31 May 2005
Pithy thoughts on "olds"
I rolled back into town last night from nearly a week of camping, and am pleased to see that Anne's held down the fort wonderfully.
Indeed, her radio appearance was so good I might well be out of a regular gig! If you missed it, scroll down the right sidebar and click on the two segments. (Warning: the mp3 files are several megabytes each).
Following are some quick thoughts on stories I missed and am just now catching up on (some of which Anne has already posted about). I'll stick it under the [Read More] button for those who aren't interested in my random thoughts on what is now "olds."
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/31/05 11:12 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (0)
What's your favorite thing to do in Houston?
Sedosi points us to Ken Hoffman's column today about the convention and visitors bureau efforts to promote Houston locally, including a contest:
To enter the convention and visitors bureau contest, go to www.visithoustontexas.com, click on Houston 365 and tell them, "My favorite thing to do in Houston is ... "
Each week, the Web site will feature a "prominent" Houstonian saying what he or she likes most about our city. Mayor Bill White was first up. He "loves to go biking in Memorial Park."
You never get towed on a bicycle.
Hahaha! That's funny!
After the mayor, I'm the next Houstonian on the Web site. It's really a tricky question: What's my favorite thing about Houston?
Go read the column to find out what his favorite thing is.
And let's steal Sedosi's idea:
So, this leads us to the BIG question of the day:
What is your favorite thing to do in Houston?
Mine is to play Danger Train Intersection Bingo.
It might be hard to top that one, but let's give it a try. What's your favorite thing to do in Houston?
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/31/05 04:46 PM | Houston Life | Technorati | Comments (11)
Metro is bleeding riders AND revenue
Through a Texas Public Information Act request, Tom Bazan received Metro's bus and tram boardings data, along with fare box revenue data, collected for FY2005 to the present.
You are advised to sit down before reading further:
-- Fare box revenue for March 2005 was $2.2 million. Fare box revenue for March 2004 was $4.5 million. (oh my)
-- March 2005 revenue was the highest so far this year. We can speculate that was due to Rodeo light rail usage.
-- Remember when Metro reported one million light rail riders for March? Eh, Metro didn't share that total system ridership in March was a bit over 8 million riders, a decline of 3.3 percent from March 2004 (8.3 million riders, system-wide). March 2005 bus ridership declined more than nine percent, compared to March 2004.
-- Ridership in April 2005 declined three percent (system-wide) compared to April 2004, with bus ridership declining almost 10 percent.
Some points to keep in mind:
-- This weekend Metro instituted further bus route cuts and changes.
-- Metro is spending $250,000 to figure out why its ridership keeps declining.
-- Metro wants to spend $58 million for fifteen new light rail cars.
That's what taxpayers get with an unaccountable, quasi-governmental entity. And we have yet another example of why these agencies should have citizen oversight, citizen-appointed boards, and be required to return to voters periodically for funding.
I wonder what Mayor White thinks of Metro's performance?
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/31/05 10:12 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (17)
A fictional op-ed?
In Sunday's Outlook section, the Chronicle ran an op-ed by John Eudy, described as a writer living in Houston:
SIXTY years ago today, a north Houston boy born in Madisonville, Texas, was crawling across the slate roof of the Reichstag building in the heart of Berlin. Nazi snipers tried to pick him off , before he reached his objective. Twenty of his own buddies were laying down enfilading fire that kept them from stopping PrivatePvt. R.C. Woods, Bobby to his friends, from reaching his goal.
A flag can was the symbolize all that can be is good and right about a nation, but in the case of Germany it had become the international sign of all that is evil and bloody about a nation: the Nazi flag.
Bobby Woods wanted that flag, and he wanted if off the towering flag pole as his personal statement that World War II was over. He wanted it as a souvenir that indicated democracy had triumphed over the pure evil of a nation and a people besotted and enthralled by their leader — Adolf Hitler.
Experts from the Antiques Road Show program tell me that this is no ordinary Nazi flag — of which there are hundreds of original examples. No! This was the ultimate symbol of the threat that almost conquered the world. It was a piece of cloth that waved and flapped over the government that spawned the worst regime of propaganda, genocide, mass murder and grandiose plans for a perverted world order ever seen by the modern world.
It didn't take long for the commenters at Lucianne to do their own fact-checking:
Funny I thought hostilities in all of Germany had ended May 8, 1945 and that the Russians had captured berlin alone on May 2, 1945
So how is this American soldier in the russian zone being shot at by nazi snipers on may 28, 1945 when the war was already over and it wasn't an american zone?
It sounds like there was ZERO fact checking done on this article
[snip]
http://www.euronet.nl/users/wilfried/ww2/ww2.htm
May 2, 1945 - Soviet forces occupy Berlin.
May 6, 1945 - Adm. Doenitz surrenders Germany to Brits and the Allies.
Can the Chronicle not be connected to the internet? Or is it simply too much trouble to fact-check before publishing a story?
via Florida Cracker who says, "You'll find this article right next to the one on high self-esteem being no substitute for study." And she's right!
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/31/05 07:38 AM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Comments (5)
Mayor White's success in Austin
Kristen Mack has a wrap-up story of how Harris County and the city of Houston did during the just-ended legislature session:
The city of Houston got off to a rocky start, with Whitmire threatening to kill Mayor Bill White's marquee traffic initiative, the Safe Clear mandatory freeway towing program. But the two brokered a deal to save Safe Clear.
The city fended off several attempts at gutting its plan for using cameras to catch red light violators. Houstonians can expect to see cameras at 50 intersections with the highest accident rates by this fall.
White also wanted to close late-night clubs after 2 a.m. He didn't succeed, but a Moreno bill tightening regulations against after-hours liquor sales was passed in his honor.
"The city started out the session thinking they could roll over us and get whatever they wanted," said Rep. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston. "They realized that wasn't going to work. They became a lot more cooperative as the session went on."
We saw that in action: Mayor White made peace with Sen. Whitmire and voila! We have the new and "improved" SAFEclear and soon we'll have red light cameras. Houstonians can rejoice at how much safer their lives will be. (It's not about revenue, it's not about revenue, it's not about revenue...)
A perennial measure that would remove the Houston mayor's effective control over the Metropolitan Transit Authority by changing the makeup of its board died quietly near the end of the session.
Probably many of you already knew that. I didn't and it took me aback. Does that mean we should hold Mayor White accountable, also, for all the "improvements" made to bus routes? If he chose to speak up, could he convince Metro to quit cutting the only transportation lifeline some area residents have?
Then Mack highlights one Houston victory that we didn't hear about until now:
The city had some quiet but huge victories, according to White.
"We could not advertise what our strategy was on all of our priorities," he said, because lawmakers whose bills the city opposed were trying to find city of Houston legislation they could kill. Among the below-the-radar successes, he said, was legislation to increase the city's authority over tax increment reinvestment zones to make sure they pay their fair share for all services.
Here's the city's explanation page on Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones.
And remember how the mayor was criticized for his lobbying team? He feels vindicated:
White praised the city's lobby team, led by his director of Government Affairs, Ann Travis, even though before the session he said the city's best lobbyists were the mayor and city council members.
"We adopted a set of principles and we accomplished most of it. It wasn't always easy or pretty."
I think it's safe to say the best lobbying done was by the mayor, especially that infamous late-night meeting he had with Sen. Whitmire at the Austin airport which saved SAFEclear. Did the subject of red light cameras come up in that meeting? We shouldn't be surprised if it did, since Whitmire effectively took care of the legislation that would have banned the revenue-generating devices.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/31/05 07:03 AM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (0)
30 May 2005
Houston funds day labor sites
Yesterday's Chronicle had a story that just boggles the mind:
Yupe, a volunteer at the nearby Our Lady of Guadalupe church, makes it sound simple. But if she and the organizers behind the East End Worker Development Center manage to get their facility off the ground, leaders say, it will be one of the first day-labor sites in the city to actually work.
Despite annual funding from the city of at least $100,000, day-labor centers have had a troubled history in Houston.
[snip]
"We feel very good about what's happening there," said Richard Cantu, head of the mayor's office on citizens services.
The city has pledged $90,000 annually to fund the East End center, in addition to the $100,000 already spent on the Oscar Romero site.
Of course, this relates to priorities:
By year's end, the Houston Police Department will have lost an estimated 740 officers — as many as the city of Orlando employs — to retirement in a two-year period.
For comparison purposes, in 2003 the department lost 138 officers through retirement, resignation, termination or death.
And there may not be enough money available in the next two fiscal years to train replacements for even half the officers the department is losing. Or to hire the 1,000-plus civilians the department is missing.
$100,000 here; $90,000 there. But even if we don't have enough police officers, at least we'll have some city-funded day-labor sites.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/30/05 12:55 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (4)
Dwight Silverman's Random Radio
Dwight Silverman had an idea called Random Radio and KPFT-90.1 is taking him up on it. The only downside is it will be at 4 a.m.:
Looks like I'll be the first KPFT listener to plug a digital music player into the station's mixing board for Random Radio.
Program Director Ernesto Aguilar is having me and my iPod in for some musical randomness at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning. I've asked him if it's possible to archive the show and if so, I'll link to it.
Dwight adds that you, too, can be a Random Radio personality.
However, I'm not sure what the problem is with commenter Gary. Lighten up, Gar!
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/30/05 12:36 PM | Houston Media | Technorati | Comments (0)
Move It!, by Rad Sallee
Today we get our first Move It! column by Rad Sallee. He discusses Metro bus drivers who have driven one million miles, accident-free; Trans-Texas Corridor studies; and a recurring pothole in the Montrose area.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/30/05 11:47 AM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Comments (3)
A breaking news editorial?
Two days ago, the Chronicle reported, very fairly I thought, about the decision of HISD administrator Margaret Stroud to retire after the results of an HISD investigation into her son's employment with the district. She will repay the salary he was paid and the investigation has been forwarded to the DA for any further consideration.
At this point I want to add that it is not uncommon in public education circles for a situation like this to be hushed up, with the offender either being promoted or retired -- with a handsome severance package. That did not happen in this case. Stroud is retiring and will make restitution.
Today a Chronicle editorial blames Dr. Saavedra for being too lenient:
Despite documented wrongdoing, Saavedra allowed Stroud the course of retiring with no penalty other than returning the money her son had been paid. That is a generous response to "critical lapses of judgment" that undermined the district's integrity and directed tax dollars to an unqualified family member. Saavedra noted that HISD's findings will be turned over to the Harris County district attorney's office for review.
I would be curious to know what the Chronicle's editorial board thinks Dr. Saavedra should have done. Stroud's retiring and repaying the money. The investigation's findings are being forwarded to the DA. Dr. Saavedra doesn't have the power to put her in jail, and I doubt seriously he has the power to punish her financially any more than the restitution.
What does the Chronicle think should have happened?
Also, I think the editorial writer makes quite a few assumptions that weren't reported in the story. The editorial is written so that readers think Stroud initiated the contracts, knew about the funding arrangements and approved everything. That's not what was reported in Jason Spencer's story, and in fact, the interpretation I took from Spencer's story is that Stroud's lack of oversight which led to this situation was one of the problems. Is this editorial breaking some news that Spencer didn't report?
And then the very last paragraph made me laugh-out-loud:
Houstonians must hope that Saavedra will soon be able to initiate solutions to festering HISD problems before they become front page headlines.
Actually that should be reworded a bit, because it's the front page headlines that have been known to lead to problems with HISD-initiated solutions.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/30/05 11:36 AM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Comments (1)
29 May 2005
Harris County late with 300,000 property tax appraisals
The deadline to protest a property tax appraisal is Tuesday, but according to KHOU-11, hundreds of thousands of Harris County homeowners still haven't received an appraisal:
When it comes to notifying homeowners about 2005 appraisals, the Harris County Appraisal District is barely in the game.
With the deadline looming to file tax protests 300,000 homeowners don't even know what their property is worth.
"It shouldn't take that long. They don't want to wait to get their tax money though," says homeowner Cindy Wolters.
11 News has learned that appraisers are looking at every piece of property in Harris County. That is more than a 1.5 million homes and businesses.
"We're working very hard to get it all done. We hope to have the bulk of the noticing done within the next two weeks," says HCAD Chief Deputy Sands Stiefer.
Stiefer says homes in areas that overlap into other counties or with school districts based in other counties, will be among the last to be appraised.
But don't worry about filing a protest after the May 31st deadline.
"Your notice is going to have a new protest deadline. It usually rolls over 30 days from the day we mail it," says Stiefer.
We've learned the Harris County Appraisal District has done enough of the math to determine the average increase this year will be about eight percent.
The average increase is eight percent. That's more than the rate of inflation, and more than most people get in a yearly pay increase. But the government machine must be fed, no matter what.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/29/05 08:41 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (0)
Let ttweak handle the next Super Bowl bid
Ken Hoffman has an interesting observation regarding Houston's loss of the 2009 Super Bowl:
The thing I wonder about is, whenever Houston goes after a major event, we send the same tired group of people to represent us. I've never seen a group less representative of Houston. This is a vibrant, 21st-century, diverse, on-the-move city. Roy Rogers and Dale Evans left town years ago.
If I were an NFL team owner, and the Houston contingent came to my door, I'd put a piece of candy in their bag and send them away.
Chris Baker echoed a similar sentiment last week -- that Houston is still seen as a city filled with rednecks. Maybe the ttweak people should handle the next Houston bid.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/29/05 11:38 AM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (1)
A look at the intersection of Main and Jefferson
The Chronicle reported a couple of days ago that the man killed recently by a MetroRail train was not legally impaired.
Also, Don Gallagher -- who moderates the Houston-MET Yahoo group -- visited the intersection where the fatal accident occurred and sent out his observations:
The entire time from when a green light starts to turn yellow until the trolley car gets a vertical bar (go signal) is 4.75 seconds. The light is yellow for approximately 3 seconds of that time. The "all red" interval is perhaps 1 second tops if that.
The key point here is that the trolley driver CANNOT see any cars approaching the intersection and the cars CANNOT see any trains traveling South (North ones can be seen easily) due to a one story building built close to Main Street.
In addition, the signal lights are all sychronized on Jefferson (all
turn green together....EXCEPT for the Travis Street light which is
still an old signal unit. Travis is the street prior to Main for those traveling East on Jefferson. This simple mistake creates a potential frustration level for drivers who are used to controlled traffic flow. The Travis light turns green and one suddenly sees Main go yellow.Forgetting that mistake (which adds to the potential for accidents,
the building blocking views, the fact that there is no signage warning about trains and the over head wires looking simply like electric or telephone lines AND a very short signal timing leads to a deadly situation.Who is at fault? The designers and those who oversee the construction. Metro has frequently commented that they were changing the signals to a 10 second interval with all directions red. This is not true at MANY of the intersections I passed through.
[snip]
[T]he time for the driver to even see the train is perhaps 1 second or less and so it is impossible to stop. He had ZERO time to make any corrections from the time he would have seen the train, even if he were looking to that direction (his left).
I checked John Gaver's site and he lists two accidents last year at Main and Jefferson (10/22 and 12/15), then the fatality on May 10, and another accident at that intersection on May 13, with four injuries.
RELATED: Metro sees nothing wrong with dangerous intersection (blogHOUSTON),
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/29/05 10:49 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (3)
28 May 2005
HISD official out after investigation into son's employment
An internal HISD investigation, prompted by a Chronicle inquiry, has sent a top HISD official packing:
The Houston school district's chief school administrator agreed Friday to retire and repay the $63,000 her son was paid for consulting work that an HISD investigation has found violated state laws and district policies.
Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra said in a written statement that Margaret Stroud "made critical errors in judgment in this case, and she will be held accountable."
All the evidence in the case will be turned over to Harris County prosecutors for possible criminal investigation, he said.
The school district's inquiry into Stroud and the contracts awarded her son, Darren Fulton, began three weeks ago after the Houston Chronicle requested information on the arrangement.
On Friday, Inspector General Robert Moore released his 34-page report that details the efforts to get Fulton on the Houston Independent School District payroll despite his criminal record and policies intended to stop administrators from giving jobs to their relatives.
The findings also are prompting a call from Saavedra for more oversight of outside vendors and the HISD employees who sign off on their checks.
Stroud, 58, had been responsible for running all of HISD's 304 campuses and earned $158,000 annually. She came to the district as a sixth-grade teacher in 1968 and had been mentioned last year as a candidate for superintendent after Kaye Stripling's retirement.
Stroud accepted Saavedra's retirement and restitution offer after seeing the investigation report, he said.
Good for the Chronicle, asking questions about the employment arrangement and good for HISD, responding in a very straightforward and firm way to the investigation's findings.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/28/05 02:47 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (1)
Customers should double-check utility meter reading
KHOU-11 decided to check out how accurate utility meter reading is:
Sanford Dow is one of thousands of customers who feel they've been ripped off.
Dow explains that the water bill was outrageously high, as if someone was making it all up. "Yeah, that's what it certainly appeared to me."
What 11 News found was when it comes to you, the residential customer you are on your own. Nobody's independently checking to see if your utility meters work, or if the utility companies are doing an accurate job reading them and billing you.
Patricia Dolese says it's the consumer's responsibility to check.
Dolese used to handle customer complaints for the Texas Public Utility Commission.
The PUC regulates how much electric companies like Reliant charge, but has no systematic way of checking or auditing a company's metering and billing.
Centerpoint Energy says it does have an auditing arm -- its customers:
"We read 3 million meters a month," says James Sheppard of CenterPoint Energy.
CenterPoint Energy says its meter-reading is nearly 100 percent accurate.
"I don't think there's widespread inaccurate billing, no," says Sheppard.
But how do they know?
"I think we have 3 million customers that audit a month," says Sheppard.
So then is it really up to the customer to make sure that the bill seems to reflect accurately what they used?
"Sure, and I'm one of those customers," says Sheppard.
The story also says that big customers, such as HISD for example, hire consultants to check meter readings. HISD says it now saves $1 million per year by checking utility bills.
A staffer in Councilman Michael Berry's office went out and read some meters, compared the readings to previous bills and discovered discrepancies.
As for the gentleman at the beginning of the story with the disputed water bill, he gave up and paid it:
Sanford Dow says he fought with the water department, but finally gave up and paid a $1,300 bill.
"I figured I needed to shower every day and move on with my life," he says.
$1,300! Apparently, you really can't fight city hall.
RELATED: Houston's tricky water billing method (blogHOUSTON)
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/28/05 08:02 AM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (0)
An odd omission in Chron editorial
I have two questions regarding today's Chronicle editorial titled, "BETTER PROBATION: Governor should sign bill to keep dangerous criminals behind bars and help others go straight":
While partisan bickering prevails in Washington, a measure of bipartisanship survives at the Texas Capitol. HB 2193 was written by three Republican representatives and two Democrats, including Rep. Sylvester Turner of Houston. Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, sponsored the bill in the Senate.
Who are the three Republican representatives who helped write the bill? Why are only the Democrats named?
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/28/05 07:42 AM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Comments (2)
27 May 2005
Saturday morning BizRadio
Since Kevin decided to go away for the long weekend (very long, you poor readers), Saturday morning's BizRadio (1320 AM) show will have to make do with me, along with Charles Kuffner.
I have already made arrangements for my kids to be gone, because it never fails that the minute I get on the phone, all sorts of crises erupt.
Tune in, if you're able, to hear what topics pop up for discussion.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/27/05 08:00 PM | Houston Media | Technorati | Comments (0)
Summer reading?
Here's the link to Mayor White's proposed 2006 city budget.
And here's the link to Metro's FY2004 Annual Report, including Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). You have to skip to Page 16 to begin reading the good stuff. What immediately jumps out is the increase in sales tax revenues and the decrease in fare revenues which Metro attributes to declining bus ridership (strange, how did THAT happen?). Also Metro says the higher sales tax revenues are due to Houston's economic recovery, but says the accompanying job growth has not been significant enough to have a positive impact on ridership.
Uh huh. That's because Metro's transit offerings have become so woefully inadequate that people won't even consider the public transportation option.
But Metro has given Houston 7.5 miles of downtown light rail. You just have to get yourself downtown to use it.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/27/05 11:15 AM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (3)
Maybe this is why we need red light camera revenue
The city of Houston is expected to lose $2 million next year due to diminishing telephone landline franchise fees. More and more people are ending traditional phone service and relying only on cellphones, and that is costing the city millions of dollars, according to this KHOU-11 story:
So many cell phone users are simply dropping their landlines that it's causing problems at Houston City Hall. Unlike for landlines, the city does not collect franchise fees on each and every cell phone.
Houston's budget anticipates phone franchise fees to drop about $2 million next fiscal year. But has Houston really lost that many landlines to wireless phones?
"Frankly, I'm very suspicious," said Mayor Bill White. "I haven't been able to get a straight answer from SW, you know, Southwest Bell, SBC, in particular, why they've been paying less and less every year. And I don't think it's right."
SBC responds it "accurately reports access lines totals to the city, as required by law..." and that the fees "…are paid by customers through charges on their bills. SBC simply passes the fees through to the city. SBC does not profit from them."
It's a good thing we'll have red light camera revenue soon, not to mention that newly enacted fine for pocket motorcycles.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/27/05 08:18 AM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (13)
26 May 2005
Chron adds local music blog
The Chronicle is adding blogs at a fast and furious pace. The newest one, HandStamp, will focus on the local music scene:
Welcome to HandStamp, a new blog dedicated to Houston's local music scene. Writers Sara Cress and Joey Guerra, whose bylines you'll recognize from our local bands page, will use this space to report on the local music scene. Enjoy, and be sure to use the comments area to agree, disagree or just offer random thoughts. They like those.
Okay all you music aficionados, bookmark it and comment away!
KEVIN WHITED (BELATEDLY) ADDS: This is potentially the best blog Chron.com (which I now think of as a slightly different entity from the newspaper proper) has added yet. No offense to the other bloggers and their subjects, but the local music scene was REALLY underrepresented in local blogging. So far as I know, Houston Calling was the only blog devoted to it previously (and those two blogs should really share links and content a bit more, because part of what makes a good blog is the sharing of information and links).
Chron.com's investment in a local music blog leverages talent that is already working that subject for the newspaper AND provides Chron.com content that won't fit in the print version. Houston music fans and Chron.com benefit.
It's amusing that Chron.com has beaten the allegedly "alternative" Houston Press to an online music blog. The Press just looks more tired every day.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/26/05 08:41 PM | Houston Arts/Culture | Technorati | Comments (7)
HISD students beat national average on Stanford 10 test
HISD received some good news with the results of the Stanford 10 test:
More than 165,000 HISD students in grades 1 through 11 took the Stanford 10 test or its Spanish-language equivalent, the Aprenda, and they did better nearly across the board than most students around the country.
[snip]
HISD students not in Special Education at five grade levels-third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, seventh grade, and eleventh grade-beat that national average midrange ranking of 50 in all subject areas tested on the Stanford. In addition, first- and second-graders at HISD beat the national average in all but one of the subjects, and HISD eighth- and tenth-graders beat the national average in most subjects.
On average, HISD grade levels improved or at least held steady in their overall scores on the Stanford test this year compared to last year. For example, in reading, the scores for HISD students across six grade levels improved, while two grades held steady. In math, four grade levels improved their scores, while four grade levels held steady. More HISD grade levels made progress this year on their Stanford scores than declined.
For Spanish-speaking students at HISD, the news is even better: HISD’s scores on the Spanish-language Aprenda soared far above the national average in most cases.
I have said before that HISD is one of the nation's better large urban districts. That's not to say HISD doesn't have challenges; we are all well aware of HISD's shortcomings, but this is an outstanding achievement for HISD teachers, students and parents.
And I sincerely hope Jason Spencer can find the good in this news. It would be nice to end the school year on an upbeat note.
UPDATE: Here's Jason Spencer's story. It's not quite as negative as I was expecting, but he does seek to compare the Stanford results to TAKS results. Whatever.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/26/05 08:21 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (2)
May sweeps spinning shall begin (updated)
Now that May sweeps has ended, Laurence Simon predicts how our local stations will spin the results.
UPDATE: Laurence points out that the Chronicle's Mike McDaniel has a story in today's paper and notes that there is indeed a fair amount of spinning going on.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/26/05 07:50 PM | Houston Media | Technorati | Comments (1)
Wading through Grand Parkway spin
Last night's Grand Parkway meeting was informative, spin-filled and fairly well-attended.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/26/05 06:29 PM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (1)
Chron's story on Grand Parkway meeting
I was able to attend the Grand Parkway meeting last night and I'll get a post written up later today. For now, though, here's the Chronicle's story, by Kim Jackson:
State transportation officials assured Spring-area residents Wednesday night that TxDOT, and not the Harris County Toll Road Authority, is overseeing a project that would run through the rapidly developing north Harris County suburb.
[snip]
Residents are concerned that, if the project is turned over to the toll road authority, they would not have an opportunity to make public comments on the environmental and social impacts the chosen route would have on neighborhoods.
"We are looking at (the toll road authority) as a potential funding partner," Trietsch said. "We will select that route with the least amount of impacts. There are no routes available, however, that have zero impacts."
It was great to see this in today's "City & State" section, since I was expecting a story to appear in next week's "This Week" section. It's nice to be wrong!
KTRK-13 has a small blurb on the concerns of residents and KRIV-26 had a camera crew at the meeting. I have no idea if anything ran on KRIV last night since I was still at the meeting.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/26/05 08:32 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (18)
25 May 2005
Take the rest of the day off
Laurence Simon had an eventful end to his lunch today. Just go read it.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/25/05 02:46 PM | Houston People | Technorati | Comments (3)
No Super Bowl for Houston
But, but...we've got light rail. We've got empty downtown hotels. What about our new Central Park? We've worked so hard on our world-classness -- what happened?
Here's the local coverage: the Chronicle, KHOU-11, KTRK-13 and KPRC-2,
Oh, and Sedosi Alhambra is relieved. This made me laugh.
UPDATE: A reader suggests that I left out a couple of Houston amenities that contribute greatly to our world-classness: the George R. Brown Convention Center and our fancy new downtown parking meters that, uh, require babysitters.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/25/05 02:33 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (0)
Grand Parkway meeting tonight
Tonight, Spring/Tomball residents have an opportunity to meet and hear from officials regarding the Grand Parkway:
Please join us for a Town Hall meeting
to address current developments with the Grand Parkway through Spring and the Tomball area (I-45 to FM 249):Klein Collins High School Auditorium
20811 Ella Blvd., Spring, TX. 77388May 25, 2005, 7:00 P.M.
And this is from Kim Jackson's Chronicle story last week:
Several Harris County and TxDOT officials said they plan to attend the meeting and address residents' concerns.
"Since there is confusion about the status and future of the proposed Grand Parkway, I agree that a public update is a good idea and will attend ... " said Art Storey, executive director of the Harris County's Public Infrastructure Department, in an e-mail sent to the Spring coalition and the Houston Chronicle.
Storey said he would clarify several points at the meeting, including the fact that the Grand Parkway project is under TxDOT's jurisdiction, and the state, not Harris County, would decide " ... when, whether, where, and by whom that facility will be constructed ... ."
"The current role of the Harris County Toll Road Authority is to evaluate, in response to TxDOT's invitation, whether we would propose to be TxDOT's implementing partner for construction and operation of that highway as a toll road," Storey said.
Storey said Mike Strech, Harris County Toll Road Authority director, or his representative, also would be at the meeting to show residents the particular route or routes the toll road authority is studying and how those routes relate to TxDOT's study.
David Gornet, executive director of the Grand Parkway Association, said his message at the meeting would be that the association continues work on a supplemental environmental study on the F-2 segment.
I am trying to attend the meeting, depending on how child care works itself out.
And a big thank you to Charles Kuffner for also posting on this.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/25/05 09:07 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (3)
Mayor White, Houston savior
Mayor White will be using this in his next campaign:
Mayor Bill White owes his election in a landslide nearly two years ago to his image as a successful corporate executive who could sort out the city's tangled finances. In reaching agreement with firefighter union negotiators on a new employment contract, the mayor has nearly completed a series of arduous challenges that will fulfill his principal campaign promises.
What follows is a glowing laundry list of the mayor's achievements, with nary a negative word to be found.
Mayor White is SWELL!
Uh huh. It's useful to remember that the Chronicle's editorial board endorsed former Mayor Lee P. Brown again and again.
And Sedosi Alhambra says this editorial doesn't pass the smell test.
RELATED: Mayor White's been checking things off his to-do list (blogHOUSTON)
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/25/05 08:49 AM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Comments (4)
Houston needs to focus on the right quality-of-life issues
Tory Gattis of Houston Strategies highlights Joel Kotkin's new work, " Urban Legends: Cities Aren't Doing As Well As You Think":
Cities must return to a progressive focus on fixing their real problems--that is, the problems of the majority of the people who live there--not serving the interests of artists, hipsters, and their wealthy patrons. Right now school reform is often hostage to the power of teachers' unions. City budgets, which could be applied to improving economic infrastructure, are frequently bloated by, among other things, excessive public sector employment and overgenerous pensions. In the contest for the remaining public funds, the knitted interests of downtown property holders, arts foundations, sports promoters, and nightclub owners often overwhelm those of more conventional small businesses and family-oriented neighborhoods that could serve as havens for the middle class.
And Tory says:
To be honest, I actually think Houston is doing many of the right things he's talking about. Yeah, we have gotten caught up in some of the glitz: stadiums, convention centers, a hip downtown - but we've also been pretty diligent on improving infrastructure and education.
Actually, we are seeing the local teachers union (assisted by activist groups and the local newspaper) throw up every road block imaginable to Dr. Saavedra's reform ideas for HISD. In the case of Gayle Fallon's group, LULAC and the NAACP, it's not about better education, it's about maintaining power.
As for the other interests Kotkin mentions, Houston has only temporarily "solved" its pension mess by moving it to the Houston Hilton-Americas, which isn't doing so hot; the downtown light rail ($320 million +) has been fueled at least partly by downtown property interests, including Metro's interests; and we have three ritzy new stadiums funded by taxpayers, with the Sports Authority yearning for at least one more.
As one of our commenters so ably put it recently, there are three things that will make a community desirable: good schools, low crime, and low taxes. Houston has many great amenities, but those big three are struggling.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/25/05 08:14 AM | Houston Life | Technorati | Comments (32)
Multi-agency task force targets MS-13
I was late checking the "This Week" sections and almost missed this story about Houston's growing nightmare -- MS-13:
"Certainly southwest Houston is not the only part of the city where we have seen gangs, but we have seen an increase, an escalation of gang activity in the southwest part of the city."
The speaker, a Houston FBI agent who asked not to be identified for security reasons, wasn't in the conference room at the bureau's Houston headquarters on T.C. Jester recently. He and other members of a multi-agency gang task force were out in the field on an operation to arrest more members of the Central American gang Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13.
The local FBI bureau and other partnering agencies — the Houston Police Department, Harris County Sheriff's Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons — have achieved success in putting MS-13 members behind bars.
In recent months, the Houston task force has arrested about 20 members of MS-13, mostly Salvadoran immigrants who started the gang in Los Angeles during the 1980s.
[snip]
Southwest Houston — particularly the Fondren, Beechnut and Gulfton areas — has particularly seen an increase in gang activities in recent years, the agent said.
On April 12, the Houston community was rocked when a toddler, Aiden Naquin, was shot to death in what police called a drug-related crime, making him one of about nine Houston residents at the time that were believed to have been killed at the hands of MS-13 members. A 19-year-old Salvadoran has been charged with capital murder in that case.
Law enforcement, meanwhile, has stepped up its reliance on the public to provide information about suspicious activity that may signal criminal gangs, such as MS-13 or others, are operating in their neighborhoods.
Kevin and I had a conversation about this just the other day. We cannot figure out why there hasn't been a well-publicized effort to get the public involved in rooting out MS-13. We know HPD has a manpower shortage; and there's that old saying that the best defense is a good offense. The local citizenry should be encouraged to keep eyes and ears open, to help law enforcement. A fearful public is MS-13's best hope.
And can someone PLEASE explain to me why this story is stuck in a "This Week" section? This should be on the front of "City & State" at the very least.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/25/05 07:03 AM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (0)
24 May 2005
An early jump on the weekend
I'm getting an early jump on the weekend, away from the internet.
Anne Linehan will be posting while I'm away, and will also be doing the BizRadio1320 show this Saturday, so be sure to tune in!
Here's wishing you all a good Memorial Day weekend in advance. See you on the other side!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/24/05 11:24 PM | Announcements | Technorati | Comments (0)
Mayor White orders investigation into HPD's handling of Halliburton protest
Those oh-so-peaceful Halliburton protesters have convinced Mayor White to ask for an investigation into the possibility that police were a bit rough last week:
What started as a noisy protest outside a shareholders meeting quickly erupted into a confrontation.
Police later said they were trying to clear a sidewalk and a driveway blocked by protesters demonstrating against Halliburton. But protesters complained the cops went out of control.
"But there were some mad cowboys and they were there that day," said one of the demonstrators who spoke to the council Tuesday. "I personally am not going to criticize our officers."
And so they came to City Hall, some to show their bruises.
"He looked me in the eye and then struck me across the face, across the mouth and nose. And then, and then I was just kind of reeling and he hit me across the chest," said another protester, Nicole Matthews.
The heart bleeds. I wouldn't be surprised if the Official Halliburton Protest Manual instructs participants to besiege the next City Council meeting with cries of police brutality, while demanding an investigation.
Here is KHOU-11's original story that includes the video feeds of police confronting protesters.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/24/05 08:17 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (2)
Chief Hurtt is leaving a trail of red light cameras
Following up on my red light camera post, a reader passed on an interesting tidbit that is easily verified through Google:
Oxnard, CA was one of the first cities in the nation to utilize red light camera technology, in 1997. Guess who was Oxnard's police chief in 1997?
Yep, Harold Hurtt.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/24/05 05:56 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (5)
Houston company begins sex offender alert service
Houston-based Scan USA has a new service available:
Scan USA Corp. has launched a service that tracks the movement of registered sex offenders in neighborhoods.
The company's new predator alert feature is available in California, Florida and Texas, and will be phased in nationally during the next eight weeks. The alert is provided to both public safety agencies and citizens free of charge through corporate sponsorships.
Scan USA developed the national predator tracking service as a result of public demand for information, according to George Sharp, chairman of Houston-based Sharp Holding Corp, the parent company of Scan USA.
The tracking of sex offenders led to legislation in Florida and is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Congress following incidents by sex offenders.
"This is public information, but many don't know where to look or rarely take the time to go through the volumes of information available in states' online registries," says Russ Krauss, chief operating officer of Scan USA.
You can sign up online for the free service.
So far, there's no word if the tough, smart LiveJournalist approves or disapproves. Maybe being tracked is an invasion of a predator's privacy. Not that most of us care, of course.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/24/05 05:33 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (1)
Former HISD dropouts get back on track and graduate
Jason Spencer has written a nice story (it's true!) about HISD's success with students who had previously dropped out:
A 21-year-old mother living in one of Houston's poorest neighborhoods, Claudia Betancourt wasn't thinking about school when she heard a knock at the door last August.
Jobless and unsure of her future, Betancourt cracked the door to see Houston Independent School District Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra and about 20 volunteers waiting.
"The next thing you know, I looked up and my whole street was blocked," Betancourt said.
What would it take, they asked, to get her back in school and off HISD's dropout list?
Promises were made, and by day's end Betancourt was in the Furr High School nurse's office getting the immunization she needed to go back to school.
"One of my teachers helped me get a job at Fiesta," she said. Others lined up daytime childcare for her two young children.
This weekend, Betancourt and 47 other former dropouts coaxed back to school through HISD's Reach out to Dropouts program will get their diplomas. Most of the 291 returning students completed the school year that ends Thursday, Saavedra said.
"Some did, indeed, drop out again. But others stayed," he said. "I can't think of a day when I've been more proud to be superintendent."
Spencer's article also mentions the story of Emmanuel Miranda, who was included in the post I ran over the weekend.
It's wonderful to read a story like this. We don't need bad news all the time; good news is good for the soul!
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/24/05 02:47 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (1)
Bush Intercontinental has wi-fi
Hobby Airport already has wi-fi and now Bush Intercontinental has it, too:
Today, the Houston Airport System (HAS) and Sprint (NYSE: FON) announced the availability of Sprint PCS wireless fidelity or “Wi-Fi” access at Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH).
[snip]
Customers will need a Wi-Fi card or mobile device embedded with Wi-Fi technology in order to take advantage of the service. Users are greeted by the Bush Intercontinental portal page that provides a host of free information, including real-time flight information.
RELATED: KHOU-11 coverage
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/24/05 02:14 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (6)
Metro should "eat its own dog food" (updated!)
Jay Tea at Wizbang blog has an interesting post:
I once read a book about the development of Windows NT (no, I really don't know why). It introduced me to a wonderful concept, inelegantly named "eating your own dog food." It was a stage of development where the programmers were forced to actually install and run Windows NT on their own computers and use that for work, to see how their efforts work for a user.
I think it's a great idea. It forces people to see just how their efforts work for the people on the other side of the fence, to see their perspective. What seems perfectly intuitive and simple to the engineer can be baffling to the end-user.
He goes on to explain that some cities employ a similar idea with residency requirements for employees, and Boston employees are none too happy about it, because of Boston's high cost-of-living.
I mentioned this one time in relation to Metro and I still think it should be a requirement -- that Metro officials and employees should be required to use Metro services. Nothing would fix Metro's pathetic offerings and service faster than Metro Bigs and employees forced to use the mass transit they have inflicted on the greater Houston area.
I will give credit to Lucas Wall (gosh, I miss that guy). He wrote about Metro and used MetroRail, and when Metro failed him, he wrote about that.
And I think it's time to see some Metro Bigs experience what Laurence Simon goes through, and then writes about. Let them deal with uninformed bus drivers and MetroLine phone answerers. Let them try to get to work on time from an outlying area, where one is required to make multiple bus changes and walk blocks to get to another stop. We've seen reports of people who have given up because it would take them 2 or 3 hours to get to work with Metro's service "improvements." Let's see these officials leave their precious cars at a Park and Pillage with no security and hope the car is intact when they return. Let officials deal with the homeless on the train.
It'll never happen, of course, but it's fun to think about.
UPDATE: Laurence details his ride home today -- three buses, one Danger Train and a brief stop at the market = a bit over TWO HOURS!
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/24/05 11:03 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (2)
23 May 2005
James Howard Gibbons: The tough, smart LiveJournalist!
Chronicle editorial page editor James Howard Gibbons has posted another Editorial LiveJournal entry on his editorial page today.
Sure, he can call it a Sounding Board article, but any column that uses "I" as much as Gibbons' does is an Editorial LiveJournal in our view.
Apparently, the Editorial LiveJournalist wants those silly readers who see the world in black and white and who criticized that offensive editorial on Florida's new child predator law to know that he really does know best. He served on a jury after all, and was TOUGH. Tough and smart, not unlike Jim Adler!
Matt Bramanti gives the Editorial LiveJournal a good Fisking over at Lone Star Times.
UPDATE (05-24-2005): I neglected Sedosi Alhambra's post on the tough, smart LiveJournalist (item #7).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/23/05 11:25 PM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Comments (4)
Mayor White unveils budget proposal
The Chronicle's Matt Stiles has filed an early report on Mayor White's proposed budget for the coming fiscal year:
The $1.69 billion preliminary budget — a five percent increase over the current fiscal year that ends June 30 — continues to make public safety a priority, with about 64 percent of all non-debt spending on fire, police and emergency medical services.
[snip]
The mayor emphasized what he called a disciplined, "performance-based" approach to crafting the budget. He said the city should do more with fewer people and less spending thanks to increased efficiency.
"We are always striving to have increased performance," he told reporters at an afternoon news conference. "Everything that we've done we've tried to get more value for the taxpayer dollar."
The Mayor's press office must be pleased with that coverage.
As Miya Shay reports for KTRK-13, raises for firefighters figure prominently in the new budget:
A plan for Houston to spend more than a billion and a half dollars is now on paper. Among the many pages of the latest proposed city budget is good news for Houston firefighters, men and women who have been working without a raise for years.
For the past six years, they battled blazes without a pay raise. That will change dramatically in a new contract, which over four years, will increase Houston firefighters' pay by 34 percent.
KHOU-11's Doug Miller reports that Mayor White has also included spending for new police cadet classes:
The budget also calls for two new fire stations and for four new police cadet classes.
Four new classes aren't going to solve HPD's manpower shortage, but at least the problem finally seems to be on the "Public Safety" mayor's radar.
UPDATE (05-24-2005): The updated reporting from Matt Stiles for today's print edition of the Chronicle is much more thorough. Here is an interesting blurb:
The general government sector, which includes citywide costs that can't be attributed to specific departments, would get the largest percentage increase: about 33 percent.
33 percent? That sounds like real money!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/23/05 11:00 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (8)
Barron examines latest sports talk radio ratings
The first Arbitron ratings are out since KBME-790's flip to its current sports talk format, and the station appears to be doing well.
The Chronicle's David Barron examines the numbers:
The broadest audience measurement, persons age 12-plus from 6 a.m. to midnight Monday through Sunday, doesn't look too good. KILT slipped from 21st place in the fall book to 23rd for winter 2005 (January-March), and KBME came in 31st, or next to last.
KILT, however, is pleased that its morning and afternoon drive numbers combined are in the top 10 among men age 25 through 54 with a 3.7 rating, and KBME is happy that it showed significant growth in that same demographic in its first full ratings period since making the move from music to sports.
For adults 25-54 from 6 a.m. to midnight, KBME went from a rating of .1 to .5, and for men 25-54 it increased from .2 to .9. KILT's numbers went from 1.6 to 1.8 for persons 25-54 and from 2.9 to 3.0 for the men 25-54 demo.
"That shows me we brought new people to the party, which is important for us as we try to grow the format," said Ken Charles of Clear Channel Radio, which owns KBME. "If I just take audience from them, it's not a win for anybody."
In afternoon drive time (3-7 p.m. weekdays), where Marc Vandermeer and Rich Lord on KILT face off against Charlie Pallilo on KBME, KILT's persons 25-54 rating went from 2.2 to 1.9 while KBME went from .1 to .9. For men 25-54, KILT dropped from a 4.1 rating to 3.0, and KBME went from .1 to 1.5.
One suspects Pallilo's numbers will only continue to improve.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/23/05 09:07 PM | Houston Media | Technorati | Comments (0)
KPRC-950 drops Newsweek radio program
Ken Charles, regional vice president of programming for Clear Channel Houston, has announced that as of this past Sunday, he has pulled the program Newsweek on the Air from KPRC-950.
Charles says that the program will remain off the air until Newsweek offers an explanation of how the false Koran story could have appeared in the magazine, and what steps will be taken to prevent the poor use of unnamed sources in the future.
Charles passes along that he made this decision in his role as programming director for KPRC.
PREVIOUSLY: Ken Charles knows how to generate buzz (bH)
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/23/05 08:55 PM | Houston Media | Technorati | Comments (0)
Man arrested in Houston for offer to sell bomb to terrorist group
A Pennsylvania man has been arrested in Houston for attempting to sell a bomb to an al-Qaeda related group:
Ronald Allen Grecula, of Bangor, Pa., was arrested Friday in Houston during a meeting with undercover FBI agents. During that meeting, Grecula indicated willingness to build and sell an explosive device that was to be used against Americans, according to court documents.
[snip]
Grecula negotiated with a confidential source and later undercover officers between April and last Friday to build and sell a bomb to terrorist groups targeting the United States, according to court documents.
The FBI recorded conversations with Grecula, in which he talked about technical knowledge about building an explosive device, his willingness to put on a demonstration, and the need for all involved to "be careful" as they planned the venture, Shelby said.
Was he going to put on his demonstration in Houston? Oh dear.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/23/05 01:35 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (2)
22 May 2005
Student asks city to fight murders, shootings, other crime
We can now add a high-school student troubled about rampant crime in his southwest Houston neighborhood to the blogHOUSTON chorus wondering when Mayor White and his council plan to address the Houston Police Department's manpower issues.
Here's an excerpt from Rick Casey's column today:
IT was not a situation Lee High School student Donald Hanks could easily have imagined.
Standing at a microphone in the school library Thursday night in front of a crowd of 200, he was politely but firmly asking for specific commitments from two City Council members and enough police brass for several school bells.
[snip]
They wanted help cracking down on the crime that has left four students and former students dead and seven more shot, that has drug dealers patrolling the neighborhood, that has prostitution run out of "spas" and rent-by-the-hour motels.
They asked for and received promises of:
•A police storefront office in the area.
•The closing of one particularly bad nightclub and efforts to identify and close other problem clubs.
•A school zone to cut down on speeding traffic on Hillcroft. (High schools are not normally given school zones.)
•An effort to increase the number of 70-member cadet classes from two to four to begin to make up for the loss to retirement of 500 Houston police of all ranks in the past 18 months.
•Monthly meetings with the Lee group to plan and assess crime-fighting efforts.
•A commitment to conduct a study to determine the number and kinds of crimes being committed in the school's area.
Mayor White and his council enacted SAFEclear under the guise of public safety. They plan on installing red-light cameras under the guise of public safety. They have banned smoking under the guise of public safety.
Why won't they address HPD's worsening manpower difficulties, which are directly related to public safety?
UPDATE: KPRC-2 joins the chorus tonight as well, with a story entitled Police Shortage Affects HPD Response Times:
Last year, the Houston Police Department received more than 1.6 million 911 calls. Yet, the department is suffering through a critical manpower shortage. The shortage is now affecting how quickly officers are responding to some of the most urgent cries for help, the Local 2 Troubleshooters reported Sunday.
[snip]
[HPD Chief Harold] Hurtt said he knows his department is struggling to keep up in certain areas, but it's a problem that's not going to get better anytime soon.
"In the time since I've been here we've lost probably 500 officers. We're hiring them 70 at a time, so it's going to be a long time before we can catch up," Hurtt said.
Hans Marticiuc is the president of the Houston Police Officer's Union. He said it is not just the public, he's also hearing from officers who are worried about getting backup quickly.
"It's a concern and it ought to be a concern for the citizens," Marticiuc said. "I'm hoping our elected officials hear this stuff, see this information, and realize staffing over here has got to be the highest priority because it's a public safety issue."
It sounds as if KPRC shamed former HPD officer and current councilmember Adrian Garcia into promising to act on the manpower shortage. We'll have to keep watching to see if he follows through, or if he can interest Mayor White and the rest of council in this problem that this blog and KTRH-740's Chris Baker have been pounding on for a while.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/22/05 09:40 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (1)
Hines issues a correction, retreats to France
The Chronicle's Coven-obsessed D.C. columnist issued a correction today for that embarrassing gaffe from last week's column:
My Wednesday column about the "nuclear option" contained the wrong supermajority normally required in the Senate to cut off debate. A three-fifths vote is required. I made an initial error, which was compounded by an editing error.
Neither the D.C. columnist nor his editors know the filibuster rule? That seems less than ideal.
What a great time to send Cragg Hines to France to report on European constitutionalism. Maybe he'll have better luck with it.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/22/05 09:18 PM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Comments (3)
Exposing the "safety" myth of red light cameras
Since it appears Houstonians will now face two different standards for red light offenses (criminal, if written up by a police officer; civil, if caught on camera) let's look back at the City Council minutes from last December when Council debated the issue. What I find especially noteworthy is that in public comments several people suggested lengthening yellow light times, and several councilmembers appeared to be interested in the idea, even asking city officials (Mayor White included) if it had been studied. The disappointing response from one city official follows: (pdf, page 7):
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/22/05 08:37 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (9)
HISD graduates overcome tremendous odds
HISD spokesman Terry Abbott recently sent out a release with some inspiring graduation success stories. I'm a complete pushover for beating-the-odds stories, so I'm going to reprint the entire piece in the extended entry.
Congratulations to the soon-to-be graduates!
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/22/05 07:48 PM | Houston People | Technorati | Comments (0)
An unsatisfied light rail rider
A contributor at HAIF asks a question about MetroRail:
After today's disasterous commute #36 (oh yes, we're counting) with my poor husband, I think Metrorail sucks big toes. Big nasty dirty toes at that. So, I am wondering how many here use the rail every single day and your thoughts on it.
BTW, today's disaster was a phantom wreck and they put all the riders on shuttle buses to get to downtown only to find there was no wreck at all, in fact the minute my husband was seated on the shuttle another train passed them right by... the shuttle driver didn't know which way to go, and we are now working on a 1 hour commute from MD Anderson hospital to right inside downtown at 45 and Main (56 minutes to be exact). I wonder how long it will take him to get home from there? My guess is another hour at least.
Thanks, Metro! You've done a bang-up job, no pun intended.
This was posted last Monday, May 16; I don't remember a Danger Train crash on that day, but a responding comment says:
Local news showed helicoper shots of the wreck, near the McGowen Station.
The last crash that local media has reported (I think) is this one. Hmmmm, was there another unreported wreck?
The comments in the post are interesting, with both supporters and detractors weighing in. Several mention that current service is so concentrated in downtown, it's almost unusable to those who live further out.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/22/05 11:33 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (1)
21 May 2005
The Casey LiveJournal Monologues, blogged
Some time ago, we noted that Chronicle columnist Rick Casey would be speaking to the Harris County Democratic Party.
Certainly, journalists are welcome to speak to groups -- even political groups -- to promote their news organization and their work, whether it's Rick Casey speaking to Democrats or Dan Feldstein speaking to conservative-activist talk-radio listeners (an appearance scheduled and then canceled).
However, it's extremely useful to news consumers to know what those journalists actually say when out and about. Thus, the Houston Democrats blog has performed a fine service to news consumers and media watchers alike in Houston by recounting Casey's remarks. Here's a sample:
Rick says there is a new nationl religion: God wants you to be rich. If you are not rich, you are not with God. Basically, the right wing would like to do away with CHIP, Medicaid, and the school fund. Instead religion says we should worship markets.Markets aren't all bad, but Rick cautioned that we should consider how to make markets do what they do well and to tame them so they do. The rich say we do not have to do anything to manage markets. The poor just have to get with God, and that will solve their problems. Rick noted that at one time it was the blacks who were not believed to be with God, now it's the poor.
Essentially, the right wing has stollen the identity of Chritianity and turned it against the "non-believers." Rick asked how is it that God wants us to have a 3-5% revenue cap?
It's certainly provocative and informative reading.
Casey's columns regularly lean to the left, and we have pointed out occasions when he seems willing to flesh out details on issues that are of interest to the editorial board. The fact that he is a columnist on the news pages, but regularly offers editorial opinion in his column, seems not to be a concern to anyone at the Chronicle, although it's not clear to me why his column doesn't run on the editorial page where it belongs.
Of course, if he were moved there, the lack of balance on the editorial page would be even more striking (Cragg Hines, Clay Robison, and Casey as the staff writers on the Left, not to mention James Howard Gibbons, Andrea Georgsson, and Mr. Kathryn Kase representing liberal pet causes in unsigned editorials -- with no identifiable local conservatives writing regularly), and the laughable claim that the editorial position is "not liberal or conservative" would be that much harder to take seriously. One does feel sorry for actual reporters who have to share the news pages with Casey, though.
RELATED: My double-top-secret agenda (Rob Booth, Lone Star Times), Pay no attention to that columnist behind the veil (Sedosi Alhambra, Isolated Desolation).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/21/05 10:33 PM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Comments (1)
Chronicle reacts to DeLay remarks by Earle
Yesterday, the Chronicle editorial board, which has been unrelenting in its criticism of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R), surprised us with this criticism of recent comments by Travis Country district attorney Ronnie Earle (D) at a Democratic interest-group fundraiser:
Republicans have accused the veteran prosecutor, a Democrat, of conducting a partisan witch hunt. Earle's attendance and remarks attacking DeLay at a Democratic fund-raiser last week in Dallas damaged the credibility of his investigation with a stunning display of prosecutorial impropriety.
The editorial board goes on to question Earle's judgment and temperament.
Tom Kirkendall offers further thoughts on the editorial board's treatment of Earle, and contrasts it with the newspaper's silence on the topic of inflammatory statements against former Enron officials by investigating prosecutors.
PREVIOUSLY: DeLay pursuer invokes DeLay's name to raise political funds (bH).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/21/05 08:26 PM | Houston People | Technorati | Comments (1)
Millie Bush is the best dog park
This is pretty neat: the Millie Bush Bark Park has been named the best dog park in the U.S.:
Millie Bush Bark Park in far west Houston has been ranked the best in the nation by Dog Fancy magazine.
The 15-acre dog park, with three man-made ponds, walkways and fake fire hydrants, was opened 1 1/2 years ago by Harris County Precinct 3 and was named in honor of the former president's late springer spaniel.
"Never-say-die supporters waged a five-year campaign to open Millie Bush, Houston's first dog park, inside George Bush Park," says the magazine in its June edition.
"And was this Texas-size jewel ever worth the wait."
Susan Chaney, editor of Dog Fancy, said the magazine took nominations from readers and assigned a writer to evaluate the 60 parks that were mentioned the most.
There are about 700 dog parks around the country, she said.
"The reason Millie Bush Park came in on top is that after the writer had interviewed people about the park, her comment was that they had unparalleled amenities, including three man-made ponds — one that was designated just for small dogs. That was pretty impressive to us."
THIS is world-class! Or is it woof-class?
RELATED: Houston Dog Park Association
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/21/05 02:43 PM | Houston Life | Technorati | Comments (2)
A thank you, from blogHOUSTON
We had a terrific time at the Armadillo Palace last night. Thanks to everyone who came out to join us -- it was great putting faces to names and catching up with everyone.
Special thanks to Laurence for getting the ball (er, armadillo?) rolling. =)
We'll have to do it again soon.
KEVIN WHITED ADDS: Yes, thanks to all! And my personal thanks to those of you who conspired on the birthday card (even though I generally discourage any acknowledgment of my aging process!).
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/21/05 11:31 AM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (5)
Don't forget about Metro's latest service "improvements"
Metro has posted a press release reminder of some impending service changes, otherwise known as "improvements":
METRO also will launch a new bus route - the 59 Aldine Mail Crosstown - to serve the Aldine community in north Houston. The new route will offer weekday service from 5:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Buses will run on a 30-minute frequency during morning and afternoon peak hours and a 60-minute frequency during the midday. A portion of this new route replaces the 54 Aldine/Hollyvale route, which will be discontinued May 29. Due to the Memorial Day holiday, the first day of service on the 59 Aldine Mail Crosstown will be Tuesday, May 31.
The 59 Aldine Mail Crosstown offers access to nine schools in the Aldine Independent School District, two public libraries, grocery stores, a health clinic and a Social Security office. The route also offers connections to the 6 Jensen, 56 Airline Ltd, 66 Yale (to be renumbered the 8 Yale, effective May 29), 83 Lee Road Circulator and 102 Bush IAH Express bus routes.
Other service changes slated to go in to effect on Sunday, May 29, include the addition or discontinuation of select trips on several routes as well as schedule modifications. For more information on the May 29 service changes, call METROLine at 713-635-4000.
Well, well. Isn't that interesting? In this release Metro doesn't list most of the service changes or provide a link to the previous announcement that listed the changes. A couple are in the press release, but for further details, riders are instructed to call MetroLine.
Is that the same Metro hotline that Laurence Simon describes here?
And, as always, we wonder how Metro is doing with its promised 50% increase in bus service? Maybe that's a typo on the Metro Solutions recap page. Maybe it should say Metro plans a 50% reduction in bus service.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/21/05 11:15 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (0)
Blogger radio segment today
Charles Kuffner and I will be appearing on the blogger segment on BizRadio1320 again today, from roughly 10:15 - 10:30 am.
Next week, Anne Linehan should be making her first appearance on the show in my place.
Recent archives are posted on the right sidebar, for hardcore fans. :)
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/21/05 09:46 AM | Houston Media | Technorati | Comments (0)
20 May 2005
Armadillo Palace reminder
Don't forget: Armadillo Palace this afternoon/evening, beginning about 5 p.m.
We would love to see you there!
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/20/05 12:21 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (3)
Metro wants an extra $100 million
This certainly takes some nerve:
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/20/05 08:33 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (18)
Feds accuse local developer of bribing former city official
Dan Feldstein has quite an eye-opening story in this morning's Chronicle:
The developer of the Houston Emergency Center gave cash in a bag to a top city official and promised her boyfriend about $250,000 if he was awarded another city deal, federal prosecutors allege.
Documents in Cleveland and Houston courts describe evidence that prosecutors had planned to use against Monique McGilbra, former head of Houston's Building Services Department, who instead pleaded guilty this month to conspiracy charges in both places.
[snip]
It was Keystone Group, then headed by Andrew Schatte, a politically connected Houston dealmaker. Schatte has not been charged with any crimes and denies many of the statements and all of the implications of the documents.
[snip]
U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby of Houston said after McGilbra pleaded guilty this week that related investigations are continuing. McGilbra has agreed to cooperate with authorities to get a reduced sentence.
Schatte has several close friends among state and local elected leaders and has been active setting up leases and investments for the city, Harris County and several local pension boards. The Houston Firefighters' Relief and Retirement Fund has invested more than $57 million in his recent deals.
Competitors sometimes have complained about his success. But Schatte says he's simply more in tune to local government needs and works hard on his specialty.
[snip]
Prosecutors allege some of Hardeman's [McGilbra's boyfriend] money was supposed to be funneled to McGilbra. They say Keystone also gave her a $1,000 Neiman Marcus gift certificate for her birthday, seven tickets to Texans games, use of a condominium in northern California and $1,000 cash in a bag also containing champagne.
Dang! This will be very interesting to watch unfold, and what great work by Dan Feldstein digging up this story.
RELATED: McGilbra supervised construction of 911 call center (blogHOUSTON)
KEVIN WHITED ADDS: It's also worth checking out the archived Chronicle stories on the sidebar of Feldstein's story today. Those stories were also written by Feldstein, and help tie together some pieces. Feldstein deserves credit for digging deeper into this story.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/20/05 06:57 AM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (7)
19 May 2005
DeLay pursuer invokes DeLay's name to raise political funds
The Chronicle's Michael Hedges reports on some ill-advised comments by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle at a Democratic Party fundraiser:
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who denies partisan motives for his investigation of a political group founded by Republican leader Tom DeLay, was the featured speaker last week at a Democratic fund-raiser where he spoke directly about the congressman.A newly formed Democratic political action committee, Texas Values in Action Coalition, hosted the May 12 event in Dallas to raise campaign money to take control of the state Legislature from the GOP, organizers said.
Earle, an elected Democrat, helped generate $102,000 for the organization.
In his remarks, Earle likened DeLay to a bully and spoke about political corruption and the investigation involving DeLay, the House majority leader from Sugar Land, according to a transcript supplied by Earle.
"This case is not just about Tom DeLay. If it isn't this Tom DeLay, it'll be another one, just like one bully replaces the one before," Earle said.
"This is a structural problem involving the combination of money and power," he added. "Money brings power and power corrupts."
The irony of Mr. Earle's statement, of course, is that he presents himself as an objective district attorney pursuing an investigation against the Republican whose name he is invoking to raise money for a Democratic interest group. A more responsible district attorney would have been concerned enough about the appearance of impropriety to refrain from commenting about someone tied to an ongoing investigation, let alone at a political fundraiser.
Money and politics are and will forever be intertwined. blogHOUSTON advises readers to be wary of politicians, bloggers, pundits, or anyone else who sanctimoniously suggests one political party is somehow more pure than the other on the topic of money and politics.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/19/05 11:20 PM | Houston People | Technorati | Comments (1)
73% of HISD students pass harder TAKS reading test
There is something missing from this story on HISD:
The percentage of Houston ISD students passing the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills dropped for every grade level under this year's tougher standards, the school district announced Wednesday.
Houston's black and Hispanic students struggled the most as the gap separating the passing rates for those students and whites grew larger. While 62 percent of the Houston Independent School District's white 10th-graders passed all four subjects tested on the TAKS, only 17 percent of blacks and 19 percent of Hispanics achieved the minimum standard.
What's missing? Seventy-three percent of HISD students passed the harder TAKS reading test this year. Considering the make-up of HISD (eighty percent low income and thirty percent ESL), that's a number to be proud of. Fifty-eight percent of HISD students passed the harder TAKS math test. Yes, that number can stand some improvement, but a majority of HISD students passed. Why not acknowledge that?
"Lead, follow or get out of the way" comes to mind here, and the usual suspects are the problem -- those who don't want any change. Dr. Saavedra is trying to remake HISD to provide a better education. Some media attention directed at the people and groups who steadfastly stand in his way is long overdue; and the students who worked hard to pass the TAKS tests should be congratulated, instead of being told they are in the worst school district in Texas.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/19/05 08:45 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (0)
Sports blogging, Chronicle style
The Chronicle has quietly added another blog to its lineup, Lopez @ Large from sports columnist John Lopez. We'll have to encourage him to break up those column-like entries into true blog posts in time, but for now, welcome to the Houston blogging community, Mr. Lopez!
On his own blog today, the Chronicle's Richard Justice responds to a reader's question about his latest column on Drayton McLane, and covers some really interesting ground on the process of gathering sports news from sports figures who are well aware of every word written about them:
Last year I wrote some tough stuff about the Astros, and I heard about it. Drayton McLane usually makes a telephone call and is very polite. Sometimes he'll call your boss to complain, but he's always civil.
When Jimy Williams was fired, I wrote critically of three Astros: Jeff Bagwell, Brad Ausmus and Morgan Ensberg.
I'm in the clubhouse the day the column appears -- you should show your face after you write something critically -- and Bagwell and Ausmus called me over and let me know with some humor that they'd read what I wrote. They didn't seem especially mad, but were letting me know they were aware.
The funny thing was that Ensberg hadn't read the paper, but they screamed across the clubhouse: "He got you, too, Morgan!"
I yelled back: "Don't ruin his day."
The whole post is worth a read.
Incidentally, since we called attention to Jose de Jesus Ortiz's fawning over Drayton McLane a few days ago, it's only fair to point to Justice's more critical column that ran Tuesday.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/19/05 04:00 PM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Comments (0)
18 May 2005
Brazosport News: Lord falls for fake story on air
Back when Clear Channel first acquired the services of sports talker Charlie Pallilo, the Chronicle's David Barron seemed surprised that Clear Channel's Ken Charles wasn't pursuing Pallilo's old partner, Rich Lord. My reaction was just the opposite: why dilute Pallilo's talent?
Banjo Jones reports on an amusing recent on-air moment from Rich Lord that only confirms that Ken Charles made the right call in putting Pallilo on KBME-790 by himself.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/18/05 11:45 PM | Houston Media | Technorati | Comments (1)
What did McGilbra and others do exactly?
We've previously noted the guilty plea of former Brown Administration official Monique McGilbra.
Tom Kirkendall calls our attention to this reaction to the news on the White Collar Cri