Early Voting: Stick a Fork in it Today

For those of you who have been inundated with phone calls to go vote - and are sick of it - I have two pieces of advice:

1. Next time, vote early during the early voting process. This should take your name and number out of the universe of calls to be made. Campaigns have access to records that show who has voted to date, and who has not.

2. Get rid of your landline! What in the heck are you waiting for? It's 2010, for goodness sakes. The laws about robo dialing cell phones are much different than for landlines. Unless you have opted in for a campaign to call your cell, you should be getting just about zero "go vote" messages on your cell.

Today is your last day to vote early. If you don't get it done today, expect a ton of calls over the weekend and through Tuesday from everyone who thinks they can influence you - Obama, Hillary, your state rep, your state senator, your kindergarten teacher, and anyone else a campaign can dig up and put in front of a voice recorder.

What does the voting look like in Fort Bend County, so far? Enlarge these photos and check it out (through Wednesday, Oct. 27):

And, for Harris County, here's voting through Thursday, October 28:

Prop 1 Missing Details and Transparency

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.

Exit TAKS Retake Week

Believe it or not, this is a TAKS week. Yeah, we think of TAKS as being a fun (haha!) spring time festivity, but if you fail one or more of your Exit TAKS as a junior, you get to retake it and retake it and retake it until you pass . . . or give up.

Yesterday was a big day for me and the first period class I teach - 21 great kids who are seniors and need to pass their Science Exit. We've been learning content, going to lab twice a week and doing practice TAKS problems. They have done everything I've asked of them, and they have exceeded my expectations. This is a group of kids who want to learn what they need to learn so they can graduate. Thursday was their Science Exit TAKS retake day. Tuesday was ELA, Wednesday was Math, and Friday is Social Studies.

I believe in these kids. I met them at the door of their testing room and gave them high fives and words of encouragement. We had a last minute review out in the hall of test taking strategies, and a few of them had one last question for me on content.

I met several of them later in the day as they left the testing room and they were smiling at me, telling me they thought they did great. I sure hope so.

TAKS is really not all that easy for many kids - particularly kids in poverty. We are all dreading next year when our freshmen have to start passing the first four of twelve end of course exams to graduate. But, we are preparing. We are not going to let our kids down. We are not going to let them let themselves down.

If you assume TAKS is easy or that the cut score is too low, take a few of them online at this link. The dreaded TPM is not an issue with Exit TAKS. Either you pass them and graduate, or you don't. There is no credit for "growth."

We get our results back the first week in December. Fingers crossed. Graduation is at stake.

Two Days of Early Voting in Harris County

Here's the record of the first two days of early voting in Harris County (click on the image to make it bigger.) It's by early vote location. Those locations can be found at this link, along with days and hours of early voting.

At first glance, it looks like Republican areas of the county are voting heavily, and Democratic areas not so much, but Kuff crunched the data after day one and didn't find that much difference in percentages from what happened right off the bat in 2006.

I live in Fort Bend, and voted on Monday. I'm sort sad the King Street Patriot poll watchers aren't out here. I would have loved to have been harassed, so I could get them in trouble (read or watch Miya Shay's report on their voter intimidation activities at minority poll locations in Harris County.) Instead, I just had to make my way through road construction and a police officer directing traffic right at the entrance of my early vote location.

As a reminder, here's all the info you need to find out how to vote early in Fort Bend County. It would be nice to see the early vote totals to date in Fort Bend County, but if they are on the always confusing elections website, I can't find them.

Folks, you have until next Friday to go vote early at any early voting location in your county. After that, mark your calendars for Tuesday, Nov. 2nd, where you will need to vote by 7 PM at the polling location in your precinct.

Early Voting Schedule and Locations in Fort Bend County

I'm about to fall out of my chair - I just discovered early voting at my early vote location is until 7 PM every night this week. Yay! Most of us in Fort Bend commute to work, and being able to vote that late is a huge help. I remember when the first week of early voting meant the polls closed at 4 PM.

All of the Fort Bend County early voting locations, and times they are open, are listed here, with photographs and maps of the location.

At this link is a map of Fort Bend County, with clickable early voting locations.

The first day of early voting is Monday, October 18, and the last day of early voting is Friday, October 29.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 2nd.

I'm excited to vote for Judy Jennings, who is running to be my State Board of Education member, Jeff Weems for Railroad Commissioner, and Linda Chavez Thompson, for Lt. Governor, as well as all of the Democratic candidates, except crazy Kesha Rogers. What a mess. I'm going to have to vote straight D, then uncheck her.

I read in Capitol Inside that Fort Bend County is Ground Zero for Democrats in this election. Well, this Democrat hasn't received any mail, so the ground I live on in Fort Bend is getting zero attention. That's OK, because I have such a strong Democratic voting history, but with all the checking and unchecking going on with Kesha on the ballot, it would probably be a good idea to shore up the triple D's with mail. Maybe it's coming. There may be another unchecking going on with a county D candidate, who is unworthy for office . . .so yeah, it's not going to be the straight D experience I usually enjoy.

If you live in Fort Bend and want to find out who is on your ballot, or even what your precinct number is, click on this link.

Prop 1 in Houston: How to Tick Off Your Supporters

I thought it was pretty bad that the Prop 1 folks didn't make it clear that schools would have to pay the flood and drainage fee, thereby giving their opponents an advantage in having something juicy to holler about before voting starts in a couple of weeks. HISD got plenty of media attention before and after today's unanimous school board vote to oppose Prop 1.

Just to correct Board President Greg Meyers - he said he didn't like that one taxing entity (City of Houston) was taxing another taxing entity (HISD). Well, Prop 1 is proposing a fee, not a tax. If it was a tax, which would have been a death blow due to Republican opposition, he'd have a point. But, it's not a tax, it's a fee. And, it's a fee on the portion of the property that has impervious ground cover, not the entirety of the property. What I heard today was that there were talks between the City and HISD about some solutions for them to be exempt from paying the fee. So I was hopeful I'd hear something positive in the press at some point today or tomorrow. Instead, I received the press release below from the Prop 1 advocates (engineers who will benefit from Prop 1 passing.)

It looks like they think they can win the war by going to battle with the largest school district in Houston. This is about the most boneheaded move I can imagine. You know, as much trouble as schools are in academically and financially, most parents believe their local public school is good. Also, I didn't know the Prop 1 backers were education experts. My goodness, I'm begging them to please lend their expertise to the school finance problems, since they have so much knowledge about where the fat is in school budgets.

Anyway, here you go . . . the Prop 1 press release going after HISD:

PRESS RELEASE 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

October 7, 2010

Contact:

Kathryn McNiel, (713) 528-3335

kathryn@kchace.com

Carolyn Campbell, (713) 530-4778

ccampbelltx@gmail.com 

Vote FOR Prop 1 Campaign to HISD: “Cut the Waste, Not the Teachers”

The Vote FOR Prop 1 Campaign regrets to learn that the Houston Independent School District is taking a position against the best interests of our city, taxpayers, and most importantly our children.

HISD should do a more responsible job of managing taxpayer funds before laying off teachers and opposing a fiscally responsible plan to keep its students safe.

In short, HISD should cut the waste, not the teachers.

HISD has been rocked by at least two scandals this year, from lax oversight of more than a billion dollars in bond funds to spending millions on unnecessary overtime.

HISD needs to provide it's students with safe passage to schools on safe and dry roads. It needs to make sure parents can pick up their kids from school after a heavy rain. It needs to make sure police and fire have quick access to schools to keep our children safe. 

HISD does NOT need to use its students as a political football when it can do a better job managing its own tax dollars. 

Proposition 1 requires the city to end years of wasteful borrowing and convert to a responsible, pay-as-you-go plan to rebuild our crumbling streets and help prevent flooding. It ties the hands of politicians so they cannot use these funds for any other purpose.

The politicians at HISD should take a lesson and get their own fiscal house in order before penalizing our kids.

We urge the Houston Independent School District to reconsider it’s resolution and join thoughtful leaders supporting Proposition 1 like the Houston Chronicle, Mayor Annise Parker, the Greater Houston Partnership, AFL-CIO, LULAC Council #402, Houston Police Officers’ Union, the Neartown/Montrose Super Neighborhood, Scenic Houston, Brays Bayou Association, Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce and the thousands of other Houstonians who don’t want to worry about high water and reaching their children at school or on school buses whenever the skies open up.

Is the Real Texas Budget Deficit $25 Billion?

I realize Rick Perry barely acknowledges there is a budget deficit at all, but the number I've been hearing - from him - is $18 billion. Then, I saw this tweet from University of Houston President Renu Khator:

RT@UHPres In Austin today for Chancellors meeting..overheard that state budget shortfall may be as high as $25 billion!

So, has anyone else heard this number? $25 billion is 39% greater than $18 billion. That's significant.

Of course, if Perry would face us, and appear at debates, we might be able to get some answers.

Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia Has a Message to Latino Voters

This is a great ad in Spanish by Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia. The gist of it is that it's important for the Latino community to get out and vote in this election - as important as voting in the Presidential elections, because the people elected this November make decisions about our schools, hospitals and parks.

She invokes family, as well. Basically, the message is - vote our voting strength so that we have a say in the future of our families and community.

Excellent. Even this SLL (Spanish Language Learner) got the message!

Phone Bank for a Better SBOE in Fort Bend on Monday!