Two seemingly unrelated stories this week caught my eye, in terms of what they say about Houston’s recent experiments in “Ready! Fire! Aim!” governance*:
First up is the news that the city’s heavy-trash collection schedule must be reworked, since the previous (seemingly urgent!) reworking has created problems:
To save space in landfills, a city task force last year recommended reducing heavy trash pickup to once every three months and requiring that only yard waste and other recyclables be put out on the other monthly pickup days. Members of the group, including City Controller Annise Parker, pointed out that other large cities do not provide free monthly residential heavy trash collection.
That may be, but few other municipalities have our sprawling, unzoned neighborhoods that invite illegal dumping in vacant lots and along streets. After several months of experiments with reduced heavy trash service, the volume of resident complaints and accumulating trash and other debris along roadsides prompted Solid Waste Director Harry Hayes to reconsider his options.
Hayes says a common refrain from residents in the pilot project areas was that they agreed with the goal of increasing recycling, but that the new schedule imposed too long a delay. “They said, ‘If you do it every other month, hey, I’m OK with that. I don’t have to keep that old couch in the back of the house or garage for four months.’ “The director expects to introduce the new pickup plan citywide in August or September.
What do you bet it will look somewhat more like the old plan (which was working just fine)? We can hope so.
Elsewhere, KHOU-11’s Jeremy Desel took a closer look at the impact of Houston’s recent floodway ordinance:
The Floodway Coalition of Houston didn’t even exist before October of 2006. But they’ve been busy since the city of Houston passed Ordinance Chapter 19.
Its no-build provision for structures in a floodway overnight made thousands of properties virtually worthless.
“There is nobody (who) can buy it. That is the bottom line,” said [Realtor Marisa] Talty.
The Floodway Coalition commissioned a study by an appraisal company to try to put a number on the loss of value to both property owners and the city through loss taxable value.
What did it find?
That the city would lose $1.9 to $3.5 billion in property tax value.
On the low end, that would be like totally removing the City of La Porte from the tax rolls or the City of Bellaire’s $2.5 billion tax base.
In fact, the loss to Houston could be bigger than the entire tax base of any city in Harris County except Pasadena.
It is an impact that means $38 to $70 million dollars in annual city tax revenue will be gone.
Neal Meyer has been on top of this story for some time now.
Unlike the first example in “Ready! Fire! Aim!” governance, this one may prove tougher to fix.
* In a post some time ago, Anne Linehan described what I am referring to here as “Ready! Fire! Aim!” governance as follows: “The city imposes the most punitive actions as a first resort, instead of exploring alternatives. Think $AFEclear, and red light cameras, to name just a couple of examples.”
