I've got some questions about Proposition 1 - the flooding and drainage fee proposition on the Houston ballot:
Why the lack of transparency and details?
With the well funded Renew Houston (google that and it points to the Prop 1 website) campaign, the City has known since January that there would be enough signatures for Prop 1 to be on the ballot.
Why not go ahead and move some obstacles out of the way early on, like make public schools and churches exempt?
Colleges and universities are already exempt, due to state law, so I'm not buying the "schools and churches have impervious cover and are part of the problem, so they need to be part of the solution" argument. For political reasons, if nothing else, those obstacles should have never been there. Move those out of the path early on and the pathway to victory is a more clear - and, it takes away one of the griping points from teapartiers and Republicans and right wing pastors. And, golly, if schools and churches have such a huge stake in making our streets safe, make them exempt from the fee and work very hard to ensure they are vocal advocates of the plan.
Why in the world would anyone think it's a smart idea to make engineers the face of the proposition?
It's not like it's not real clear they are very nearly the only ones funding the campaign to pass Prop 1 (spreadsheet of donors at this link.) Their biggest funder, Bob Jones - president of an engineering firm who will greatly benefit financially if Prop 1 passes, shot his mouth of in an arrogant, racist attack about the concerns of black elected officials. Come on. Engineers are process people and good with details and implementation, but they would not be my first pick for communication and persuasion for an issues oriented campaign. The Renew Houston/Prop 1 engineers' absolute arrogance in response to the HISD school board's unanimous opposition to Prop 1, is a case in point. If flooding and drainage is a crisis issue for Houston, why not bring more stakeholders on board early on - as funders, spokespeople, etc.
Why not have City Council vote on how the 20-year and $8 billion Prop 1 plan would be implemented - at least in terms of the metric that will be used to prioritize projects - before voters go to the polls, and not after the election?
Yes, I know the metric is being developed right now as we speak and that it is complicated. The City's Public Works and Engineering department supposedly has tools AND A PLAN to spend the money on prioritized flooding and drainage projects - what is that plan? The mayor published her proposed principles for implementing Prop 1, but it's City Council who will vote on and approve an implementation plan - and it could end up being very different from the mayor's proposal. Council could have already voted on "if Prop 1 passes, here is how it's going to work . . . the priorities will be determined this way . . . and here is who is going to be exempt." There are models from other large cities on how this type of fee is implemented in regards to rate plans, metrics and priorities. The City's plan for this should already be clear to voters before they are asked to tax themselves and hand billions of dollars over to engineering firms. There is some sort of game of chicken going on here so that if Prop 1 fails, elected officials can throw their hands in the air and say, "hey, I didn't put this on the ballot - this was an engineer driven thing, and it was handled poorly, and I have no idea what we are going to do about our flooded streets now that voters have voted against it." Which leads me to:
How do we fix Houston's flooding and drainage problem if Prop 1 does not pass? The reason lots of folks are saying, "vote for this because there is not another solution on the table" is because there is not another solution on the table. But, I'd really like to hear - from someone who is responsible - if it's so critical to pass Prop 1, seriously, what are we going to do if it doesn't pass. Make that clear.
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