In today’s Chronicle story about current $AFEclear events, reporter Ron Nissimov includes this:
Councilman Michael Berry, another strong supporter of Safe Clear, helped develop the ordinance last year and predicted the council would approve amendments offered by council members Adrian Garcia and Gordon Quan that modify the mayor’s proposal.
Under their proposal, the city would identify “safe drop” locations to be used for short free tows, and it would ask the Legislature for permission to charge city residents a $1 registration fee for each car they own to fund the program.
The fees would generate an estimated $1.5 million a year.
Is Councilman Berry supporting the $1 fee to fund $AFEclear? It kind of sounds like it. Maybe it’s just the way the story is written.
Anyway, is there any revenue stream (translation: new tax) that City Council WON’T support? $AFEclear started off as a flat-out, no-doubt-about-it tax on vehicle breakdowns (although not big vehicle breakdowns, because buses and 18-wheelers are not included in the program), and when that didn’t go over well it was to become a “free” service for Houstonians, and now the idea is to fund $AFEclear with a new fee (tax) that should generate $1.5 million.
So, let’s do the math: the city convinced towing companies to pay out an estimated $1 million in freeway rights, then the mayor said the city would pay $300,000 to fund the “free” tows, and now the city is proposing to offset that with a tax that would generate another $1.5 million.
1,000,000 – 300,000 = 700,000 + 1,500,000 = $ 2,200,000
Wow! It seems the longer $AFEclear takes to be perfected, the more revenue it generates for the city. The mayor is really onto something here.
KEVIN WHITED ADDS: We know that Chronicle columnist Rick Casey has had problems in the past with representing the ideas and words of others as his own.
However, we didn’t even guess that he was representing the ideas of councilmembers Garcia and Green in his column a few Sundays ago. I guess we know now, but it would have been more above board and useful to readers and citizens if he would have identified the councilmembers floating that proposal in his column.
Of course, Anne’s post illustrates a point that we’ve made all along: this program is as much about creating yet another “new revenue stream” for the city as it is about public safety. It’s worth reminding readers once again that when politicians claim it’s not about the money, it’s almost always about the money.
As an interesting aside, it would be interesting to know how much time and money it will cost Houston taxpayers to lobby the state legislature for these changes that Quan and Garcia would like should their proposal be adopted.
