As we’ve all been told time and again, red light cameras are ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL about the safety, right? Well, KHOU reports that citizen Byron Schrimbeck found an odd safety violation near one camera, located at FM 518 and I-45 South, and decided to document it:
Texas law requires a light be yellow a certain length of time to safely give drivers time to react and stop.
Schirmbeck then called League City Police Chief Michael Jez and Jez asked The Texas Department of Transportation to investigate. TxDot found Schirmbeck was right about the yellow lights being short.
The eight-tenths of a second made a difference in more than 1,700 citations issued between October of last year and March.
Let’s read that again: The eight-tenths of a second made a difference in more than 1,700 citations. Now, this light was apparently supposed to be under the control of TxDOT. I guess that, since the article doesn’t tell us so. Nor does it tell us what the required minimum time is. But the important question is, who made out like bandits from this money-machine, for six months? Note that the article says refunds are being issued — but doesn’t say by whom. Follow the money, KHOU, follow the money. Doesn’t the state get a cut of it, these days? I’m sure League City gets the lion’s share.
One wonders if some bureaucratic tangle will “delay” the checks. Not that I have anything but total faith in the sincerity of our elected and unelected masters when they say “the check is in the mail.”
Shortly before KHOU broke the initial reports of document-shredding, Metro fired its general counsel, Pauline Higgins, as well as another staff attorney, Jakki Hansen. Another staff attorney voluntarily left the agency the same day KHOU’s first story aired. Metro said no other employees from the legal department have left the agency since February 1, 2010.
However, the exodus from the agency continues. A Metro spokesperson confirmed yet another senior manager has left the agency, just two days after it disclosed shredding had taken place. George Smalley confirmed in a written statement that David Feeley, the Senior Vice President of Operations at Metro, left the agency last Friday.
This is in an article, telling us that, surprise! Metro has never been in compliance with state law on recordkeeping.
Let me make this perfectly clear: Metro has NO excuse. All the information you need to know on how to comply with the requirements is available on the state’s websites. It took me a few hours research, and a half-day class on the city’s software and how to fill out the paperwork. To devise the program for Metro, which is far smaller than the city, should not have taken more than a week of work by a lawyer and any reasonable competent bureaucrat assigned to the work. I mean, hell, use the salary they’re wasting on Mary Sit’n'Spin’s blog to hire someone with some experience in the work — I’m available.
Fair warning, though: if you try to shred anything on my watch, you get fed to the shredder first.
KHOU and blogHOUSTON have been talking about the city and county’s decrepit land holdings. Maybe they should look more closely at the tool the city uses to acquire and disburse these properties: LARA.
From the minutes of the August 2009 meeting:
Didn’t we already kill that idea a few months before that?
Read the full minutes on the City’s website — the appearance of Jolanda Jones at the meeting, and the board’s discussion of participating in politics by submitting chosen questions to the mayoral candidates through the League of Women Voters are both illuminating…
Try as I might, I can’t find any mention in the minutes of just how much most of these properties are being sold to developers for, except one lot sold at full value ($10,000) and constant references to the “$1 Lot Program.”
Methinks the LA Times doesn’t know what the hell it’s talking about. Someone who has silently financed Bill White’s spending agenda is not a conservative, fiscal, or otherwise. Conservatives keep government spending restricted to the necessities, and do not waste time with worthless amenities such as sports stadiums, useless/expensive/dangerous trams, and wind energy schemes that only benefit friends. Nor do they spend a million dollars on consultants just to cover their political butts for the next run. That’s been the last six years, and the controller has fiddled while Rome burned. We will now discover if this was political pragmatism or agreement with the Democratic machine that Bill White has built.
We’ll be watching to see just how “conservative” this new mayor is.
Steven den Beste backslides into political blogging once again, with a post at Hot Air. If he isn’t careful, he’ll be at it full time again.
Pity I can’t register for comments there, as I wanted to follow up with this: “Is it worth noting that extreme cases of teleological belief would fit the technical definition of schizophrenia?”
Bob Lemer has become known as a bit of a “disaster monger”, and has been about as welcome as a global warming skeptic at a Greenpeace convention. Unfortunately, he’s also correct, and he’s not pulling his punches.
The City of Houston is financially broke and it appears that the mayor who takes office in January 2010 may have to captain the City through bankruptcy procedures.
Well if that ain’t telling it like it is.
Ok, here is my non-accountant read on it: Yes, if we honestly ‘fess up to what the (out of date and UNaudited) books say, we are flat broke. As in, we have a negative net value. That’s not the same thing as bankruptcy though, and while he confuses the point deliberately, I think he’s doing it in good faith. Bob and his co-signers, Aubrey M. Farb and Tom Roberts, are trying desperately to turn the Titanic before we hit the iceberg.
I recommend the full read above, but if Accountant Math makes your head hurt, you may want to skim at least the first half. If that’s too hard for you, I have highlights for the really attention-impaired, presented somewhat out of order, below the fold.
Since March, there have been rumblings inside the City of Houston’s PW&E department that a large shortfall was pending in the Combined Utility System’s funding. The public first learned about the city’s overall budget problems in Bill King’s oped, which we discussed here. The CUS, which is supposed to be independent of the city’s general fund is a separate issue altogether, though certain funding tricks used during the White era make their appearance once again. Specifically: back-loaded borrowing in which the city pays only a little up front, but then faces a balloon note down the road. According to Lee McGuire’s article for KHOU:
…nearly $1 billion in credit must be renegotiated early next year, and debt payments have spiked $50 million above earlier projections. All told, the system currently faces a $100 million cash shortfall – a significant problem for a department that took in $332 million in water bills last year.
“Re-negotiate” is CPA-speak for “re-finance” or “obtain debt relief, rather than default.” Simply put, the city’s rate-payers are about to face the music for years of living off borrowed money. How bad is it? The city has been making ordinary expenditures, such as yearly water meter purchases, from the capital funds instead of operating expenses. In household terms, they’ve borrowed money to pay for the groceries. And while this specific example represents only a tiny portion of the total, it’s one of the ways that total has been accumulated.
Today’s article was based on item #13 on today’s agenda, a proposal to hire consultants McKinsey & Co. to look for inefficiencies in the Public Works Department. This item was tagged and will return on next week’s agenda. Once again, the mayor is proposing to spend a large amount of funds for a questionable purpose. Unfortunately, KHOU’s article contains a few key errors, and some misleading statements. This may simply be the result of deadline pressure, or it may be that not all of the information provided to the press was…. shall we say, totally accurate.
I haven’t got the time to blog this properly, but head over to Texas Watchdog this morning for a look at what almost certainly prompted Vacar’s sudden “retirement.”
This is outstanding investigative reporting, the likes of which has been abandoned by the Houston Chronicle, which now relies on bloggers to cover the news while it keeps us informed of, well see for yourself.
Of course considering that the Chronicle’s loss (in staff) has been TW’s gain lately, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
There is a point in tournament poker where one player doesn’t have the chips to play out the next raise, but they have great cards, so they call “all in.” At that point, nobody can raise them and the hand gets played out — either to a game changing win or a total loss for the person who made the call. It appears Sarah Palin decided she and her family could no longer deal with the thousand cuts, so she is “all in.”
One of the best articles I’ve seen on the surprise story of the weekend; I recommend reading it in full.
Meanwhile, if I have any readers left out there on RSS, I suppose I owe you a bit of an explanation.
Since the beginning of the year, I have been working on a new project. Bloggers can’t save the world, the country, or even Houston. It’s going to take people working hard and making things happen. Tea parties are only a start, and there are some things that I just can’t do as “Ubu Roi.”
I hate letting the blog lie fallow, and I may be back here from time to time — the city is in bad shape right now, as anyone who reads blogHOUSTON should know, but our elected “leaders”, especially the Mayor, continue to dig the hole deeper. In another six years, at this pace, Houston is going to be a Left Coast basket case. We’re spending our savings down, and borrowing to pay the house note and groceries, while adding a new plasma-screen TV, and that’s just not sustainable. There will be a reckoning, and it’s going to be ugly.
Nonetheless, I’ve been called on to take a bigger role in my public ID, so this blog is going to have to remain a very small part of my activity in the future. I’ll write when I can, that’s all I can promise.
It’s a truism that big news that the city government doesn’t want you to hear will always break late on a Friday afternoon. Once again, it’s been proven.
Richard Vacar, who led the Houston Airport System for more than 11 years through several multi-billion-dollar expansion projects, abruptly left the post today, according to an announcement from Mayor Bill White’s office.
It was unclear whether Vacar was fired or left voluntarily. The announcement from the mayor’s office said he had retired.
Hey, he retired so fast, his own staff didn’t know. That happens all the time, right? Seriously, he was definitely shown the door, and the mayor obviously didn’t care if it hit him in the butt on the way out. Special inside knowledge? Nah, just the total abrogation of protocol.
Rorschach suggested that it might be the news leak over the new runway while the Lege is still in session, considering eminent domain bills. I don’t think I buy it.
This has all the hallmarks of MBW in full-blown rage mode. Now Vacar may have wanted the extra runway, and we know he’s the tool of Yellow Cab and the entire airline industry. (Or should I have stopped at “tool”?) But unless there’s a hell of a lot more to this.. as in “Bill, get us this runway and we’ll make damn sure you’re the next jr.Senator from Texas,” I just don’t see White going bonkers over this. In fact, I don’t see him even trying to make that deal unless he thinks such an obvious screw of the public (and our already broken budget) would look good right before he runs for office.
So did he catch Vacar eating babies for breakfast, or what?
Is the real problem that someone has proof that Vacar is as corrupt as we’ve always felt he was?
And is it just me, or is the Chron burying this story under swine flu and knee surgery infections at Methodist hospital?
Just on the odd chance that anyone has managed to run across my blog without seeing any of the majors today, you need to get your butt over to Michelle Malkin’s place.
Reading this blog has problably resulted in your being designated as an extremeist.
According to police, they were driving a white Pontiac Grand Prix when they fired gunshots at the driver of a truck. Then they exited the freeway at West Gulf Bank.
The truck driver stopped on the West Gulf Bank overpass and got a rifle from his back seat for protection, police said. As he looked over the side of the freeway to see the license plate of the Pontiac, he saw the car’s driver’s side window open and feared the suspects would shoot at him again.
He fired several shots at the Pontiac, hitting the passenger who was sitting in the front seat and another man who was in the back seat.
The front-seat passenger, 17, was taken to Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital, where he later was pronounced dead.
It’s not that the guy said “Screw this, I’m shooting back!” It’s not that three punks got more than they bargained for. It’s not even the comments. Nope, it’s the ratings of the comments.
CPP wrote:
Gang punks shoot at Bubba & Bubba returns fire: end of story!
4/9/2009 11:13:07 AM
