While frogs may not be that dumb, unfortunately, way too many humans are. John Whitmire is proposing a $5 garbage fee for two years, with the rate eventually increasing to $25 per month. A frog knows when it is getting shafted; unfortunately, too many Houstonians will buy into the little bit of time tax increase. Make no mistake, it is a tax increase. Let them start with the water boiling, a $25 a month fee, so they can at least put their political careers on the line.
The other sleight of hand that John Whitmire is doing is taking money that the voters voted to be used for dedicated purposes, water and sewage fees, and making those departments pay for the water and sewer lines that are in the City Right-of-Way. Exactly those pipes are mostly on the property owners’ property, and the city has other utilities pay for the right to have them on our properties. This is even a more screwed-up idea than the slowly boing the frog, as there will not be extra money in the city budget; it will just be shifted to a possible sludge fund for the mayor and the council members to play with.
The City’s Water and Sewer accounts are balanced, so they will take money from them, and who knows what they will do with it. With slight tricks like this, expect Houston to start getting worse, not better. They can’t fix all the water and sewer pipe breaks now; they are going to do even worse with less money?
If approved by the city council in early June, about 400,000 solid waste customers in Houston would begin paying a $5 monthly “administrative fee.” The approximately $100 million solid waste department would move from the city’s $3 billion general fund to become part of the water and wastewater utility system — which would also begin paying fees to the city for using municipal right-of-ways.
Think of our Social Security funds that go into the general fund, where they are used to build billion-dollar ballrooms for the king in the White House. Or to pay for Trump’s drones that the military is supposedly buying from twiddle dee and twiddle dumb Don and Eric.
How many hours a day does a police man/woman work?
They get paid for eight hours. They get paid while eating at a restaurant. They get paid when they are shopping. They get paid if they are not actually patrolling or investigating. They get paid while waiting for ICE. We are lucky if they work six hours for eight hours of pay. Let us start with the police and fire departments to get more bang for our dollars.