18 October 2006
Mayor touts subsidized housing spending
With all the excitement over the naming of the park (not to mention our soggy Monday), some news from the weekend didn't get much attention. As KTRK-13 reported, your city just committed $2-3 million to subsidize housing for a certain neighborhood:
There will be more affordable housing for those who need it. That's the goal of the city of Houston.
Mayor Bill White announced Sunday the city will give $3 million to The Metropolitan Organization to build 60 single family homes and buy land in the near north side. Property values in that area have increased 26% in the past year. The homes will be targeted at people making $25,000 to $30,000 per year.
"Somebody in the middle class can buy a house in the city limits and doesn't have to move away and fight all that freeway traffic on the way to work," said Mayor White.
Mayor White also says the city plans on providing the same affordable housing plan in other neighborhoods.
The Chronicle's resident lefty plagiarist, Rick Casey, likes the move:
[Mayor White] also said citizens shouldn't look at the program as welfare.
"This is a high return on public investment," he said. "These will be taxpaying properties here in the city limits. And with more families moving in, they'll be safer neighborhoods. Our hope for maintaining property tax discipline is to encourage developments in these neighborhoods."
It makes sense.
Sure. Tossing millions to subsidize housing in certain neighborhoods makes great sense at a time when the city's leaders refuse to budget adequately for basic municipal services like policing (HPD's manpower shortage and associated surge in violent crime, anyone?) or flood control (as many parts of town experienced Monday).
It is useful to keep in mind Mayor White's spending priorities, especially as he's urging passage of various November propositions on revenues/spending.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/18/06 10:57 PM |
Hotel Icon: Where PR doesn't quite match reality
The Houston Business Journal posts this real-estate news:
Real estate investor and developer Lowe Enterprises Investors has acquired Hotel Icon -- a 135-room luxury hotel located in downtown Houston -- for undisclosed terms from an undisclosed buyer.
Los Angeles-based Lowe Enterprises acquired the property, located at 220 Main, on behalf of Lowe Hospitality Investment Partners, a $266 million discretionary fund that invests solely in hotel and resort properties.
Lowe's affiliate company Destination Hotels & Resorts will assume management of the hotel.
That's not nearly as good as this priceless tidbit from the Lowe Enterprises press release:
“Hotel Icon is an exquisite property. Every aspect of its renovation exhibits the highest standards of quality and attention to detail, from the richly appointed lobby and public spaces to the large comfortable guest rooms,” said Bleecker Seaman, managing director of Lowe Enterprises Investors. “Located in the heart of downtown, it is walking distance to the arts and entertainment district as well as the many other attractions such as the convention center and the ballpark. The METROrail light rail line, located adjacent to the hotel, offers guests convenient access to destinations throughout greater Houston.”
The Danger Train? Destinations throughout greater Houston?
Right.
That bit of hilarity is not exactly a great moment in Houston public relations.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/18/06 10:20 PM |
KHOU gets into the non-descriptive description act
KHOU-11 reports that HPD is on the lookout for a bad guy:
Houston police are looking for a suspect in a string of crimes that started around 8 p.m. Tuesday.
The suspect is wanted for a robbery, carjacking and shootout.
It happened at the Popeye's in the 8500 block of Jensen Drive.
[snip]
Houston police said the suspect is 5 feet 6 inches tall, was wearing a bandana and had a black gun.
It is very disappointing that KHOU injected race into their description of the gun!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/18/06 10:12 PM |
Houston Greeters
Beginning October 26, visitors to Houston can turn to local volunteer "greeters" to learn more about the city (via Houston Business Journal):
The Houston Greeters is a free service which pairs visitors and new residents with volunteer greeters. The greeters use their knowledge of local facts to show out-of-towners and new residents the city's hidden gems.
[snip]
The program includes more than 60 greeters from various backgrounds, including proficiency in 11 languages.
The Houston organization is modeled after the Big Apple Greeter in New York City, and has taken the lead in organizing the Global Greeter Network that currently includes similar programs in Chicago, Toronto, Fairbanks, Buenos Aires, as well as Melbourne and Adelaide, Australia.
All the programs are free of charge for individuals or small groups of six or less, and all use public transportation.
In Houston, the organization has partnered with Metro Rail to provide free passes for visitors and their greeters during city tours.
The Houston Greeters website is here.
What a nice idea, although experiencing the Danger Train up close and personal could be more exciting than visitors expect.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 10/18/06 07:30 PM |
Smoking ban expansion passes overwhelmingly
After all the talk last week about possible amendments to the proposed smoking ban and lack of consensus and alleged uncertainty, Council today overwhelmingly expanded the smoking ban, approving the ordinance 13-2 while shooting down various amendments. Alexis Grant reports for the Chronicle:
The City Council voted today to extend Houston's indoor smoking ban to bars but to continue allowing smoking in outdoor patios and in bars that promote cigar smoking and derive significant revenue from tobacco sales.
The 13-2 vote was a victory for Mayor Bill White, who wanted to extend the ban while leaving some locations available for public smoking. The only dissenters were council members Addie Wiseman and Michael Berry, who had said previously that they opposed any extension of the ban and that the decision on whether to allow smoking should be up to individual businesses.
The council rejected several amendments that would have weakened the ordinance or extended its reach. The only amendment approved expands the ban to include meetings of nonprofit organizations at their own facilities.
Apparently, the influence of lobbyists on this issue (which concerned the Editorial LiveJournalists) was way overestimated, as Mayor White and Councilmember Alvarado easily won approval of the ban they wanted, and Councilmembers Berry and Wiseman stood in opposition to the ordinance, just as they promised they would all along. The best guess here is that some of these amendments were just window dressing to allow certain councilmembers to tell constituents they tried to improve the ordinance, but their colleagues wouldn't go along, and they had to do something.
The ordinance will not take effect until September 2007.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/18/06 01:19 PM |
17 October 2006
Michael Berry is podcasting
As Michael Berry promised last week, podcasts of his KPRC-950 show are now available.
For those who can't catch the show live or just prefer the convenience of podcasts, they're available here.
I've missed Councilmember Berry's shows this week, so it's going to be nice to catch up at some point.
UPDATE (10-18-2006): I just caught up on Monday's show, which was a smart discussion of drainage issues in the city of Houston. The mp3s are available here and here.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/17/06 10:18 PM |
Downtown park named Discovery Green
Houston's new downtown hobo destination now has a name: Discovery Green.
Mike Snyder has the details for the Chronicle.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/17/06 02:49 PM |
Emergency vehicle-only onramp
In Monday's Move It! column, Rad Sallee reports that TxDOT's new Blodgett to 59 south onramp is for emergency vehicles only. Really:
For several months now, the daily list of road closings from the Texas Department of Transportation has included the new ramp from Blodgett to the southbound Southwest Freeway (U.S. 59). It's listed as a long-term closure, but Paul Beutel and Joel Shepherd ask if it's a permanent one.
It seems so, although emergency vehicles will be able to use it.
In May, shortly after the ramp was opened, motorists were calling it scary, and TxDOT made observations that generally bore that out.
"We found limited gaps in the U.S. 59 traffic stream and observed some ramp motorists using the right shoulder during freeway merging, creating unexpected high-speed conflicts with outbound Spur 527 travel lanes immediately downstream of the ramp," said district spokeswoman Janelle Gbur.
"Most motorists using this ramp had some difficulty entering within the available merge area," she said.
"In consideration of the high-traffic volumes ... the limited merge distance, low Blodgett ramp traffic volumes, available freeway ramps nearby and constrained right of way, we have determined that closing this ramp is the best alternative," Gbur said.
"The ramp will be gated and available for emergency use and incident management."
How much did that winning design cost taxpayers?
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 10/17/06 06:12 AM |
16 October 2006
KTRK CrimeTracker: There's some percentage of crime downtown, we think
KTRK-13 broke out the CrimeTracker to take a look at downtown crime.
Here's the online report:
Overall, violent crime is up 4%. Of the 138 reported violent crimes, 93 of them happened between 7pm and 7am.
On the 6 pm on-air broadcast, Andy Cerota reported that "about 50%" of those crimes happened between 7pm and 7am.
Obviously, 93 of 138 reported violent crimes is not "about 50%."
So, we're not really sure exactly what Cerota and the CrimeTracker have figured out about downtown.
We did see one woman interviewed, and she accurately described the homeless beggar situation: If you are a female downtown, it's quite likely you'll be approached by the growing hobo population.
That's not very appealing. But hey, at least MayorWhiteChiefHurtt have the renegade downtown jaywalkers under control!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/16/06 10:39 PM |
How the Chron turns good news into bad news
Last week, as part of a news round up, the Chron printed a blurb about HISD seeking class-size waivers from the state. See if you can spot something a bit odd:
Class-size waiver requests increase
HISD will appeal to the Texas Education Agency this week for permission to exceed maximum class-size standards for 659 classes, from kindergarten through fourth grade, with more than 22 students.
That's up slightly from the district's low of 641 waivers in 2004, but down dramatically from the more than 1,500 waivers that the state approved in 1999.
This is 2006, and the request is 659. That's up from 2004's request of 641.
Er, what happened to 2005? How many waiver requests were there last year? You know, the most recent year to make a comparison.
Well, a little info from HISD's press office tells us that in 2005, 933 waivers were requested. Now why didn't the writer use that number? Why did the writer go back two years to say that HISD's waiver request had increased? Common sense says one might use last year's number as the benchmark, or even list a whole bunch of years, like this:
2006: 659
2005: 933
2004: 641
2003: 672
2001: 1334
2000: 1319
1999: 1508
1998: 1380
1997: 1244
Well. Now 659 looks like an improving trend, doesn't it? And the Chron's headline looks very strange.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 10/16/06 08:28 PM |
15 October 2006
Dave Ward: 40 years of Houston TV news
Ward is about to celebrate 40 years on the air in Houston, and many many years of leading the news ratings chase in town.
Congrats to Dave, who remains my personal fav for local news (even though KTRK's news was better with Shara)!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/15/06 10:25 PM |
Houston's sales tax revenue up almost 20%
The Houston Business Journal reports the latest state sales tax disbursements:
The state of Texas collected $1.51 billion in sales tax revenue in September, 13.7 percent more than the same period a year ago.
Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn also disbursed $415.5 million in sales-tax payments to cities, counties, transit authorities and special-purpose taxing districts for the month of October.
Of this amount, Houston received $36.3 million, up 19.4 percent from October 2005.
Harris County does not collect a sales tax. However, the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County collects a 1 percent tax. Metro received $35.9 million from the state in October.
Wow! Add in red light camera revenue, and Houston's sitting pretty! As for Metro, that revenue sure helps with the substantial losses the agency incurs every month as it subsidizes the Danger Train.
Along the line of municipality revenue, a blogHOUSTON reader alerted us to a Federal Reserve study that concludes cities use traffic ticket revenue to bolster lagging city revenues. From the report's abstract:
Specifically, positive changes in revenue have no effect on traffic tickets, but negative revenue changes increase the number of traffic tickets issued. A one percentage point decrease in revenue yields a 0.38 percentage point increase in traffic tickets. We calculate that traffic ticket revenue supplements a low percentage of local revenue losses.
And if that's true of hand-written traffic tickets, imagine what a study would conclude when the subject is camera tickets.
RELATED: Study: Traffic Tickets Rise as City Income Falls (theNewspaper.com)
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 10/15/06 07:51 PM |
Editorial LiveJournalists don't like some lobbying
The Chronicle's Editorial LiveJournalists blast City Hall lobbyists today:
Mayor Bill White, who has made his disdain for City Hall lobbyists well-known during his two terms, doubts they will have much effect on the outcome. "It's the witnesses who are doctors treating cancer patients and people who have respiratory illnesses related to secondhand smoke who work in bars and the merchants who are concerned who have impact on council members in this debate," the mayor said.
Let's hope that's the case. The public, including the business and medical communities, has had abundant opportunity to address council on the pros and cons of the smoking ban. The presence of lobbyists who say whatever they are paid to say, regardless of the obvious public good, is not needed and does little to elevate the debate.
This view may put me in the minority, but downtown lobbyists who go in front of Council to speak in favor of a position don't bother me that much. Yes, they're paid spokesmen for a cause, but we know that, and they do put forth points of view that ought to be considered. For example, during the recent debate before Council's decision to curry favor with Yellow Cab by putting Texans Shuttle out of business, a paid lobbyist for those opposed to the move put forward some very good arguments why it was a bad decision. Presumably, that lobbyist also attended various committee meetings on that topic and made himself heard, along with other stakeholders in that issue. That's not a "bad thing" in my view, so long as it's transparent. Indeed, the "lobbyist" said quite a few things that I might have told Council, if I could ignore job and life commitments to go hang out at City Hall for public comment.
It's unfortunate that the Chronicle Editorial LiveJournalists chose to criticize transparent lobbying on the smoking issue, but chose completely to ignore the manner in which Yellow Cab company persuaded the city's aviation director and members of Council to put a competitor out of business a few weeks ago. Apparently, transparent "lobbying" is worse than non-transparent anti-competitive dealmaking to benefit City-Hall-favored companies, at least in the view of the Editorial LiveJournalists.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/15/06 09:01 AM |
Will hobos appreciate the Homeric undertones of the new park's name?
The Chronicle's Mike Snyder today updates us on Mayor White's new downtown hobo destination park, which will be named on Monday:
The explorer archetype is a powerful theme in classical literature, from Odysseus' quest to find his way home in Homer's Odyssey to the narrator's search for spiritual revelation in Dante's Divine Comedy.
These ideas might seem a bit high-concept for choosing the name of a 12-acre park in downtown Houston....
Yes.
There's more:
"The personality that we realized that we're going after is one of exploration with kind of a dash of magic thrown in," said Guy Hagstette, the conservancy's park director.
Accordingly, the firm the conservancy hired to help select a name settled on the explorer as the primary archetype for the park, with the magician as a secondary theme.
Archetype? Dante? Homer?
At least the firm gave the park's busybodies some fancy-schmancy soundbites to go with what was likely a hefty bill for its consulting services.
Prizes will be awarded tomorrow:
The entrant whose name is selected will win dinner for two at a park restaurant, a framed political cartoon by Houston Chronicle cartoonist Nick Anderson and a collection of Houston Astros merchandise.
Ah, they're not offering a video iPod and one of Anderson's bizarre animations? THAT would have been archetypically world-class! The iPod, not the animation. The Astros gear is pretty cool, though.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/15/06 08:45 AM |
Let's start calling them "suggested guidelines"
The Editorial LiveJournalists are relieved that FEMA is (again) not enforcing a housing recertification "deadline":
Houston social service agencies and Hurricane Katrina victims living in the city welcomed a decision by Federal Emergency Management Agency officials to extend housing subsidies past an Oct. 31 deadline for recertification for at least another four months. The specter of thousands of jobless people being thrown out of their apartments onto the streets still remains, but the FEMA action provides a window of opportunity to prevent that from happening.
The federal disaster relief agency dropped its requirement for extensive documentation for housing assistance recertification after few of the estimated 21,000 evacuee households in Houston made submissions. Instead, a simple one-page form is being accepted, with an automatic extension of all housing payments through the end of February.
So stop calling them deadlines.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 10/15/06 07:30 AM |
Appraisal protests in Harris County clog up the system
It's time for property tax bills to hit the mail, but the good news is Harris County isn't ready (via KTRH-740):
Harris County residents won't be seeing their property tax bills the first week in Novemeber because officials won't be able to mail them on time.
"You'll probably get the bills the week of Thanksgiving," Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt told KTRH News. "The state law is real clear. You have to have listened to 95 percent of the total value protests, before the chief appraiser can take a roll from his appraisal review board."
Bettencourt said that's not possible yet, because "this year there's been almost a quarter-million protests."
Outstanding! And until the Lege does anything meaningful on an appraisal cap, boatloads of protests are the only way to get the attention of local appraisal boards. Make those boards earn every penny they are taking from hard working Texans.
Now, about that big property tax cut the Legislature and Governor Perry promised property owners:
Property owners shouldn't be surprised if they don't see the promised $2,000 property tax cut from Austin, Bettencourt said. The tax-cut figures, he said, are based on home sales, not appraisal numbers, and the cut may actually be so gradual that, for some, it will be a wash because of rising property values.
That figures.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 10/15/06 07:17 AM |
14 October 2006
A mother's joy
A big reason why my blogging has been so limited lately is because my children are all immersed in activities -- swimming, gymnastics, baseball, honors band, and orchestra. You should see the weekly activity schedule and witness the juggling that goes on to make sure everyone gets to where they are supposed to be (and back home again!).
This morning my eldest tried out for the All-Region Band* (he plays the clarinet in the Hildebrandt Intermediate School honors band and orchestra) and he made it! Woo hoo! I am one proud mom! He loves playing the clarinet and can't wait to head to Klein Oak High School next year and join the marching band there.
Congratulations, Austen! You did good!
*Region 9 -- ISDs include Spring, Klein, Tomball, Conroe, Montgomery, and Huntsville.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 10/14/06 01:36 PM |
Fun with Council campaign finance disclosure
Slampo's been poring over City Council's campaign finance reports, and is sharing the fun in the form of trivia quizzes.
Here are part one and part two.
Better keep checking in. Who knows what Slampo may turn up while the Chronicle is focused like a laser beam on Yao Ming's toe!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/14/06 09:23 AM |
Smoking ban = World Class Houston
Heard in the Linehan mobile Friday evening: a pro-smoking ban ad on KTRH-740 that said if Houston wants to be World Class, then Houston needs a smoking ban. And don't forget to call City Council.
What's left on the World Class checklist?
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 10/14/06 07:36 AM |
13 October 2006
Houston's ghostbusters
They call themselves the Phenomena Police, and have a website that resembles the dvd case of a good sci-fi flick.
So, if you're having some sort of paranormal problem (haunting, demonic possession, poltergeist), now you have a local resource to help!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/13/06 09:49 AM |
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