For Real (So Far)

After catching the public speakers’ portion of the 3-30-10 Houston City Council meet-up on the access channel,* we were moved to wonder why the mayor’s unilateral move to increase the insurance payments of under-65 municipal retirees hasn’t occasioned more comment and commentary, especially from Our Town’s legions of conservative bloggers and the other vociferous gum-beaters of the blogosphere,** for whom public employees and public-employee unions are generally bête noire, generally speaking. (We, of course, expected absolutely nothing from the likes of the Sexiest Blogger in Houston,*** or Most Influential-est and Boring-est Block-Quoter in the Western Hemisphere, whatever, and we have not been disappointed, although this wily old vato, who was briefly in the employ of the mayor's runoff opponent last year, did weigh-in from the port side with an appreciative acknowledgement of the mayor's bulls-by-the-horn approach. We know it's early, but we expect to see at least one and possibly more pro-Parker op-ed pieces by erstwhile mayoral would-be Bill King (checking his Web site, we see ... nada, but as we said it's still early).

We are not saying here that he mayor was absolutely 100-percent right in this move (and how could such an unpalatable action be "right"?), 'cause we don't have enough information to issue such a snap judgment, especially on the, um, complex political ramifications, not to mention the financial ones. We must admit that we did blanch a bit, in sympathy, as several under-65 and able-bodied (or at least able-bodied enough to get to the microphone in council chambers) ex-city workers bewailed the extremely large increases they'll be forced to bear in their monthly payments –– one guy said his were in the neighborhood of $700+ –– but then the il’ dude inside us who hut-huts along like either John Calvin or Edmund Burke (he dresses like a city employee –– a cop!) came a'strolling, twirling his nightstick and wondering, "Who but a public employee could afford to retire well before 65 in this day and age?"**** and "How many dependents are you carrying there on your policy?" Council members Clarence Bradford and Wanda Adams, especially the former, raised concerns about the mayor's action, which, if we can interpret their meanings within the broad confines of necessary council collegiality, seemed to imply that the mayor had been high-handed and not sharing information with them. The mayor, we noticed, did not flinch.

So we have some predictions here: No. 1.) Expect the public bonhomie and good feeling and general unanimity of the White Era City Council to be a thing of the past, a development that will be the direct result of No. 2.), and that is: This mayor apparently came into office prepared to actually do stuff.

*In case you were wondering, we heard District F Councilman Al Hoang say nothing stupid or needlessly insulting during the part of the meeting we saw –– in fact we could not tell whether Hoang was actually present and accounted for.

**We would also paint local conservative talk radio with this possibly unwarranted broad brush, except that we rarely listen to any of it.

***Who was see is actually encouraging people –– or a person, to be exact –– to move away from Houston, but presumably only after he's returned his Census form.

***The aggrieved retirees we saw all looked to be of our vintage, mid-range Baby Boomers. One, who seemed to be a friend of the mayor, spent an unusually large portion of his allotted minutes congratulating her and the council for various unspecified fiscal accomplishments.

Problema Grande, Solución Obvia

The Sunday, January 10 edition of the Houston Chronicle brought front-page, banner-headline news of a “problem” in Our Town. (For some reason we don't care to know, we could find no evidence of this story anywhere on or in the paper's online edition as of 12:30 p..m. Sunday.) As with most “problems” “exposed” by formulaic journalism (that’s the set-‘em-up, knock-‘em-down kind that doesn’t tell you anything new or revealing about particular people with real names and addresses), this problem apparently can only be remedied by greater effort, and increased expenditures of taxpayers’ money, on the part of government.

This particular problem––the problem de jour, if you will––rests on the shocking “news” that many people in Houston, far too many people in fact, do not speak English. This state of affairs “adds burdens to police and public,” as the ungainly banner headline screeched, in a “city of global dialects.” (Dialects? Do they still use dictionaries at newspapers, or is that another archaic tradition that’s fallen victim to budget cuts?) That apparently results in situations in which officers who speak only English rely on “wrecker drivers, bystanders or victims’ children to act as translators if bilingual [read: Spanish-speaking] officers are not available.” This despite a Houston Police Department program that "pays $1.9 million annually in extra pay to 1,046 bilingual-certified officers,” among whose number are “904 officers certified as fluent in Spanish” and an unspecified (by the Chronicle) lot “who can speak Vietnamese, two dialects of Chinese and Korean.” (We’d hazard a guesstimate that the number of the latter two rounds up to about 3 or 4.)

To illustrate the pressing nature of this problem, the Chronicle notes that the Houston school district “has identified about 100 languages spoken in students’ home.” What that means, we suppose, is that the ideal HPD officer would be able to investigate and thwart crime in, oh, about 50 different tongues, although such skills would probably price an applicant far out of the police academy. But such deft linguists certainly would be an improvement over all these dumbass native-English-speaking officers who obviously aren’t cut out for police work due to their monolingualism. Their ineptitude contributes to the following tear-extracting vignettes, and “often,” supposedly:

The lack of bilingual officers often forces victims to recount intimate details of a sexual attack to a neighbor acting as translator for an officer, said one veteran HPD investigator....

Not to sound unfeeling or unsympathetic to crime victims, but isn’t the obvious and most cost-effective “solution” to this “problem” to have people who come to this country, legally or illegally but in either case out of their own free will, get cracking and LEARN SOME GODDAMN ENGLISH?

We suppose that would just be too much to ask.

One for the Home Team!

After reading the Dec. 22 dispatch in the Houston Chronicle by Bernardo Fallas, the reporter who covers the Houston Dynamo for the daily newspaper, our first thought was, “This Bernardo Fallas must have a sister who works for the Dynamo organization.”

No, no. We’re the ingenuous, naive sort, and such a connection wouldn’t naturally occur to us, at least during our waking hours. We just thought Fallas’s story was overly generous in detailing the arguments of the Dynamo management and Major League Soccer as to why “soccer-specific” stadiums and the necessity of the franchises “controlling revenue streams” are the keys to growing the domestic MLS to “compete with the best leagues in Europe and South America.” But that’s just our opinion, and opinions are like ... well, you know what they say.

The timing of the story also struck us as a bit suspicious, coming just 10 days after a mayoral election in which Dynamo president Oliver Luck and the team ownership, in the individual and corporate persons of California billionaire Philip Anshutz, Brener Sports and Entertainment of Beverly Hills and ex-boxing champ Oscar de la Hoya, put their money on the wrong pony. As Fallas himself put it:

...the Dynamo — whose move to Houston in late 2005 was due, in large part, to local government’s receptiveness to the idea of a public-private partnership for a soccer stadium in the Bayou City — wait for negotiations with the city of Houston and Harris County to resume after the recent mayoral election brought them to a standstill.

A cynical sort––not us, though––might believe that a little prodding in the daily paper would help move matters along.

As it turns out, of course, Fallas does have a sister who works for the Dynamo, a connection first brought to our attention by eagle-eyed Anne Linehan of blogHouston, who pointed to the similarity in the last names of the Chronicle reporter and Ana B. Fallas-Scarborough, listed as the Dynamo’s executive assistant/HR rep (true, not a high-level, policy-making position). Benardo Fallas confirmed the relationship for us, assured us it had no bearing on the story in question or his coverage in general, and told us it that “to insinuate otherwise would be both imprudent and an insult to my professionalism as a journalist.”

OK, imprudent is our middle name (actually, our middle initial is M. and our last name is Prudent, which is German, so heavy accent on the first syllable), but since Mr. Fallas promptly and graciously responded to our inquiry, thus freeing us to get on with the business of returning ill-fitting Christmas gifts, we’ll turn this space over to him for extended elaboration:

I informed my superiors the moment I learned my sister was being considered for a job with the team. Since the decision was to keep me on the beat, we have strived to maintain a healthy professional distance.

I sense you (or some of your readers)* may have an issue (and understandably so) with MLS' and the team's argument that teams need to control revenue streams in order to "make it."

The argument that MLS teams need to control revenue streams to become financially viable enterprises is one made time and again by teams and league (as well as teams in other pro leagues). It is the first answer you would get if you called Oliver Luck or Don Garber and asked them why an MLS team needs a stadium.

What I did is I presented that argument while noting that there's opposition to the idea of the Dynamo having public help in their pursuit of a stadium.

I was asked by my superiors to write about the emergence of MLS stadiums and how that relates to the Dynamo, and I think I did just that.

Mr. Fallas strikes us as an earnest and thoughtful young man trying to make his way in the world, but these unnamed superiors of his are doing him and their newspaper a disservice if they are aware of the sibling connection and are still assigning him to do a story on what essentially is a political issue that arouses considerable hostility on both sides. (As we noted to Fallas, even his reporting of games, team personnel moves and other non-political matters might come into question if he and the daily newspaper actually had any competition and there was another reporter from another organization assigned as a Dynamo beat reporter. Fallas later informed us that he doubles-up at the Chronicle as both a copy editor and soccer reporter; we’d caution him against over-excelling at either of these jobs, lest he wind up also shouldering the paper’s transportation beat while passing his off-evenings as a part-time society columnist.)

On a semi-related note, since the negotiations over the new soccer-specific stadium appear to hinge on Harris County’s agreement to participate in a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, the Chronicle reported on Wednesday that the outgoing City Council voted expand the Midtown TIRZ by 8 acres to include “the Asia House, the Buffalo Soldiers Museum and the Museum of African-American culture.” Kind of an interesting farewell of sorts, since we were under the impression that the departing mayor was not exactly a fan of the TIRZ mechanism (one of the good things about him, in our inconsequential book) and the incoming one most pointedly made an issue of not expending tax dollars, or too many tax dollars, on “museums” and “stadiums” and the like in this time of, um, fiscal austerity.

The version of the story in our damp home-delivered edition was all of 3 paragraphs and unbylined, but the online version included this seen-it-comin’-a-mile-away graf:

Councilman James Rodriguez, while supporting the changes, said he wanted to see plans for development of a Latino heritage museum within the same zone in Midtown.

We only hope that we can raise the money, and find a suitable and affordable location within the Midtown TIRZ, to get our planned Museum for the Study and Furtherance of Peckerwood Culture up and running in time to take advantage of the “$5 million in improvements to cultural and public facilities.”

By the way, possibly because of some apparent oversight neither this story nor Mr. Fallas's Dec. 22 work included a quote from Bob Stein.

*Mr. Fallas here makes the probably unsupportable supposition that we have readers, plural.

Late Night-Early Morning Coffee-Fueled Post-Election Mash-Up

We’ll leave to others the predictable analysis and sentimentalizing about what it all means and just say that the best candidate won. As Parker herself noted, her victory was historic in overcoming the long-standing stigma that has prevented Rice graduates from ascending to the city’s highest office. Our newly elected mayor has a sense of humor––it can be wicked, we’ve heard––and we’d imagine that will come in handy.

Locke never struck us a bad person, and in fact had the most interesting personal story of the entire field, but as we tried to point out in this space on a number of occasions, in a number of ways, there wasn’t much rationale to his campaign. Combining all that union support and promise-making with backing from the likes of Ned Holmes and Bob Perry made for one ungainly effort and a very muddled message. The current demographic equilibrium in the municipal electorate necessitates artful coalition-building–– that’s a good thing!––but welding the monolithic black vote to whatever anti-gay sentiment there is to be stirred-up apparently is not the ticket. (Rumors that Hotze the Herb Doctor and Dave Wilson were spotted loading up U-Hauls late Saturday night apparently were false.)

Locke was gracious in defeat, as was Parker in victory, and as a concerned citizen we would ask that Locke perform one more public service before he returns to the rigors of $640-an-hour public-agency lawyering: MAKE SURE SOMEBODY TAKES DOWN ALL THOSE GODDAMN SIGNS YOUR CAMPAIGN TACKED UP ALL OVER THE CITY ON FRIDAY AND SATURDAY. Yeah, that was overkill. Bizarre overkill. We plied the hustings a bit on Election Day and thought we even spied one tied to a fence outside a cemetery. Very unsightly.

Elsewhere on the ballot, we were pleased to see that Stephen Costello prevailed in the at-large Position 1 council race. He struck us as thoughtful and low-key, attributes that will be in demand on a council to which Jolanda Jones will be returning. We had no horse in the controller’s race––statutorily, we believe the controller’s main job is to lay the ground work for a future mayoral campaign––so once in the voting booth (or cubicle, whatever you call it now) we shrugged and spun the dial for our outgoing councilman, M. J. Khan, ’cause we figured it would be cool to have a lesbian as mayor and a Muslim as controller. Nah, not really. We just never heard Ronald Green offer a specific, detailed explanation of his troubles with the IRS. Lord knows we’re sympathetic with anyone who has problems with the tax collector, but the liens against Green, and the total he owes to the agency, suggest that he has a long-standing problem getting his own fiscal shit together. But apparently there are enough Democrats in the city playing Democrats-versus-Republican in supposedly non-partisan municipal politics to hoist Green to higher office (that includes Chris Bell, our former congressman [recently elevated, or demoted, to state senator by the error-ridden daily newspaper], who left an urgent message on our machine on behalf of Green). Now that he’s obtained a better-paying post at the public trough, we hope Councilman Green will be able to satisfactorily resolve this dispute (you can bet we’ll never hear back form the media on this particular matter, because winning cancels all debts, at least spiritually).

Now for the distressing news: We were stunned––okay, very surprised––by the results in our own humble District F, where lawyer Aloysius Hoang beat lawyer Mike Laster. The latter, a former assistant city attorney, had a long record of civic involvement in Sharpstown and apparently has lived for a number of years in a downscale, unfashionable neighborhood in the area, in a house that’s even smaller than ours and carries an even lesser appraisal for tax purposes. In other words, Laster was committed to the district. Hoang, by contrast, appears to have taken an address in District F for voting purposes, becoming eligible to cast his ballot there just prior to the November first-round election, and his wife claims a homestead exemption on an abode in Brazoria County. Almost every cent he raised came from fellow Vietnamese-Americans, many of them from outside of the district. (There’s nothing wrong with that, per se––that's how immigrant groups traditionally have gotten a leg-up in electoral politics, but it doesn’t exactly reflect support from the wider “community” you’ll pretend to represent.) Some benighted representatives of the media and academia will, of course, hail the election of a Vietnamese immigrant as some splendiferous triumph of “diversity,” but the actual story is infinitely more complex and, if we may stoop to rank sentimentality, sadder. The turnout for Saturday’s runoffs in District F was pathetic: Hoang won by about 500 votes of the 8,860 or so total cast. Aloysius found a convenient jurisdiction in which to pursue his ambition of becoming a macher in Viet-Am circles. We hope that from here on out he can be found laying his head on a goddamn pillow every night in District F (F is for “forewarned is forearmed”).

Okay, we were stunned. More on this as developments warrant.

When Frogs Go Missing ...

We finally got around to reading a long, couple-of-months-old New Yorker article by environmental writer Elizabeth Kolbert on “The Sixth Extinction?” [reg. required]—the notion that our planet is currently experiencing another mass die-off of animal species and has been for maybe 50,000 years, this one thought to be unwittingly caused by the spread of a Chytrid fungus by human, um, civilization—and were surprised to learn that a Houston municipal operation plays a role in trying to preserve the variety of frogs that are rapidly vanishing* (without question mark) from the forests of Central America. The Houston Zoo, Kolbert reports, is the prime mover and funder of The El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center in central Panama, which, as noted elsewhere, is sort of a Noah’s Ark for such going-going-but-not-quite-gone species as the horned marsupial frog:

EVACC is financed largely by the Houston Zoo, which initially pledged twenty thousand dollars to the project and has ended up spending ten times that amount. The tiny center, though is not an outpost of the zoo. It might be thought of as a preserve, except that, instead of protecting the amphibians in their natural habitat, the center’s aim is to isolate them from it. In this way, EVACC represents an ark built for a modern-day deluge. Its goal is to maintain twenty-five males and twenty-five females of each species—just enough for a breeding population.

The first time I visited, [EVACC director Edguardo] Griffith pointed out various tanks containing frogs that have essentially disappeared from the wild. These include the Panamanian golden frog, which, in addition to its extraordinary coloring, is know for its unusual method of communication; the frogs signal to one another using a kind of semaphore. Griffith said that he expected between a third and a half of all Panama’s amphibians to be gone within the next five years. Some species, he said, will probably vanish without anyone’s realizing it: “Unfortunately, we are losing all these amphibians before we even know they exist.”

At first glance this sounds like a much more agreeable extracurricular overseas activity for a city of Houston-connected operation than those engaged in by, say, the Houston Airport System Development Corporation.

*As Kolbert notes--for all you Darwinists who’ve never read Darwin (like us!)--Darwin himself rejected the concept of “catsrophism,” that is, sudden mass extinctions caused by such events as an asteroid smashing into Earth, a concept now embraced by most scientists.

Absolutely the Worst Effin' Street in the Whole Damn Town

Perhaps not "absolutely." These designations, after all, are local--we're sure that every quadrant of town, perhaps every hectare of town, has its own worst street (we, for instance, don't regularly ply the byways of northeast Houston and therefore can't wield a very broad brush). This just happens to be the street we drove down about 20 minutes ago, and we're still steamin' (although normally a happy-go-lucky, live-and-let-live kind of fellow). It's South Braeswood, between Buffalo Speedway and Stella Link, and it's one f'ed-upped mess and has been for years, if not decades: seamed and rutted, potholed, bifurcated--hell, trifurcated--and it always makes us feel as if we've returned to the spine-jarring days of the Model T when we inch our way down it ('course road conditions do keep most traffic well under speed limit). It's like you're driving in Belize--rural Belize.

So the city council agrees to fund the silly-ass Houston Arts Alliance with $11 million. (We're sure this was from some dedicated fund that could only be spent on dubious " art" and the administration thereof and not road repairs, right?) We haven't been paying much attention to the mayor's race, but we know the kind of candidate who will appeal to us (and our wide, deep sphere of influence) will be one who says ixnay to the baubles and trinkets and promises a strict concentration on bread-and-butter neighborhood issues. (Yes, we know, promises are one thing ...)

But Seriously: Who's the Daddy?

We noticed that our mayor gingerly sidestepped responsibility for that obviously knuckleheaded proposal to subsidize the credit-worthiness of would-be Houston homebuyers with funds originally set aside for Ike-necessitated repairs. According to Wednesday's follow-up by the Chronicle's Carolyn Feibel

While the mayor is responsible for what appears on the council's weekly agenda, White placed the genesis of the idea with the city's Department of Housing & Community Development. He said the staff member's intentions were good.

"As the mortgage markets are collapsing, banks are no longer buying mortgages, then people who can afford a house are not able to buy a house and that's what the staff was trying to address," White said.

Setting aside the question of whether this is a matter a municipal government should "address"---it's not, but let's move on---and ignoring the faulty characterization of the would-be beneficiaries of the now-junked (?) program as "people who can afford a house," we must wonder aloud why White seems to be escaping blame for this hastily aborted (?) fiasco. The Chronicle editorial page, in a recently unprecedented display of timeliness, administered a quick tsk-tsking to the "World Class Folly" but in doing so turned uncharacteristically "playful":

Maybe, it was just some smarty-pants staffer's idea of an April Fool's joke played a month early.

No, please, let's give blame where blame is due: White's the mayor, making housing in the inner-city "affordable" has been one of his high-profile initiatives, and the way we've always understood it the mayor has an agenda director whose job is to do what that title suggests (direct the council agenda). The agenda director works for the mayor. We can only assume that Councilwoman Pam Holm, in blaming the proposal's emergence on "poor leadership," was referring to the mayor, although that would be an unusually direct form of finger-pointing that would deserve the striking of a commemorative plaque. Maybe she was just talking about some anonymous, well-intentioned smarty-pants staffer.

In any case, Feibel's reporting---and by the way, these are the sort of stories you'll miss when the daily newspaper goes the way of the mastodon, miss as in "I miss my mommy" and miss as in you'll never hear about it---has turned a fertile bed for further inquiry. The reporter quotes Housing Director Richard Celli---he works for White, too, right?---saying that only one of 872 home-buying families for whom the city has provided down payments and closing costs during White's tenure has been foreclosed upon. Hmm. That seems to be an almost unbelievably salutary figure, one we assume is documented somewhere on paper. Beyond the technicality of foreclosure, though, we wonder how many of these families are actually iving in the houses they contracted to buy, and what their presence has done for the blocks where they've settled (admittedly a difficult question to qualify, but maybe it's just all good and if so props to the mayor, etc.).

The Right to Be Stupid, Denied

Wall Street's still in the tank, the automakers---and everyone else, apparently---are whining for a bailout, and, closer to home, UTMB is laying off almost 4,000 workers. But never let it be said that the Houston City Council is unable to keep itself occupied in these trying times, as demonstrated by Wednesday's vote banning those giant inflatable balloon creatures that waft so delicately over car lots and some of our town's other less aesthetically pleasing commercial establishments.

Our feelings on this subject were best summed up by our president-elect when called upon to address the nagging issue of the droopy britches sported by some of today's woefully out-of-fashion youth:

"I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time. We should be focused on creating jobs, improving our schools, health care, dealing with the war in Iraq, and anybody, any public official, that is worrying about sagging pants probably needs to spend some time focusing on real problems out there."

"Having said that," he added, "brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What's wrong with that? Come on. There are some issues that we face, that you don't have to pass a law, but that doesn't mean folks can't have some sense and some respect for other people and, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear---I'm one of them."

In other words, we'd rather not have to look at your dirty drawers, young sir, but the last thing the world needs is an ordinance legislating that you hike up your pants. And while we'd rather not be distracted by your big, fug-ugly pink gorilla, Mr. Car Lot Owner (we'd rather, in fact, wing it with a pellet gun as we speed past on our way to nowhere in particular), we don't believe this is a societal failing deserving of government action.

This, after all, is Houston, a city with a long, proud history of garish commercial signage. What cruel fate might have befallen the landmark Holder's Pest Control roach in today's "Let's Turn Houston into Portland"* climate?

The council can ban all the displeasing public displays it wants, but we're afraid it can never rectify the underlying problem. Consider this: Bob Wright, owner of an establishment called Party Boy at I-10 and Studement, told the council his business increased by 20 to 30 percent whenever he hoisted one of those balloons (it was unclear whether he meant foot traffic or actual revenue). No matter how hard it tries, the Houston City Council won't be able to legislate stupidity out of existence.


*Not that there's anything particularly wrong with Portland.

Let’s Go Downtown. For Some Bocce.

The daily newspaper’s Mike Snyder, one of Our Town’s ablest reporters (has a deep, deep knowledge of the city that can only be acquired through years of not only working and living here but paying attention here) had an excellent story in Sunday’s editions about the new Discovery Green thing-a-ma-bob downtown, which is set to open next week. In a very even-handed way, Snyder gently raises what has seemed to us to be the obvious question about Discovery Green: Will anyone aside from vagrants and other idlers actually go there, once the whoop-de-do dies down and the brass-band welcome from the tail-waggers in the media goes silent?

Based on Snyder’s reporting, it sounds to us as if the attractions at Discovery Green were concocted not by actual park patrons and/or taxpayers but by a committee of faux hipsters-cum-PR-and-marketing shills. According to Snyder

Visitors can sprawl in the grass for a concert, race model boats or splash in an interactive fountain. Runners can try out the jogging path while more sedate visitors can read a magazine in a small library or have a drink at The Grove restaurant … People who enjoy trendy games can play bocce, an Italian sport similar to lawn-bowling, while more traditional Texans can pitch horseshoes. Part of the model boat pool will be frozen during winter months for ice skating. Children can frolic in a "mist tree" that also serves as a piece of public art and a place for joggers to cool off … A farmer's market will serve a demand for locally produced food. On weekends, families can visit the park, put their pets in one of two dog runs and watch their kids play on the playground while they discard their newspapers and cans into recycling bins.

Bocce? This is Texas, podnuh: Why not an actual non-smoke-free* bowling alley? Anyway, we hope this all works out and the park is perpetually packed from dawn to dusk and taxpayers’ $41 million investment pays off (oh yeah, one of the lead designers of the park---her firm’s from San Francisco, of course---told Snyder that all activity sites in Discovery Green will be aligned “along the Andrea and Bill White Promenade, which runs through the park.”**)

We, however, are skeptical. Let us stop for a moment and consider why people go to parks, based not on the fanciful notions of some overpaid designer types but on the unfashionable evidence presented to our own lying eyes: People with little kids go to parks to let their offspring frolic on the rubberized, injury- and liability-proof playground equipment, as is available at city SPARK parks on school grounds across Houston; if there are jogging paths, as at Memorial and déclassé Bayland, a county-run facility near our home, people go to run and walk around the track, although we wouldn’t consider a jogging path a destination attraction (we’d bet most of the lithe young folks prancing around Memorial work and/or live near downtown, while we notice about the only people doing the circuit at Bayland are slightly overweight Hispanic women from nearby apartments [we when lope past we say encouragingly, “You go, muchacha!”); if there are tennis courts, the old and middle-aged go to knock the balls over the net; there are also many, many people, usually not from the upper-income zip codes, who go to the park to picnic and be with family (at Hermann Park on any given Saturday it’s like half of Mexico is having a family reunion [and that’s cool]); occasionally---meaning “not too often”---citizens will be drawn to Hermann Park to attend a special function targeted to their particular demographic profile***: Shakespeare in the Park, the Asian Festival, the Juneteenth Celebration****, the Meshketian Turk Pig Run and Roast, etc. (But apparently some of those to-dos, or related ones, are being pulled over to Discovery Green: Snyder reports that “the park plans to host a health fair on Juneteenth and an Asian festival.”)

Personally, we know of no one who’s going to drive downtown and stash their vehicle in Discovery Green’s underground parking lot (sheesh: a park with an underground lot, what a Houstonesque touch!) to read a magazine or dump their recyclables or play bocce or even horseshoes.***** We’re sure the Del Grande-Schiller restaurant operations will do just fine, but it’s a safe bet that what we’ll reductively designate as “regular folks” won’t be thronging the front doors. Snyder taps an out-of-towner, Phil Myrick, a vice president of New York-based non-profit Project for Public Spaces, which participated in early planning for Discovery Green, to delicately raise these points:

… the public and philanthropic investment in Discovery Green can be justified only if the park attracts many people from throughout the Houston area, said [Myrick].

Too often, Myrick said, "money gets poured into a place that very few people end up enjoying and spending time in."

Because Discovery Green is in a "challenging location," Myrick said, it will have to offer compelling activities to attract visitors from far-flung neighborhoods.

"Consider your average person on a Saturday or Sunday. Are they really going to pack up the kids and head downtown, or stay closer to home?" Myrick asked. "If downtown is the only audience (for the park), it will be a terrible waste."

Time will tell. In the spirit of civic-mindedness we had suggested the facility be named in honor of Lightnin’ Hopkins*****, a move that certainly wouldn’t have forestalled the bocce lanes or the Andrea and Bill White Promenade but would have generated some international buzz and perhaps ensured the park would attract the occasional visitor from Copenhagen or Lyons, should the homeless eventually take over.

*’Cause cigarettes and bowling go together like … Bill and Andrea White.

**Maybe it’s just our raisin’, but it strikes us an unseemly for a sitting mayor and his old lady to have anything connected to a taxpayer-funded facility---even a “promenade”--- named after themselves, no matter how instrumental White was in helping raise the private funding for the park. Discretion should have dictated that the mayor demur and suggest the avenue be named, say, the Bob and Elyse Lanier Promenade (plant a few roses bushes along the way) or even the Lee P. and Missus (Whatshername) Brown Promenade. Hey, while we’re on the subject, how come nothing’s named after Kathy Whitmire around here? After all, she was the town’s first and so far only female mayor and did a decent job under trying circumstances (oil bust, rampantly surreal gay-bashing, etc.), but is there even a Ladies Room at City Hall bearing her name?

***Once, it must have been in the mid- or late ’80s, we heard Sun Ra and his Arkestra in Hermann Park. Now that was cool.

****Looks like Al Edwards will be back this year in fighting trim!

*****We, of course, won’t be going, as we only venture downtown if we need to see a lawyer or a broker, and we aren’t interested in talking with a representative of either profession at the moment.

******Y’know, a local from the locality, who nevertheless was/is known all over the globe. (We’re still scratchin’ that thing.)

Je Suis La Ville, La Ville Est Moi

We had seen the picture of Bill White sporting that pimpolicious Stetson (apparently bequeathed to him by the Red Foxx estate) at his inaugural, and we had read how the mayor quoted the theme song from The Jeffersons to underscore the direction in which Our Town is headed (“on up,” we believe it is). Yet we had no idea what an interesting speech the mayor had delivered until we went to the city’s Web site today looking for a nearby location where we could dump our Christmas tree for recycling and came across the text of his address. Although el alcalde failed to mention the indispensability of Carol Alvarado to Houston’s continued well-being, he did make a fairly extraordinary claim regarding his own stewardship of the city:

We gather on land first settled by dreamers and drifters and slaves.* They forged a new community in raw wilderness, just a half dozen generations ago.

From those humble beginnings Houston grew with unprecedented pace and prosperity.

Yet there has never been anything like the amazing progress made by this City since several of us first took this oath four short years ago.

Wow! Never? That’s a long time, my friend, but the mayor had some fun with numbers to back up the boast:

In little more than 200 weeks our urban area has added a quarter of a million new jobs.** Consider this: we have added about four times more jobs than our total population a century ago; the total new jobs we have added in four years is more than the total number of jobs within the city limits at the end of World War II, and even more than the total number of cars in the Metropolitan area back then.

… Even more than the total number of cars in Houston in 1945? Well, whatever. But we do enjoy The Jeffersons invocation. Come to think of it, Houston has always reminded us of George Jefferson: a short, balding dry cleaner trying to cover up his insecurities with strut and bellicosity.

Then there was the following, which we can only interpret as an offer of help to our love-besotted district attorney:

To my elected colleagues I issue a challenge: let us rush to help one another when we stumble on matters not affecting the public trust, and stumble we will. Let us remember that the large number of uncontested or lopsided City races and City bond issues in the last two elections reflects in part public perception of our effectiveness as a team.

Helping an elected official who stumbles may sound like a risky proposition. But remember the lesson that Dr. King taught in the sermon before his death. He said that the Levite who passed the wounded man without helping asked the wrong question. He asked himself, “If I help this man, what could happen to me?” The Good Samaritan asked, “If I don't help this man, what could happen to him?”

Or maybe that was the Alvarado reference.

He also mentioned Houston being home to Beyonce, which is always a crowd-pleaser.

*That is, real estate speculators and cheap labor.
**City government, of course, was responsible for the creation of all 250,000.

Southampton Residents Warn the Rest of Houston: Hands Off Our Ordinance, Plebes

As far as we know no one has even pretended that the now-delayed-for-90-days ordinance aimed at keeping a 23-story high-rise from affronting "affluent" homeowners of the Southampton and Boulevard Oaks neighborhoods is anything but a whimsical maneuver tailored to satisfy one small, localized constituency of the well-off. But must the Southamptonites and Boulevard Oakies be so flagrantly proprietary about it?

We're referring to a comment the Houston Chronicle's Mike Snyder extracted from Chris Amandes, identified as "an attorney who chairs a task force of leaders of the two neighborhoods," who's

worried that a lengthy delay [in city council approval of the ordinance] would prompt efforts to add features to the ordinance that might jeopardize its passage.

"There are lots of opportunities for anybody who has any kind of land-use issue to tie their wagon to this ordinance," Amandes said.

In other words, Away with your wagon and other nettlesome development issues. This is our ordinance.

If nothing else, this controversy has made for an edifying spectacle, in particular the notion of these agitated rich folks rallying to forestall the creatively destructive impulses of market capitalism.

Then there's Mayor White, who must be putting a little extra strut in his step following the 86-percent stamp of approval he received in Tuesday's election. According to Snyder, White said the message he's sending to the developers of the planned high-rise is this: "You'd better stop this thing, because I'm going to stop it unless you stop it."

It's Marshal Kane, with the Southamptonites as his Quaker bride.

Cue the Tex Ritter.

A Slampo’s Place Exclusive Endorsement: Bill White for Mayor (’Cause He Lays off the Grass)

After a long and careful review of the candidates and the issues while waiting for a bus at the corner of Fondren and Beechnut, the editorial board has voted unanimously to again throw the full heft of Slampo’s Place behind Mayor Bill White in his bid for a third and final term.

That means, of course, the election is all but over, unless one of the other candidates---aren’t there one or two?---would like to send some cash money to us in an envelope (no return address necessary). Fifty ($50) could swing it (having spent our formative years in the "Gret Stet" to the east, we’re not only corrupt but come cheap). Contact us at the email address above, and remember when you leave a message to specify which candidate we are to endorse. Be quick about it.

We, of course, have had our differences with Whi … ah, scratch that. We accidentally hit the “insert editorial writing cliché here” button. Here’s what we meant to say: We agree with many things The Guv’nuh has done, disagree or are puzzled by others, consider his “tax cuts” a silly joke but overall think he’s been a good mayor, better than his immediate predecessor for sure (small, small praise) and probably better than his immediate three or four predecessors (at least). We don’t even hold against him---not too much, anyway---the mess made of our neighborhood for a year and a half by the public works department and the soon-to-go-bankrupt contractor the city council picked for a major water pipe replacement project (now fading fast into pained memory).

We’re occasionally tickled by our brethren and sisteren or whoever-en in the blogosphere who attribute every action or pronouncement of White’s to base political motive in advance of his putative run for governor. (We also have to laugh at the mayor’s protestations that his political future doesn’t factor into his decisions---the muddled truth most likely is somewhere in between.) If White were a calculating Clinton-esque triangulator (which he is) but nothing more, then you’d have to say he’s an inept one. Take the attempted eviction of the mentally retarded from their longtime home near River Oaks: What percentage was there for White in that maneuver? It’s not like a donation or two from a developer, if he even were to get them, is going to get him elected governor. From a political standpoint, it was dumb---which nine out of ten people on the street could have told him, if he had asked---so we can only conclude the mayor truly believed he was pursuing the fiscally responsible course, even if it was politically dumb and (if you please) morally wrong. (As age teaches, there are certain arrangements in the world that, upon close inspection, are that way for a good reason and should remain undisturbed by the improver’s hand.)

So White strikes us as a serious person, with a tendency to list toward self-righteousness and sanctimony (and how). That was brought home to us by something called Living Green that appeared inside the Oct. 25 Houston Chronicle. Living Green is the latest in an apparently endless parade of niche publications the Chronicle is trotting out. Perhaps you’ve seen them: There’s Glop, or Gloop, and Health (can Wealth by far behind, or did it come and go and we missed it?), and Sexy Boxing Latinas (“The Chronicle niche publication for dudes who like to watch hot chicks fight”) and Frenchette (“The Chronicle niche publication for Houstonians who pretend to know something about wine”) and our favorite, Sweat ("The Chronicle niche publication for Houstonians who perspire in large and unsightly amounts”). The Lil’ General (5 years=no Pulitzer=hari-kari … oh, he’s not Japanese) who rouses the troops at 801 Texas recently declared that the niche publication is one of the key fronts on which the Hearst Corp. is battling the mysterious “all comers” (some come fast ... some come real slow) in the war against falling circulation and revenue.

And what’s this got to do with Bill White? Hold on, we’re getting to that. Right now we’re building momentum, kinda like the Dead in the 8th or 9th minute of Tennessee Jed at Hofheinz back in November of ’72.

Anyway, regarding Living Green: We won’t waste much time here pointing out the irony of a newspaper whose existence depends on the clear-cutting of acres of forests and the burning of copious amounts of fossil fuels presuming to offer instruction, or even “tips,” on environmental correctness. We’ll just open up Living Green and note that the first item to offend the sensitive reader is deep reportage on the “green habits” of various celebrities such as Demi Moore and Martha Stewart, which appeared right next to a full-page Gallery Furniture ad for an expensive German mattress made only of "natural materials." (And for this, we guess, the newspaper laid off or fired veteran reporters and editors.)

Yucky!

Deeper into the section is a double-truck feature in which some consigned-to-hell Chronicle minion was forced to ask various local personages---a well-known restaurateur, the head of maintenance at Metro, etc.---to rate Houston’s “greenness” on a scale of 1 to 10. That wasn’t the only thing that was asked of them---apparently each of these experts was asked to be photographed holding a FUCKING PLUG OF GRASS, which you would presume is the logo or symbol or whathaveyou of Living Green. It’s unclear and unspecified whether this was a flat of common St. Augustine, as it appears, or some native grass, or perhaps a slab of wheat grass, the kind that is pressed into the juice we drink only when Councilman Peter Brown is buying shots for the house at Whole Foods. Whatever it is and whatever its visual "point," all the participants are pictured holding a FUCKING PLUG OF GRASS---the pained expression on the restaurateur’s face suggests she’s extending a paper plate of DOG POO---all, that is, except for el alcade. The mayor is pictured wearing a goofy green golf shirt, most likely left over from St. Paddy’s Day, and bizarrely gives Houston an 8 of 10 for greenness (ah, it’s a joke anyway, so why not give the city an 11?), but he IS NOT HOLDING A FUCKING PLUG OF GRASS. Maybe he thought, “I’m not participating in this stupid gimmick that somebody thinks will burnish the bottom line of the Hearst Corp., no matter how many back massages and foot rubs I’ve been given by Rick Casey and the Chronicle editorial board,” or maybe he wasn’t thinking that at all, but whatever the case the FUCKING PLUG OF GRASS ended up still in the picture but well behind the mayor on a window frame.

So, um, as far as we’re concerned he's got that going for him, and he’s deftly denied his Republican opponent in the 2010 gubernatorial race the chance to run a negative ad featuring a picture of Bill White looking like a mope with a wad of grass in hand.

Don’t Vote for Zaf Tahir If He Persists in Running for Houston City Council (A Special Slampo’s Place Non-Endorsement)

Zafar Tahir may be a prince of a fellow and for all we know would make an exemplary public servant, but he shouldn’t be running for city council, at least in Houston, and if he continues with his charade we call on all right-minded readers of this blog---at least the two or three who are registered to vote in the city---to shun his candidacy in favor of some suitable alternative (your choice).

Last week the Chronicle’s indefatigable Matt Stiles reported that Tahir and another candidate for the Position 5 at-large seat, former state board of education member Jack Christie, had both assumed addresses of convenience in the city in order to meet the loosely interpreted “residency” requirement for candidates. Each lived outside the city in before launching his campaign---Christie in the wealthy northwest enclave of Bunker Hill, Tahir in the rapidly diversifying burg of Sugar Land. Stiles proceeded to beat on Christie with his reportorial Ugly Stick---and it was beauteous thing---by revealing that Christie not only was claiming two homesteads for tax purposes with his estranged wife but had allowed an unsightly build-up of algae---what some would call “scum”---in the swimming pool at his in-town rental digs. Stiles’ reporting apparently led not only to a health department citation for the algae but to Christie’s quitting the race (results!). That was a good thing, because we're fairly certain we weren’t the only Houstonian unwilling to vote for a man who couldn't keep his pool clean.

Tahir, meanwhile, has of this writing escaped further blows from the Ugly Stick, apparently having no algae-infested pool---and possibly no pool at all---at his throwdown address, and no marital complications that might result in dual homestead claims. He has called for a return to a discussion of, ahem, real issues, whatever those are, presumably with the idea that the residency matter is but a temporary and minor obstacle on his road to taking his rightful place on City Council alongside his sponsor, fellow Paki-American and former (still?) non-Houston resident M.J. Khan. (And isn’t it a little odd for an incumbent council member to be so out front in backing an aspirant for another, open council seat at so early a date? It’s not, you say? Sorry we asked.)

We notice that Stiles’ stories have generated some discussion over whether “residency” really matters. Let us resolve the issue by explaining why it does: When you move into a jurisdiction solely to run for an elective office, you’re telling us (at least me) that you view the office first and foremost as a vehicle for your personal ambition(s), not as an opportunity for public service or to engage in the setting of public policy (yes, we know, most candidates for office are slightly touched egomaniacs driven by an admixture of motives, personal ambition being foremost, but the taking-an-apartment-in-town ruse makes it just too damn obvious). What you’re saying is that place doesn’t matter, that one is just the same as the other (false), and, above all, that commitment to place is meaningless. Commitment as in establishing a home and paying property taxes (at the least) in the jurisdiction where you want to serve, becoming part of a neighborhood (and not some phony-baloney “community”) and, if you want to get real crazy, sending whatever kids you have to the area public schools (okay, that might be asking too much).

We don’t know much of anything about Tahir, but we see his campaign Web site is full of blather about transforming Houston into a “truly global city” and so forth. We didn’t see the word “potholes” on the site, but maybe filling ’em is kinda passé and boring in our new borderless, place-less, flattened-out, gimme-the-money globe. Tahir himself apparently is in the business of expanding global economic opportunities, through an entity called International Spectrum Development and his affiliation with the government of Pakistan’s Board of Investment.

We suspect Tahir could find a similar opportunity for service on the Sugar Land City Council, although it might leave something to desire in the personal ambition category (less money, fewer outside business contacts/opportunities, less ass-kissing and having your ass kissed, etc.). But at least he wouldn’t have to bed down in that little townhouse all by his lonesome for the next two months.

Money for Nuthin’ (Updated With Latest Breaking Jason Yoo News, Correction of Misspelling of Our Own Councilmember's Name)

The Wall Street Journal, which is down like white on rice (’scuse us) on Democratic Party benefactor and recently apprehended fugitive Norman Hsu, revealed Wednesday that at least one possible source of the mysterious Chinaman’s heretofore inexplicable largesse was $40 million from a fund headed by Joel Rosenman, an investment banker who, as the WSJ put it, “first gained fame as one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969.”

Yeah! Wooden Ships on the Water! This is turning into a story imagined by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity during a night of heavy drinking.

According to the Journal, the Rosenman-run fund, Source Financing, entered into 37 separate deals with Mr. Hsu but recently found that checks from Hsu’s Components Ltd. were being returned for insufficient funds. Hsu’s attraction for Rosenman was understandable:

Hsu told Mr. Rosenman the money would be used to manufacture apparel in China for Gucci, Prada and other private labels, yielding a 40% profit on each deal [our emphasis] …

The Journal obtained a pitch letter from Rosenman outlining the deal for prospective investors, in which the Woodstock majordomo related that the funds would be lent

“ … to U.S. private label designers that needed interim financing to fill orders for a select group of well-known, high-end U.S. apparel retailers."

… In a "step-by-step" outline of a typical transaction prepared for investors, Source Financing describes the way a deal worked with Mr. Hsu. Source Financing would agree to provide bridge loans for seasonal high-ticket, high-quality retail goods made in China for exclusive brand names, according to investors. Mr. Hsu told the company that he would obtain from Chinese manufacturers a price quote for apparel production. He would then add a mark-up and give the quote to a high-end buyer in the U.S.

Now, the Journal reports, Mr. Rosenman’s attorney is asking that the many Democratic beneficiaries of Mr. Hsu’s generosity not return the tainted (and in some cases, it would appear, illegal) campaign donations so that Source Financing and investors in other apparently non-existent Hsu ventures can recoup some of their losses. "It appears that Source Financing Investors joins Hillary Clinton...and many others as his victims," the lawyer says of the presidential candidate for whom Hsu raised $850,000 before he ran out of suckers.

Victims.

On second thought this story isn’t just a wet dream for right-wing talk hosts---it ties together almost everything that’s gone wrong with America for the past 25-30 years in one not-so-neat and still-developing narrative. Stay tuned, and beware.

Closer to home (yet oh so far away), the Chronicle’s Carolyn Feibel reported that Houston Mayor Bill White, who is said to harbor gubernatorial if not presidential aspirations, is involved in a move to unilaterally extend a “lucrative” food-sales concession at Bush Intercontinental without “a potentially messy competitive bid process.” The beneficiary of this extension would be Jason Yoo, described by the newspaper as “a local businessman” who owns JDDA Concession Management. Yoo has donated at least $28,000 in campaign funds to eight council members and $1,260 to White in the last four years, according to Feibel.

A council vote on the extension has been delayed a week by Councilmember Anne Clutterbuck, who wants the franchise to franchise outlets that sell extortionately overpriced food and drink at Terminal C put up for bid. White says he agreed to negotiate an amended contract with JDDA at the urging of some council members, whom Feibel identified as Jarvis Johnson and Michael Berry. (Update: In a Thursday follow-up Feibel and colleague Matt Stiles add the name of our very own representative on council, M.J. Khan, to the list of Yoo sponsors. Yoo, who according to the Chronicle urped up $4,000 in campaign funds for Khan, is listed as “president, construction co.” in the list of endorsements the councilman is touting in his re-election bid.) The mayor contends he’s wrangled a much better deal than if the city were to seek bids.

That may be so, but we didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or have our self voluntarily committed after reading the council members’ justifications for the extension:

"They had, I guess, a slump in business," said Berry, who received a $5,000 contribution from Yoo in 2005. "And they didn't think it was fair that the contract was up as soon as it was."

JDDA purchased the contract from the previous vendor, Entertainment One Inc., in 2005, but the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and renovations at Terminal C meant lower-than-expected revenues, according to JDDA's attorney, Robert Miller.

Johnson said the extension was the "right thing for the city to do," since food sales declined during the airport renovations.

"The new deal gives us what we need. It also gives the city more income," the councilman said. Johnson received a $2,000 contribution from Yoo this May. Yoo's daughter also worked briefly on Johnson's staff in early 2006. But Johnson and Berry denied any political favors or conflict of interest.

Yes, sure: Jason Yoo and his JDDA, a 65-percent minority-owned business, are victims of circumstance, much like Hillary Clinton and Rosenman of Woostock fame. And what about the legions of suckers who didn’t read or couldn’t understand the fine print in their mortgages … don’t they deserve an extension? Life is soooo unfair.

By the way---for those of us who don’t spend a lot of time loitering at City Hall---who is Jason Yoo?

Is he the same Jason Yoo listed on the steering committee of Friends of the Airport?

The same Jason Woo who founded HBS Construction, a certified Miniorty/Women-owned Business Enterprise and Historically Underutilized Business? (A designation apparently granted to make up for years of discrimination against Korean-Americans.)

The same Jason Yoo listed as a Friend of Bill?

The same Jason Yoo who dropped a grand on Clutterbuck, which the council member told Feibel she’s considering returning “but for reasons unrelated to the airport contract, which she declined to discuss.” Do tell, council lady: it’s the public’s business. Perhaps Clutterbuck has performed some kind of due diligence. We sure hope White has: Democrats need to be extra picky about their “friends” these days.

There's No Prude Like a Sanctimonious Prude

An interesting story interred in the graveyard pages of Sunday’s daily newspaper examines Mayor Bill White’s hard-on for the city’s high-end topless clubs and suggests that if the mayor has his way Houston just won’t be … Houston.

Without its topless “cabarets,” the newspaper reports, Houston

to some would be akin to San Francisco without cable cars or Seattle without rain and coffee.

(We have no evidence to refute the bold assertion of this “some,” and in fact have long held that aside from its sexually oriented businesses the city has been woefully short on signature attractions/phenomena since the Holder’s Pest Control roach was removed from its perch alongside the Southwest Freeway.)

To personalize the issue, reporter Mike Tolson introduces us to Ivy Taylor, who says her job as a dancer at the Men’s Club allows her to pay for the behavioral therapy required by her 2 ½-year-old autistic daughter. "I wish,” says Ms. Taylor, possibly with a straight face, “government officials were more concerned about the needs of special-education kids than topless bars."

The mayor, when questioned about the potential plight of Ms. Taylor and child should the city’s distance requirement for SOBs eventually be enforced (estimated date for resolution of court proceedings: late 2061), “suggested that she find a new line of work,” according to the newspaper.

"There's bound to be a better way to address the challenges of a young mother trying to take care of a child and make ends meet than by having businesses that have her take off all her clothes and dance in front of strangers," White said.

As far as we know the mayor has no standing to dispense career advice (not in the city charter), but we do, having recently won our certification as a Life Coach. Here’s what we’d suggest to Ms. Taylor: Instead of working at a job that pays decent money and gives you some sense of control (however illusory), hire on as an office flunky somewhere at many times less your current salary and enjoy the leering and sexual badinage---without getting tipped for it, of course.

If that doesn’t sound fulfilling, Ms. Taylor should try obtaining a law degree and becoming a wealthy trial lawyer, then parlaying her connections into a high-level presidential appointment in the Energy Department, then using those connections to attain greater wealth in the private sector, then launching a successful political career ... Such a path would require a considerable amount of get-up-and-go, it's true, but it’ll beat taking off all your clothes and dancing in front of strangers any day.

We Speak, They Listen: Slampo’s Place Gets Results, No Matter How Small the Consequence

In the interest of … could we call it closure? … we flag attention to this small entry by the estimable Matt Stiles on the Chronicle’s Newswatch: City Hall blog:

… I should also note that often these amendments are negotiating points between the members and the mayor. Take Councilman Michael Berry's amendment to eliminate the Mayor's Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, or MOIRA. The mayor agreed that the office should end activities perceived as advocacy for illegal immigrants, so Berry tabled his amendment.

Good enough, we guess. Congrats to the councilman and the mayor for reaching a seemingly satisfactory conclusion. Everything else should be so easy when it comes to illegal immigration, right? Next thing you know the mayor will be coming out against that comprehensive "reform" legislation.

Proposed Garbage Fee, Once Front-Page News, Hardly Noticed as Its Corpse is Dragged Off Public Stage Under Cover of Night

As predicted a while back in this very space, the monthly fee for garbage pick-up (or waste reduction, if you will) proposed a few months back by Mayor White’s Solid Waste Task Force has come to naught, at least for the time being (and forever, too), getting the heave-ho from city council before it adopted the budget for the upcoming year.

We believe we may have been apprised of this possibility a week or so ago by Channel 11 (although weren’t paying attention at the time, having been distracted by our Spanish-language translation of Critique of Pure Reason, and if we’re wrong we apologize to anyone who would care), but we learned of its official demise from a one-paragraph obituary tucked deep down in a story on the new budget that appeared in Thursday’s Houston Chronicle. This was quite a comedown from the newspaper’s first big report on the proposal, which appeared on page one as that day’s play story and was followed by a ringing endorsement from the mayor’s Auxiliary Pep Squad on the Chronicle’s editorial board (the paper should now promptly re-endorse the garbage fee, just to show it has the courage of its supposed convictions).

Although the reasons for the rejection were left unexplained in the Chronicle, we can safely surmise that council members heard not one approving word about the proposal, unless it hailed from a Solid Waste Department minion or Chronicle editorialist. We suppose its disappearance in the middle of the night will accrue to White’s benefit, although come to think of it the ever-cautious mayor didn’t exactly hop up and grab the task force’s report in a smothering embrace.

Then again, it was his task force.

The rejected garbage pick-up tax also rated late mention in a notable column on Friday by Kristen Mack, the daily's political writer---notable because it was the rare instance of a Chronicle tastemaker not falling all over his or her self to plant a big wet one on the mayor’s hind cheeks. Although the column started out in less-than-promising fashion, quoting once and probably future mayoral candidate Chris Bell to the effect that a budget is a “moral document” (a statement we find objectionable on several levels, starting with the unearned hauteur it betrays; we’d expound further but supper’s on the stove), Mack goes on to posit that White is in Chapter 7 when it comes to new ideas and his “unambitious” budget lacks an “overriding mission.”

It’s a trenchant analysis of White’s last years in office, although we personally are averse to overriding missions (Five-Year Plans, Great Leap Forwards, rail systems to nowhere, false-premised preemptive invasions of sovereign Middle Eastern nations, false-premised “comprehensive immigration reform,” etc.). All we ask from municipal government is prudent taxation and spending and effective delivery of basic services. So if the mayor indeed has no other “overriding mission,” we’re down with that.

Almost as interesting as Mack’s analysis was the comment affixed to the online version of her column by one D. Jones (hmmm … name sounds familiar), who writes, sans caps

well, i'm just amazed. kristin mack has actually written truth about mayor white. your insight clear, analysis solid and presentation unhedged. he has run out of ideas. he is a mean little micro-manager of the kathy whitmire variety and he is totally media-driven in his ill-conceived run for statewide office. this man who viciously savages employees in meetings is a timid little mouse before any public criticism. mark that down: houstons' only newspaper has one person who is man enough(??!!!) to tell the truth.

Funny, we’ve heard a couple of similar critiques of the mayor, although their presentation lacked the tang of D. Jones’s. It’s clear the Chronicle ought to make this guy one of its 16,141 bloggers: We detect potentially high reader interest in what he’s got to say.

The Living is Just Too Damn Free and Easy Here in the Trash-Monger’s Paradise

At the risk of coming across as a gimlet-eyed, tooth-grinding bore---or, more accurately, an even bigger gimlet-eyed, tooth-grinding bore---we must return to the issue of the recommended $3.50-a-month “waste reduction fee” for the city of Houston, which we will henceforth refer to simply as the proposed garbage tax.

We took note, as did others, that the Upper West Siders of the Houston Chronicle editorial board donned their revealing cheerleader outfits Sunday to slap their pom-poms and cut some rather shakily executed backflips on behalf of the garbage-tax recommendation by Mayor Bill White’s Solid Waste Task Force. Declaring Houston to be a “trash-monger’s paradise” (a catchy new city motto, don’t you think?), the Upper West Siders then claimed that

Heavy trash, a $28 million expense, gets whisked away free each month.

BlogHouston has pointed out that the editorial went on to contradict itself on that issue only four paragraphs later, so we see no reason to wheeze on refuting this obviously screwy assertion but instead will refer to the very first page of the “well researched proposals” of White’s task force, as the editorial described them, wherein it is flatly stated that

City solid waste services are provided without a user fee, which is a rare situation in Texas. While many residents look upon the City service as “free” it of course is not free but has both monetary and societal costs because 1.) taxpayers fund it …

Well, there you have it. Perhaps it would have been too much exertion to read the thing, which is posted on-line and can be accessed from the air-conditioned comfort of the home office.

Although the editorial’s author or authors seemed quite enamored of the task force’s projection that its proposals will save the city $14 million of the $28 million currently spent on free monthly heavy-trash pick-up, closer scrutiny might have led him, her or them to wonder why a proposed five-sixths reduction in service would result in only a projected one-half savings in three years (that’s because, as Ubu Roi, a blogger with a deep appreciation for the surreal, notes, this one won’t actually result in much in the way of “waste reduction,” the ostensible guise in which the garbage tax comes clothed.)

We write here as a humble payer of city property and sales taxes and regular user (not abuser, nor “monger”) of both heavy trash (the proud 30 percent, we guess) and recycling pick-up, and as such we of course have noticed that we keep paying more each year in property taxes to the city but aren’t getting any more in services. Not even a teensy bit more. Perhaps the Hearst Corp. does not pay its editorial writers enough to afford a standalone home, even at the very favorable terms now available, and that state of affairs that has left them with the misimpression that the whisking is on the house.

Now there may be some sensible recommendations in the task force’s report, particularly regarding "out of ordinance” service and the revival of city compositing, but we hope the mayor isn't just buying time when he suggests the entire report can stand as a point of departure for further discussion. Much further. Hell, it's remotely possible we might even be persuaded that some nominal monthly fee is warranted, although it would take more than a "succinct slide presentation" by the task force, omission of which the Chronicle found to be the biggest problem with the report's presentation (y'know, a colorful PowerPoint to boil it down for you stupes). Said discussion might begin with the priorities of a city that can find the pocket change to fund an office to tend the needs of non-citizens and agitate for comprehensive immigration reform, to cite one dubious (and, yeah, admittedly minor) expense.

Then our newly engaged and empowered city council members could move on to examining the priorities of a transit agency that dabbles in real estate development to improve ridership---we know, "dabbles" isn’t quite the right word for a $7.2 million deal---and then leaves hanging the question of whether it might try to wiggle out of paying property taxes on the parcel while it holds the land for repurchase by a private developer.

Which brings us way around to the question of why someone (that is, besides us, a mere rank-and-file trashmonger) hasn’t pinned Mayor White’s ears back on the Metro deal. If we remember correctly, the mayor appoints a majority of the Metro board, including the chairman, with the council's approval. These are among the same trustees who exercised their fiduciary duties last month by approving the land purchase with no public discussion. Not even a post-approval press release from their press-release factory. Imagine that!

Would a Garbage Fee Mean the City Would Throw Our Recycling Bin Back in Our Yard and Not Leave It Out in the Street Anymore?

We hope Michael Berry wasn’t the only member of Houston City Council to make the rather obvious observation that the recommendations by Mayor Bill White’s Solid Waste Task Force amount to “less service, higher costs,” but we fear that Berry may be alone among the herd of independent minds on council.

The justifications for the panel’s proposed imposition of a first-ever garbage collection fee and curtailment of heavy-trash pick-up are that 1). Money from the city’s general fund now spent (we refuse to use the word “subsidize” here) on picking up recyclables and unwanted sofas could be used for parks and libraries and police and whatnot (and how can you argue against that---it’d be like moving to evict the mentally retarded from their long-time … oh, never mind) and 2.) All the other big cities in Texas do it, with monthly fees ranging from $16 to $23 for basic service.

We like parks and libraries and figure that Houston could always use more, but in the great scheme of things we’d consider hauling off the trash, whether it’s stuffed in the can or stacked by the curb, to be a more pressing priority. For the moment, though, let’s set aside the “higher costs” end of the equation and examine the “less service” portion.

According to the task force, one of the uses to which the new revenue would be put is stricter enforcement against illegal dumping. Of course, one guaranteed result of cutting heavy-trash collection from once a month to twice a year (eventually on an “on-call basis,” as the task force would have it) would be a marked increase in illegal dumping.

Not to worry, though: the service cut will be accompanied by “substantial enforcement” in “abused/abusing neighborhoods,” the former being where the folks just put out too damn much heavy trash, the latter being where commercial operators take advantage of the pick-up to get rid of their crap (which we would argue is better than dumping it in a vacant lot). The task force elaborates:

Effecting change in Houston will require strong enforcement (for a period of time until practices change) and material fines being levied that exceed the cost of taking the trash too a landfill or a neighborhood depository. The cost of enforcement and opening new depository sites can eventually be borne from heavy trash savings achieved. Enforcement will initially require extra funds …

Yes, one revenue stream begats another, till the mad rivers flow into the peaceful sea.

In outlining what it sees as the “problem,” the task forces observes that use of heavy trash pick-up is “unevenly distributed among neighborhoods,” with some using it “excessively” and others hardly at all (we’d guess ours would fit the first category, whatever “excessively” means, and Mayor White’s the second). That may be true, but it’s a meaningless observation---in some neighborhoods households can go weeks, months and maybe years without calling the cops while in other neighborhoods residents phone for police service “excessively,” so maybe the city should consider tacking a monthly “protection” fee on to water bills, just to make everybody happy.

On second thought forget we mentioned it, as we can see the day coming …

(By the way, we noticed the head of the county Republican Party came out against the White panel's recommendations, so we’re wondering where his Democratic counterpart is, Democrats being the party of progressives and populists and William Jennings Bryan. Oh yeah: Democrats are the ones pushing this.)

Four-Alarm Garbage Fee Alert!!!!!!!!

News of Mayor Bill White’s (let’s give credit where it’s due) move to evict the Center Serving Persons with Mental Retardation from its longtime home on prized and highly developable city-owned property near River Oaks (as detailed in this very fair and balanced story in Sunday’s Chronicle) comes on the heels of word that the city may be poised, for the first time in its history*, to impose a fee for garbage collection services on single-family residences.

We learned the latter fact from the front page of last Thursday’s newspaper---not the front front page, but the front page of the weekly zoned edition of the Chronicle that’s distributed in our neck of the metropolis. And of this we’ve heard no more (talk about underplaying a story!).

In other words, this proposal hasn’t exactly gotten prominent mention in the media, or by our elected officials.

According to the Chronicle’s Alief/Southwest News, at-large Council member Ronald Green told the Alief Super Neighborhood Council last week that the city is likely to propose a $3 or $4 monthly fee for recycling and heavy trash pick-up and collection of such could come through city water bills (as if they aren’t high enough already). Green allowed that there “is a $2 million to $3 million gap in providing waste collection service and a fee for recycling and heavy trash is going to be an option.”

We’re not sure what he meant by “gap,” exactly, but we’ve never been under the impression that garbage collection (light, heavy, recyclable or otherwise) is a city service that is supposed to pay for itself, anymore than police protection is supposed to be a self-sustaining service. Fact of the matter is, we always thought that municipalities were incorporated mainly to provide for sanitation and public safety, but as usual we must have been wrong. What do we pay city property and sales taxes for, anyway? So we can, like, turn a city golf course into a soccer stadium for a California ga-jillionaire? Or what?

This doesn’t surprise us, as White has previously targeted both services: Early on as mayor he proposed making heavy trash collection a by-request service (it’s unlikely White and his neighbors haul their expired Maytags and decayed fence posts out to the curb, as the do-it-yourselfers in our neighborhood do, in large numbers), a proposal that went nowhere. More recently he threatened to do away with recycling pick-up in neighborhoods where residents don’t avail themselves of the service in sufficient numbers, but we've lost track of where that one stands.

So we’re thinking that maybe the city should go ahead and toss the mentally challenged folks out of their center because its 99-year lease violates the city charter or whatever legalism is justifying the eviction and use the windfall from the sale to cover the $2 to 3 million “gap” for waste collection and reap some revenue from the fug-ugly high-raise apartments that will no doubt replace the center---housing that, and we’re just taking a wild swing here, will be priced well beyond the “affordable” range for the rest of us down here on the ground paying the $3 or $4 garbage fee.

But here are our predictions, once the public is riled: No garbage fees, no eviction of the retarded. And here’s a gratuitous forecast with no connection to those two, which we’re throwing in as lagniappe just because we were over that way this weekend: Midtown=the “Gulfton Ghetto” of the 2030s (we’ll be too too dead to care or else blessedly medicated in the Old Folks Compound up in Navasota).

*We think that's the case but we're too time-pressed for this "fact-checking" business at present. If this would not be a historical first, then we regret the error, etc.