Voting NO on the infrastructure bonds (Houston, Spring: 2015, neighborhoods, schools)

[WRM20]

Originally Posted by SpringBrancher

W seems to be pathological liar. It was NEVER the intent for yards and homes to be flooded. Stop pretending like its just street flooding. The lies by obvious city employees are sickening

Vote no to send these folks a message to focus on the flooding!

First, I am not a City employee. I wouldn't take the minimum 50% pay cut to take a City job.

Streets and yards have flooded occasionally since I moved to Houston in 1976. That's fact. That's the design. The capacity of the streets and storm sewers was adequate when those were built, but with more runoff from upstream, the bayous, which is where the water is going to go, can't take as much water from city streets. I doubt you could build enough detention ponds to improve the situation, without reducing the upstream flows.

Retention ponds aren't as big as you think, either. The ponds North and South of I-10 on the West side of BW8 appear to have a usable area of about 11 acres between them, and let's assume they are 15 feet deep. That's 165 acre feet of storage. Assume a heavy rain of 12 inches that all runs off of an area, because the ground is saturated and can't absorb any more water. In that situation, 165 acre feet would be the runoff from an area about 2700 feet per side. In Spring Branch, that's a square going along Neuens from Witte to Crestdale and South to an extension of Crazy Oaks to Crestdale. There's also not many places to build detention, unless you are willing to sacrifice your house to the cause.

People talk about flooding along Brays Bayou like it's a new thing. It's not. There was flooding on several occasions in the early 80's on Beechnut between Stella Link and Newcastle. I was there, and almost lost a car trying to get through it to my apartment on Stella Link near Pershing MS.

Again, the flood issues are regional. There's not much the City can do on its own, and it shouldn't do anything without coordinating with the HCFCD and the Corps of Engineers.

[SpringBrancher]

There is a LOT the city can do. Vote NO to send the message they need to get started. Asking nicely has not worked.

[Vicman]

Originally Posted by SpringBrancher

There is a LOT the city can do. Vote NO to send the message they need to get started. Asking nicely has not worked.

The question is "will it have the intended consequences or will it just cause more problems?" This is why I compared it to Brexit.

What would be good is a flowchart or graphic, with sources cited, showing the exact roles of the city government, HCAD, and the US Army Corps Engineers. Please answer:

• What can the city government do?
• What is it doing now?
• What is it not doing?
• What would a defeat of these bonds do?
• How would this protest vote cause the city to do more?
• Do you expect to defeat the bonds, or do you just want the city to notice a lower percentage of people voting for the bonds than before?

[SpringBrancher]

I appreciate you being thoughtful but I do think it will have a good shot at having the intended result. Worst case scenario is next year we get a bond package that also doesn't include flooding. Hopefully though the city will learn it needs to help flood victims and Turner will do something as he tries to win re-election. If not then I guess those old Malibus the cops drive will need to hold up!

[SpringBrancher]

This is what a lot of people are talking about. He explains better than I do:

City Bond Election: Pension Bonds – YES / Improvement Bonds – NO – Bill King Public Policy Discussions

[lotophage]

It really doesn't seem like the city shouldn't be paying for flood mitigation projects, that should be the county, if no the state. Paying for flood mitigation out of the city budget seems like it would allow West University, Bellaire, Hunters Creek, and other wealthy areas that stand to benefit disproportionately from the projects to escape paying for them.

[SpringBrancher]

Originally Posted by lotophage

It really doesn't seem like the city shouldn't be paying for flood mitigation projects, that should be the county, if no the state. Paying for flood mitigation out of the city budget seems like it would allow West University, Bellaire, Hunters Creek, and other wealthy areas that stand to benefit disproportionately from the projects to escape paying for them.

City if bunker hill paid tens of millions to stop getting flooded by Houston. Other cities can and do pay for flooding. Houston tries to evade that responsibility.

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by Jack Lance

The OP complains the city has done nothing about flooding then advocates that we not fund what they do have planned. Seems rather obstructionist on the surface.....

Nope, what he is saying is if they haven't spent the billion they already collected wisely how can we entrust them to spend another half billion wisely?

[lotophage]

Originally Posted by SpringBrancher

City if bunker hill paid tens of millions to stop getting flooded by Houston. Other cities can and do pay for flooding. Houston tries to evade that responsibility.

But if you address the problem at the county level (or higher) then nobody gets to escape responsibility. Plus you get to address the issue holistically as flooding, by it's very nature, crosses municipal boundaries.

[SpringBrancher]

Originally Posted by lotophage

But if you address the problem at the county level (or higher) then nobody gets to escape responsibility. Plus you get to address the issue holistically as flooding, by it's very nature, crosses municipal boundaries.

Agree with all of this but the city is guilty of policies that flood people out or their homes. The city must spend money to fix the flooding problems it has created by starving flooding projects of money and allowing developers to build without regard for flooding out their neighbors.

Agree that ideally we would have holistic solutions. The city won't do that though so we have to send a message the only way we can to a city that mercilessly floods it's own taxpayers.