Two important documents were recently released on flooding in our region. The first is the Harris County Flood Control District’s (HCFCD) report on Hurricane Harvey written by Jeff Lindner and Scott Fitzgerald, the HCFCD’s chief meteorologist and engineer, respectively. The 32-page report is chock-full of statistics,...
There are two basic strategies for mitigating flood damages. One is to raise the level at which structures are built. The second is to lower the level of the flood waters. While flood mitigation policy should utilize both, the latter is vastly more efficient and...
Recently the City of Houston and the Harris County Flood Control District added new flood mapping tools to their websites. The City’s tool estimates the difference between the ground elevation and the 500-year flood plain. The map is color coded for incremental differences up to five...
The US Census Bureau just released its population estimates for 2017. They are a giant red flag for Houston. Most stunning was that the Census Bureau estimated that the City proper only added 8,200 new residents in 2017. The growth rate for the year was four-tenths...
The proposed FY2018-2019 City budget will, if adopted, continue to spend most of the drainage fees paid by Houstonians on things other than drainage. Any Council Member who votes for this budget is voting to continue to siphon off the drainage fees that Houstonians were...
As most of you know, in 2004 Houstonians voted to limit the amount that City Council can raise property tax collections each year without voter approval. The limitation is the sum of population growth and inflation, but not greater than 4.5%. Notwithstanding this limitation, the...
In 2001, the last year before Metro began spending money on light rail, Houstonians took over 89 million trips on Metro’s local bus service.[i] Last year, the combined trips on the local bus service and the light rail system came in at about 76 million,...
Last week it was suggested that Houston voters should agree to pay more in property taxes in order to hire more police. We have already done that once, in 2006. Perhaps before we rush to allow the City to increase property taxes by more than...
Recently, I did an informal poll of Facebook asking my friends whether they had the impression that violence had increased or declined throughout human history. Most thought it had remained about the same. A few felt it had increased. Several, who had read Steven Pinker's The...
It is an idea that seems intuitively like it should work. Instead of us all separately driving a car to where we need to go, we'll build some kind of transit system that will take us there. No parking. No traffic. You can read a...
On Wednesday, City Council narrowly approved a sweeping revision of the flood rules specifying how high new buildings must be constructed. The amendment to the ordinance is lengthy and complicated, but fundamentally it requires that buildings located in the 500-year floodplain must be built two...
There are two basic strategies for mitigating flood damages. One is to raise the level at which structures are built. The second is to lower the level of the flood waters. While flood mitigation policy should utilize both, the latter is vastly more efficient and...
The current ruling two-party duopoly is so ubiquitous that we take it as a given. We teach the "two-party system" in government classes. Taxpayers pay for their primary elections, notwithstanding that legally, parties are private associations. We have allowed the two ruling parties to institutionalize...