It’s bonds and more bonds this week, as we discuss the remaining referenda on the ballot. First up is the city of Houston bond package, which by law will be broken out into five separate propositions for your approval. Proposition B, the one having to do with parks and recreation, is easily the highest profile [...]
Posts Tagged ‘charter’
The ballot propositions we won’t have
Today is the 78th day before the November 6 election. That makes it the statutory deadline for ordering an election, as noted by the Secretary of State. They cite Sec. 201.054 of the Elections Code for this, which seems wrong to me; Sec. 201.051 appears to be more on point, though that still doesn’t specifically [...]
The door will stay open
Good decision. A proposal to give Houston City Council the ability to meet behind closed doors is dead. What a mayor’s spokeswoman called a “lack of consensus” was manifest in a committee meeting last week during which several council members criticized the idea as bad policy and bad timing. [...] Mayor Annise Parker’s agenda for [...]
Discussing the Z word
I have three things to say about this. The go-ahead for the Ashby high rise has left me feeling really depressed. If affluent residents with all their political and social connections can’t keep a 21-story skyscraper out of their bucolic neighborhood, what hope is there for the rest of us? When Mayor “I’m against the [...]
Another homeless feeding update
Depending on how you look at it, time is either running out for the petition signature gatherers who hope to overturn the homeless feeding ordinance, or it isn’t. Free to Give Houston, a recently formed political action committee, needs about 28,000 registered voters’ signatures to trigger a charter amendment election in November. The group sent [...]
Non-discrimination ballot referendum coming
I’ve been waiting for this. Activists are preparing a petition to put a referendum on Houston’s November ballot, calling for a ban on discrimination against gays and permission for the city to grant health insurance benefits to the unmarried partners of city employees. If organizers collect the 20,000 signatures needed to get it on the [...]
No action on red light camera settlement yet
Houston City Council voted to wait two weeks before deciding whether or not to accept the settlement agreement with camera vendor ATS. The City Council on Wednesday delayed approval of a $4.8 million settlement with its red-light camera vendor amid questions about the effect of an appeals court ruling that lets two Houston lawyers intervene [...]
Parker joins other mayors in push for marriage equality
Good for her. Good for all of them. Houston Mayor Annise Parker seized the vanguard of a drive by 78 mayors Friday to win the equal rights of marriage for gay couples, donning a national leadership role that contrasts sharply with her low-key demeanor back home. “This is an issue whose time has come,” Parker [...]
Elections from a bygone era
All through the Early Voting period, I’ve been comparing turnout this year to elections from 2005 through 2009. It’s not like we didn’t have elections in this city before then, of course. Obviously, the city now is different than it was before, and as such I don’t know how much there is to learn from [...]
Council redistricting will be messier than it needs to be
Houston City Council is set to start their discussion about redistricting, but some people want them to stop. Councilman Mike Sullivan views expansion as a function of mayor-council politics, and he opposes it. Houston’s residents, Sullivan said in an impromptu news conference after last week’s council meeting, “don’t want to see us trying to disenfranchise [...]
Renew Houston
The fact that Houston is currently in the throes of a severe revenue shortage doesn’t change the fact that there’s a great need to renovate and repair large portions of the city’s infrastructure. Naturally, that will cost a lot of money, which we don’t have. But with a new revenue source, we could do it. [...]