waiting, we can keep the time going for him.”

A lack of waiting customers isn’t a frequent occurrence, said Trent.

“We currently have six computers with an Internet connection and a seventh that we can log into online if we absolutely need to,” she said.

Trent also said they’re thinking ahead and have already set up a wireless network.

“If you bring a laptop, you can use our network for free. It even extends out to the porch, so it’s nice to sit out here on pretty days,” she said.