So much for Texas: Houston is broke

[RoryN]

Nice work, Texas!

Houston Mayor John Whitmire says city is 'broke' after decades of overspending that has stopped them from being able to pay firefighters

America's fourth largest city is spending more money than it's taking in, leaving it with a $160 million deficit, according to FOX 26 Houston.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/te...erspending-stopped-able-pay-firefighters.html

 

[Rotadom]

Nice work, Texas!

Houston Mayor John Whitmire says city is 'broke' after decades of overspending that has stopped them from being able to pay firefighters

America's fourth largest city is spending more money than it's taking in, leaving it with a $160 million deficit, according to FOX 26 Houston.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/te...erspending-stopped-able-pay-firefighters.html

Houston was planned by drunk blind squirrels.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Sprawl is expensive to maintain. Lots of paved streets used by only a handful of residents. Eventually the suburb system breaks down.

 

[desecration]

Houston Mayor John Whitmire says city is 'broke' after decades of overspending that has stopped them from being able to pay firefighters

Looks like Sylvester Turner and Lina Hidalgo did not do such a great job.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Houston firefighters have gold-plated pensions, and are way out of touch with reality.

They should have been migrated over to defined contribution plans (as opposed to defined benefit plans) decades ago, but no Houston mayor wanted to "rock the boat".

 

[Tigersman]

Houston like the state of Texas has given too many tax breaks too often to too many companies. Houston has also annexed too many communities that cost them more to provide police and fire protection for.

 

[desecration]

Houston firefighters have gold-plated pensions, and are way out of touch with reality.

As opposed to HPD? No way.

HFD is one of the few remaining functional parts of the city.

Turner hated it because it was not under his control.

Now that Turner is gone in a miasma of implication and failure, we may know more...

Pendulums swing. It's not how things should be, but it's how humans are.

The human species is basically a group of stupid monkeys that talk and have anxiety.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Houston like the state of Texas has given too many tax breaks too often to too many companies. Houston has also annexed too many communities that cost them more to provide police and fire protection for.

Like the "Energy Corridor"? In the 1980s, the 80s oil boom created a huge boom in cheaply built office towers lining Interstate-10 from the western edge of Houston all the way to the Katy city limit. Promoters dubbed it "the Energy Corridor". Oil bust happened and the place is a literal ghost town since then. Super cheap rents, but no one rents there because the local infrastructure (restaurants, gas, shopping) withered away and hasn't come back. Most buildings aren't wired for Internet (!!!) and high speed fiber to the area is non-existent. It's a textbook case of sloppy urban planning.

 

[desecration]

Like the "Energy Corridor"? In the 1980s, the 80s oil boom created a huge boom in cheaply built office towers lining Interstate-10 from the western edge of Houston all the way to the Katy city limit. Promoters dubbed it "the Energy Corridor". Oil bust happened and the place is a literal ghost town since then. Super cheap rents, but no one rents there because the local infrastructure (restaurants, gas, shopping) withered away and hasn't come back. Most buildings aren't wired for Internet (!!!) and high speed fiber to the area is non-existent. It's a textbook case of sloppy urban planning.

Have you been there lately? Katy is booming and the city is built out to it.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Have you been there lately? Katy is booming and the city is built out to it.

I go by there all the time. Katy has built a booming city because the giant Katy Mills outlet mall (biggest in Texas) is the economic anchor on the East. There are giant distribution centers to the west of Katy (Rooms To Go, Amazon Food, etc) that offer decent jobs, and the former cattle land north of Katy is being turned into huge master-planned communities.

Think of dog bone: one end knob is Houston....the middle thin part is the decaying Energy Corridor... and the other end knob is Katy.

Katy is also now developing upscale destination restaurants....I admit I didn't expect to see THAT in my lifetime.

 

[desecration]

Katy is also now developing upscale destination restaurants....I admit I didn't expect to see THAT in my lifetime.

Me either. However, the energy corridor is doing fine although the "decay" you note is the big O&G firms moving to Spring. Houston now extends straight out to Sealy! I'm not a fan of this, but the growth is upon us.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Me either. However, the energy corridor is doing fine although the "decay" you note is the big O&G firms moving to Spring. Houston now extends straight out to Sealy! I'm not a fan of this, but the growth is upon us.

Spring is fucked in the short term, they've grown too fast too soon and now Hotwheels Hitler wants to tear up substantial portions of Spring to build the enormous I-45 mega-interstate (4 additional lanes) from Houston to Dallas.

Also Hurricane Harvey showed that Houston is barely competent in flash flood management (thanks to the Addicks-Satsuma reservoir built in the early 50s) but Spring relies on sketchy drainage into the Houston shipping channel. Flooding is a serious drawback in Spring.

 

[desecration]

Spring is fucked in the short term, they've grown too fast too soon and now Hotwheels Hitler wants to tear up substantial portions of Spring to build the enormous I-45 mega-interstate (4 additional lanes) from Houston to Dallas.

Not to be a contrarian, but I-45 has sucked ass for years. Rebuilding it is a good idea. In the long run, I agree with you that expanding freeways is bad because it encourages sprawl.

Also Hurricane Harvey showed that Houston is barely competent in flash flood management (thanks to the Addicks-Satsuma reservoir built in the early 50s) but Spring relies on sketchy drainage into the Houston shipping channel. Flooding is a serious drawback in Spring.

Houston had fifty years of warning on that one, but spent its money on social causes instead.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Houston had fifty years of warning on that one, but spent its money on social causes instead.

I disagree. The Reservoir was designed to withstand a 500-year flood, which sadly occured in 2017.

The system failed because in the interim between 1951 and 2017, developers begged and pleaded to build homes in the lucrative spillover land that acted as a buffer between the city and the reservoir. Developers wanted to gamble that the 500 year flood would not occur in their lifetime, so between roughly 1965 and 2010 housing developers dumped a shit-ton of campaign cash into politicians amenable to make "one-time only exceptions". The end result was 80% of the spillover land that was supposed to be the last-chance barrier between Houston and floods of Biblical proportions was basically gone.

The reservoir filled. The levees were in danger of breeching, destroying the entire system, so the decision was (correctly) made to open the spillways. This was catestrophic for any poor sucker who had a home in the 500 year spillover zone, their homes were ruined. (They're currently suing the Army Corps of Engineers for doing the right thing). The opened spillways had no drainage area to soak up water, so they overflowed into the major drainage canals that dump into the Houston shipping channel. The result was any building with a basement or underground parking in Central downtown (as opposed to the "Medical Center Downtown") was fucked. Fucked hard and fucked often.

It took six freaking months for the major roads that bisected the reservoir to reopen. I think there were three or four of them. They were two feet above flood level for that long! Anyone commuting downtown had to take a 20 mile detour one way to reach downtown via the perimeter roads (Beltway, 610 and 99 Grand Parkway).

 

[desecration]

The Reservoir was designed to withstand a 500-year flood, which sadly occured in 2017.

Ooof, no. The reservoir has been getting warnings from the Army Corps for the last fifty years. It was never sufficient.