Mayor John Whitmire said that he agrees the city needs to invest more in drainage, but said he does not believe Houstonians would elect to do so through a court order. He said the city plans to appeal the ruling. Source
Whitmire had no problems quickly settling a lawsuit to pay the firefighters billions of dollars and having the judge sign the agreement he made with the firefighters. He did not seek approval from the city council or anyone else. He proclaimed himself a god and made that billion-dollar decision by himself. He claimed that the city was also saving millions in legal fees, not quite an accurate statement as the city had spent less than two million dollars in legal fees over the numerous years that the case was in litigation.
The citizens of Houston voted to use that money for infrastructure and flood control, not the mayor and certainly not John Whitmire. The lack of police or firefighters is not the problem that Whitmire and all the whiney Republicans make it out to be. They compare Houston to New York City and Chicago and how many police they have. Why not compare to San Antonio, Austin, or Dallas-Ft Worth? They don’t do that because they have fewer police officers per 100,000 residents than we do.
The same is true about the firefighters the only major city in Texas that has EMS as firefighters is Dallas.
Meme typically does not support bonds, but he did vote for the additional revenue for additional police. Guess what? The number of police officers stayed the same.
The City of Houston has a history of misspeaking and lying. They lied about the impervious surface fees and how they were to be used.
Whitmire has to be honest with the citizens of Houston. He needs to quit the political BS and be honest.
Whitmire can prove that he is serious about cutting costs by leading the way and decreasing the mayor’s office by ten percent (10%). This doesn’t mean that he does what previous mayors have done, which is to move them to the airport while they keep doing the same job at the mayor’s office. The airport is an enterprise zone, which means money generated there has to stay there by federal law.