Good.
After two years of negotiations, the Houston City Council approved an agreement Wednesday that provides toll revenue from the airport connector to the city for the first time – 24.5 percent, to be precise.
Officials at Harris County, which has collected all revenue on the segment since it opened in January 2000, said it only made sense to play nice. County leaders have called parts of the original 1997 city-county agreement governing construction, maintenance and tolls “puzzling” and “bizarre.”
The city expects to collect about $1 million annually under the revised agreement, which still must be approved by the county Commissioners Court.
“We do have a better working relationship than we’ve ever had,” Mayor Annise Parker said. “Every so often governments can sit down and say ‘We wrote this in the contract, but we can do something better.’ ”
In a 2011 letter to the county proposing the two sides split toll revenues on the connector, Houston Airport System Director Mario Diaz noted the city contributed 43 percent of the $31.7 million construction cost and maintains a roughly 1.3-mile stretch of the road on airport property. Diaz also discussed the 1997 agreement, which authorized the city to collect toll revenues only if it built its own toll plaza – which could have resulted in redundant facilities or in the dismantling of the county’s existing plaza.
“That would just border on the line of pure stupidity to tear down a perfectly good plaza and build another one,” Commissioner Steve Radack said. “If the city’s happy with this and the toll road authority’s happy with it and they recommend it, I don’t have a problem with it.”
See here for the background. You will note that at the time, Steve Radack did have a problem with this idea. The fact that he is on board with this plan is a clear sign that city-county relations are at the highest point they’ve been in recent memory. Or possibly a sign of the impending apocalypse. Either way, kudos all around.