Tomorrow, the City of Houston will consider whether to use Stormwater funding to demolish buildings. The City claims that only buildings that attract illegal dumping and affect stormwater flow will be demolished. Who will monitor if, in fact, they do that? Anyone volunteering?
I suspect the department must be trusted to be honest, as I seriously doubt any council office will be monitoring the demolitions.
Numbers like 2302 are not years; they are numbers assigned to something else, perhaps where the funds come from or go.
Click the link below to open a PDF presentation, which works best on a computer.
https://indd.adobe.com/view/8fbc2007-2c3b-4152-ae8f-0a7cacdd6ca4
Bill King, who has been defending Mayor Whitmire, appears to think it is acceptable. There is a saying that there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics.
Below is some of what he recently published on his blog. I believe that is one of those times when we moved beyond statistics, as there are quite a few things one would need to look up to follow his argument.
I will make one point: while more money is allocated to the fund, the small letters at the bottom indicate that 25 million was added. It was added to demolish buildings. That is the first time that has been done, according to the City’s presentation.
Of course, if Public Works can establish the nexus as the department says it will, then the answer is clearly no. But beyond that narrow question, it should be noted that in this administration’s first two budgets, spending on flood control has been dramatically increased, nearly tripling the amount budgeted. So, the City is clearly spending much more on flood control than the previous administration.
This is a harder question. Despite the CUS net position being the best in its history, it also faces massive challenges. The City has been under a consent decree with the EPA since the 1980s, because our sanitary sewer leaks so much raw sewage into the environment, including our bayous. Also, about two-thirds of the City relies on a decrepit water plant in the East End that was built in the 1950s. Estimates to properly modernize that plant have been pegged at over $5 billion.
Source – Bill King, it is an email so no link.
