Last week we posted on Spring Branch ISD’s fight to prevent the city of Houston from condemning a piece of land in front of an elementary school to create a new turn lane. Both the Chronicle and KTRK-13 ran stories previewing SBISD officials going before city council to protest the land grab, but then we couldn’t find any stories after that.
Today in the Chronicle‘s Wrap Up section, Jason Spencer writes this:
IT turns out that the folks at the Spring Branch Independent School District never saw the memo.
If they had noticed the Oct. 15, 2004, letter explaining that the city of Houston wanted 200 square feet of Valley Oaks Elementary School property for a routine sidewalk improvement, not a right-turn lane, the unhappy school board members might not have marched down to City Hall last week. They also might not have issued a news release a day earlier, describing the city’s decision to claim the land through eminent domain as a “dangerous land grab” endangering children’s lives.
But it turns out the letter probably went unnoticed because it was addressed to then-Associate Superintendent Mike Maloney. That’s the same Mike Maloney who had resigned four days earlier in the face of a criminal charge accusing him of lying on his job application by claiming to have a master’s degree from a California university that doesn’t exist.
[snip]
While acknowledging the school district’s role in the misunderstanding, Kellner and Kosmoski said city officials share the blame.
“The mayor’s office would not return our phone calls,” Kellner said. “They could have straightened this out with us a week ago.”
Huh?
Is Spencer telling us that the condemnation is for a sidewalk and not a turn lane? Or is Spencer telling us that the city originally said it was for a sidewalk but now the city’s constructing a turn lane?
Did Spencer interview Susan Kellner to get a more complete picture of what is going on and what Spring Branch ISD’s position is? Did Spencer try to interview any city officials to clear up what the city of Houston is really doing, and to find out why the city refused to communicate with Spring Branch ISD officials?
We need a follow-up story to the wrap-up story.
