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Completely, 100%, agree. All that stopped the UT-Houston deal was silly, myopic, tribalistic politics. It's embarrassing, and yet another data point showing how terrible the leadership here has been over the past decade or so that they allowed UH leadership to railroad them into stopping this deal. Houston has a lot of things going for it, but the lack of our leadership to fight for the things that will lead this city in the future is unacceptable.
The fact that UH leadership felt this was the hill to die on to make the case its unfair that they are not a part of the PUF was incredibly selfish and self-serving. Education is for the public good - its not the responsibility of rest of the city, or the state for that matter, to protect UH from competition, even if that competition is fundamentally unfair. UH has grown and thrived despite not being a member of the PUF. And while I agree they should get some of that money, this event still isn't going to spur state leaders to change the status quo. UH still isn't going to be a part of the PUF due to this taking place. And Houston will still only have one major university - a city that's faster growing and has a younger population than any other.
It's civic malpractice that will only continue to hurt this city's competitiveness when compared to our in-state and out-of-state peers. There's already evidence that these types of decisions are hurting Houston - the jobs we're attracting these days, while plentiful, are lower-paying than jobs we've attracted in the past. We have next to no chance of attracting any new corporations that are not part of the energy or medical world, and even in those fields, DFW is a stiff competitor. (McKesson should be here for example, and I'm sure they never even considered us.) We have increasing traffic and environmental problems with no cohesive plan for fixing them. (And I consider Metro's NEXT plan and H-GAC's plan both woefully inadequate to address our future needs on both of these fronts.)
We're riding off of our past successes and growing cultural cachet right now, and anyone with an ounce of sense can see that our current trajectory is going to lead us to stagnation in a state where all of the rest of the major cities are growing both bigger and better. And if that happens, we only have ourselves to blame. We might not be the next Detroit, but with our policies in place right now, we could very well become the next Chicago - a powerful, but ultimately troubled and stagnating region.
Mr Clutch you and some other of the posters in this thread should consider running for Mayor. The Houston Chronicle ran a story that potholes were going to be what the mayors race this year was going to be about. If Houstons snub of the UT Datacenter doesn't get a good thorough debate it will be an indication our media is not serving the best interest of Houston.
I understand it wasn't the Mayors decision to make, but he was AWOL during the debate when it was in the balance, and only surfaced after UT pulled the plans, with some lame fence sitting position that half ass supported some kind of Data Center. It's time for a change...
Completely, 100%, agree. All that stopped the UT-Houston deal was silly, myopic, tribalistic politics. It's embarrassing, and yet another data point showing how terrible the leadership here has been over the past decade or so that they allowed UH leadership to railroad them into stopping this deal. Houston has a lot of things going for it, but the lack of our leadership to fight for the things that will lead this city in the future is unacceptable.
The fact that UH leadership felt this was the hill to die on to make the case its unfair that they are not a part of the PUF was incredibly selfish and self-serving. Education is for the public good - its not the responsibility of rest of the city, or the state for that matter, to protect UH from competition, even if that competition is fundamentally unfair. UH has grown and thrived despite not being a member of the PUF. And while I agree they should get some of that money, this event still isn't going to spur state leaders to change the status quo. UH still isn't going to be a part of the PUF due to this taking place. And Houston will still only have one major university - a city that's faster growing and has a younger population than any other.
It's civic malpractice that will only continue to hurt this city's competitiveness when compared to our in-state and out-of-state peers. There's already evidence that these types of decisions are hurting Houston - the jobs we're attracting these days, while plentiful, are lower-paying than jobs we've attracted in the past. We have next to no chance of attracting any new corporations that are not part of the energy or medical world, and even in those fields, DFW is a stiff competitor. (McKesson should be here for example, and I'm sure they never even considered us.) We have increasing traffic and environmental problems with no cohesive plan for fixing them. (And I consider Metro's NEXT plan and H-GAC's plan both woefully inadequate to address our future needs on both of these fronts.)
We're riding off of our past successes and growing cultural cachet right now, and anyone with an ounce of sense can see that our current trajectory is going to lead us to stagnation in a state where all of the rest of the major cities are growing both bigger and better. And if that happens, we only have ourselves to blame. We might not be the next Detroit, but with our policies in place right now, we could very well become the next Chicago - a powerful, but ultimately troubled and stagnating region.
Did you actually watch any hearings on the UT-Houston proposal? How the land deal was not authorized by the state's Board of Education, how the plans for the campus were unclear, and how UT used state funds to purchase land from a fellow UT Alum at an above market price. It was a piece of contaminated land that had been on the market forever. Did you watch how the UT president had to resign of the whole fiasco and how it was handled....they are lucky they didn't end up in jail. You can point the finger all you want at UH but this smelt like a rat from the very beginning. UH has not been fully supported by her state from DAY ONE. It was Roy Cullen, and his generosity, who started the University of Houston...not the state of Texas.
And to those welcoming competition...let's start with a UT- College Station right next door to Texas A&M or how about a Texas A&M- Austin campus in downtown Austin. Oh...that's right..... those have never even been proposed...I wonder why?
Mr Clutch you and some other of the posters in this thread should consider running for Mayor. The Houston Chronicle ran a story that potholes were going to be what the mayors race this year was going to be about. If Houstons snub of the UT Datacenter doesn't get a good thorough debate it will be an indication our media is not serving the best interest of Houston.
I understand it wasn't the Mayors decision to make, but he was AWOL during the debate when it was in the balance, and only surfaced after UT pulled the plans, with some lame fence sitting position that half ass supported some kind of Data Center. It's time for a change...
Ha, thanks Jack, but I couldn't get elected as a dogcatcher - I don't have a good enough filter for politics. I would **** some people off lol. But if some politician wants to pay me a lot of money to advise them, I'm more than down for that.
Both the city and the county have done a terrible job with leading in the last 20 years. Just within Texas alone, what does Houston lead in that our local politicians contribute to? We don't lead in implementing technology in the city. We don't lead in urban development and redevelopment. We don't lead in public services, whether we're talking about police, fire, management of our homeless problem. We don't lead in environmental stewardship. We have long refused to do the type of mass planning required to protect the region from flooding, and only a historic storm never seen across the US spurred us to finally take action, which we still can't agree on 18 months later. We don't lead in traffic management and transportation ($7B to rebuild 45 with no new free lanes, yet we don't have a proper transit system and recoil over spending even $1 billion on it). This thread is a perfect example of our issues with education, despite our inherent advantages. Hell we don't even lead in economic development anymore, which ironic considering that many of the decisions that have been made in the past have been done with the regional ethos that "we must remain the cheapest place to live/do business possible in order to continue to grow".
That attitude is one of the biggest impediments to us eventually being the city we're destined to be. Austin and Dallas are somewhat more expensive than us and it hasn't hurt them at all. I'd argue that they have positioned themselves much better due to their focus on doing things the best they can with constrained resources, as opposed to our focus on doing things the cheapest/fastest we can while using financial constraints as an upfront excuse not to do more/better. They advocate for the things they want and figure out the cost aspect later. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But the important part is that sometimes it works. On the other hand, we figure out what we can afford and just accept it in many cases. We've historically not had champions for our region - only nearsighted local politicians only worried about their little burg or area. The only thing that our local politicians are truly good at is building parks. That's literally it.
As you mentioned, we've generally been the most economically productive region of Texas with the highest GDP despite having a smaller population than DFW. This was true as recently as 2014. But with our leadership, it may not ever be true again. We've been able to get away with apathy in the past in large part due to the power, breadth, and growth of the oil industry. However, these are different times, the oil industry is very slowly losing clout and influence over the international energy market. The growth trajectory isn't as high because, unlike the situation in the 80s, there are alternatives that are quickly becoming cheaper. The industry will continue to grow, but it cannot be relied upon to drive the type of growth that we're used to having.
Almost all of the good stuff that we have comes from the people (food, culture, music, art scene, activities, large events, etc.), businesses (our large cosmopolitan international population that have been brought here by the oil and medical industries), or God (the weather). Our institutions are largely legacies of politicians long in the past - I can't think of a single cutting-edge or innovative idea any politician has ever implemented in Houston in the last 30 years, unless you count ripping out a perfectly good commuter rail line, rebuilding roads that we rebuilt a decade before like we have money to burn, implementing poorly designed and conceived mass transit, ignoring 5-10 major floods, and ignoring pressing issues like the need to widen the Ship Channel, until of course, its too late to actually do anything about it.
Basically I see the decisions that they have made over the last few decades coming home to roost now. We should have already dealt with a lot of these issues. The transportation one particularly irritates me because there are probably very few people alive today that remember a Houston that didn't have ridiculous traffic problems. This has been an issue for literally 70 years. When the Gulf Freeway was opened in 1948, it was having bumper to bumper traffic jams within a year. By 1951 they were already trying to figure out what to do with it and how to expand it. And yet there are STILL people (though it seems like less than before) who insist we don't need to do anything about this other than add more concrete!
If the people who've been running Houston over the last few decades had been running the place earlier in the 20th century, we'd probably be a slightly larger Beaumont and perhaps the saying would be "Fort Worth, the Eagle has landed."
Did you actually watch any hearings on the UT-Houston proposal? How the land deal was not authorized by the state's Board of Education, how the plans for the campus were unclear, and how UT used state funds to purchase land from a fellow UT Alum at an above market price. It was a piece of contaminated land that had been on the market forever. Did you watch how the UT president had to resign of the whole fiasco and how it was handled....they are lucky they didn't end up in jail. You can point the finger all you want at UH but this smelt like a rat from the very beginning. UH has not been fully supported by her state from DAY ONE. It was Roy Cullen, and his generosity, who started the University of Houston...not the state of Texas.
And to those welcoming competition...let's start with a UT- College Station right next door to Texas A&M or how about a Texas A&M- Austin campus in downtown Austin. Oh...that's right..... those have never even been proposed...I wonder why?
The land was overpriced, which ironically may save the idea of that property staying in UT's future. They may end up developing it merely because they can't unload it. The environmental remediation you talk about is fairly minor. I know that political hack John Whitmire made it seem like it was practically a superfund site, truth is it was only about 2 acres of a 300 acre site and would only have cost about 2 million bucks to clean up.
Your arguments about a UT CS, or a A&M Austin, are ridiculous, and irrelevant to what's best for Houston. Houston is in Texas and the University of Texas should be here in whatever form it deems best as should A&M for that matter.
The land was overpriced, which ironically may save the idea of that property staying in UT's future. They may end up developing it merely because they can't unload it. The environmental remediation you talk about is fairly minor. I know that political hack John Whitmire made it seem like it was practically a superfund site, truth is it was only about 2 acres of a 300 acre site and would only have cost about 2 million bucks to clean up.
Your arguments about a UT CS, or a A&M Austin, are ridiculous, and irrelevant to what's best for Houston. Houston is in Texas and the University of Texas should be here in whatever form it deems best as should A&M for that matter.
A&M is in the medical center. And that's what this campus was really about, connecting with the Texas Medical Center. It was only a few miles away. UH does have its college of pharmacy in the Medical Center, but they haven't been able to leverage it because TSU limits them. And TSU hasn't put its pharmacy school there.
In addition to this article, let's discuss if it's time to amend the Texas Constitution to allow elevate both the University of Houston and Texas Tech access to the permanent University Fund (PUF). This way, both of those schools would not have "beg" the state for funds each and every time they desire to improve their academic facilities. Facilities for a state run public university.
Both of those schools have proven they are on the cusp of becoming "flagship" level Universities and both the University of Texas and Texas A&M have had access to that fund long enough. Maybe, it's time to have FOUR upper echelon Public University in the state with each SHARING the revenue for the PUF. We have the population to support FOUR!
The University of Texas is getting so bored with the excess funds they get from the PUF that they are using the money to buy up land in Houston for a secret UT-Houston campus while the University of Houston begs for an upgrade on a prove and ranked UH Law Center...one that was built in the. 1960s.
The UT System currently includes fourteen educational institutions, and the A&M System currently has eleven institutions, all of which share to one extent or another in the proceeds from the PUF. These proceeds constitute the corpus of the Available University Fund (AUF). Only the AUF is used for educational expenditures; the PUF remains untouched in perpetuity.
The AUF pie is already split 25 ways. The addition of the University of Houston and Texas Tech University to the AUF would represent Slices No. 26 and 27. We should note that both U of H and Texas Tech already participate in a separate sovereign wealth fund known as the Higher Education Fund, the proceeds of which are generally not available to PUF institutions.
The screed from the OP is written from the perspective that only two universities, UT-Austin and Texas A&M, are the sole beneficiaries of the AUF, but in reality, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Even if a duly approved amendment to the Texas Constitution authorized the University of Houston to participate in the AUF, it would still be only one of a total of 26 participating institutions (27 if Texas Tech becomes eligible also.)
The slice of the AUF pie allocated to U of H would be far smaller in reality than the proponents of this measure envision.
I hadn't realized how bad things were in Houston until reading the posts here from city boosters. I'm depressed now. It does suck to live here after all and this city is going nowhere.
Somebody please tell the NCAA Final Four not to come here in 2023, or the World Cup in 2026, or the Democratic National Convention in 2020. Stop the renovation of Memorial Park and expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts. This is Loserville, U.S.A.!
I had to put myself in voluntary timeout from this thread. But now that I am calmer, and casting aside any bias that I may have, I have to point out one last time - there was no concrete plan for this proposed land development. The UT system had no concrete plan for this other than buying up some land at a dubiously inflated price and stamping their brand on it. I saw an article describing a data center (which typically do not require hundreds of acres), another article describing a campus complete with with a large track and multiple multi-story buildings, and finally a research center devoted to data science (again, does not require a campus). No plan. They just expected to sprinkle some magic UT pixie dust on the ever changing proposal, and everybody would hold hands and sing songs together. Not to mention this completely bypassed the process for creating a new free standing university since the proposal came AFTER buying the land. UH saw this as a trojan horse and reacted accordingly just like UT-Austin would have done under similar circumstances, and similarly to how A&M recently reacted to TTech's proposal for a new school of vet medicine in Amarillo (would impact A&M's vet school recruiting). I think the problem many people have is how UH has grown in strength despite lacking the resources and political might of the flagship universities. Some of y'all just expect UH to roll over and die like it was 1995 and UT was driving the Big 12 selection process all over again. But this is 2019. UH is vastly different. And UH just stood up to the biggest university system in the state. That's the real issue some people are having.
I hadn't realized how bad things were in Houston until reading the posts here from city boosters. I'm depressed now. It does suck to live here after all and this city is going nowhere.
Somebody please tell the NCAA Final Four not to come here in 2023, or the World Cup in 2026, or the Democratic National Convention in 2020. Stop the renovation of Memorial Park and expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts. This is Loserville, U.S.A.!
I never said Houston would go nowhere without UT , I have been saying Houston will go further , faster with more diversified and prominent institutions of higher learning and research.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielWayne
I had to put myself in voluntary timeout from this thread. But now that I am calmer, and casting aside any bias that I may have, I have to point out one last time - there was no concrete plan for this proposed land development. The UT system had no concrete plan for this other than buying up some land at a dubiously inflated price and stamping their brand on it. I saw an article describing a data center (which typically do not require hundreds of acres), another article describing a campus complete with with a large track and multiple multi-story buildings, and finally a research center devoted to data science (again, does not require a campus). No plan. They just expected to sprinkle some magic UT pixie dust on the ever changing proposal, and everybody would hold hands and sing songs together. Not to mention this completely bypassed the process for creating a new free standing university since the proposal came AFTER buying the land. UH saw this as a trojan horse and reacted accordingly just like UT-Austin would have done under similar circumstances, and similarly to how A&M recently reacted to TTech's proposal for a new school of vet medicine in Amarillo (would impact A&M's vet school recruiting). I think the problem many people have is how UH has grown in strength despite lacking the resources and political might of the flagship universities. Some of y'all just expect UH to roll over and die like it was 1995 and UT was driving the Big 12 selection process all over again. But this is 2019. UH is vastly different. And UH just stood up to the biggest university system in the state. That's the real issue some people are having.
Daniel excuse me but this is such a disingenuous argument to imply that if UT had this well developed plan, with schematics and reports attached, that somehow the U of H lynch mop would have been appeased and accepted this expansion. Total malarkey! You would just have started your attacks sooner before it got to the point of purchasing land.
Daniel once again you make it about the U of H, and disregard the interest of Greater Houston. Please make an argument, just one, that makes the point that this UT expansion into Houston would be bad for Greater Houston.
I don't think the U of H will ever accept a UT Expansion into Houston under any circumstances. Even if the U of H were allowed into this "PUF" that you speak of, would that really quash all this opposition ?
Ha, thanks Jack, but I couldn't get elected as a dogcatcher - I don't have a good enough filter for politics. I would **** some people off lol. But if some politician wants to pay me a lot of money to advise them, I'm more than down for that.
Both the city and the county have done a terrible job with leading in the last 20 years. Just within Texas alone, what does Houston lead in that our local politicians contribute to? We don't lead in implementing technology in the city. We don't lead in urban development and redevelopment. We don't lead in public services, whether we're talking about police, fire, management of our homeless problem. We don't lead in environmental stewardship. We have long refused to do the type of mass planning required to protect the region from flooding, and only a historic storm never seen across the US spurred us to finally take action, which we still can't agree on 18 months later. We don't lead in traffic management and transportation ($7B to rebuild 45 with no new free lanes, yet we don't have a proper transit system and recoil over spending even $1 billion on it). This thread is a perfect example of our issues with education, despite our inherent advantages. Hell we don't even lead in economic development anymore, which ironic considering that many of the decisions that have been made in the past have been done with the regional ethos that "we must remain the cheapest place to live/do business possible in order to continue to grow".
That attitude is one of the biggest impediments to us eventually being the city we're destined to be. Austin and Dallas are somewhat more expensive than us and it hasn't hurt them at all. I'd argue that they have positioned themselves much better due to their focus on doing things the best they can with constrained resources, as opposed to our focus on doing things the cheapest/fastest we can while using financial constraints as an upfront excuse not to do more/better. They advocate for the things they want and figure out the cost aspect later. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But the important part is that sometimes it works. On the other hand, we figure out what we can afford and just accept it in many cases. We've historically not had champions for our region - only nearsighted local politicians only worried about their little burg or area. The only thing that our local politicians are truly good at is building parks. That's literally it.
As you mentioned, we've generally been the most economically productive region of Texas with the highest GDP despite having a smaller population than DFW. This was true as recently as 2014. But with our leadership, it may not ever be true again. We've been able to get away with apathy in the past in large part due to the power, breadth, and growth of the oil industry. However, these are different times, the oil industry is very slowly losing clout and influence over the international energy market. The growth trajectory isn't as high because, unlike the situation in the 80s, there are alternatives that are quickly becoming cheaper. The industry will continue to grow, but it cannot be relied upon to drive the type of growth that we're used to having.
Almost all of the good stuff that we have comes from the people (food, culture, music, art scene, activities, large events, etc.), businesses (our large cosmopolitan international population that have been brought here by the oil and medical industries), or God (the weather). Our institutions are largely legacies of politicians long in the past - I can't think of a single cutting-edge or innovative idea any politician has ever implemented in Houston in the last 30 years, unless you count ripping out a perfectly good commuter rail line, rebuilding roads that we rebuilt a decade before like we have money to burn, implementing poorly designed and conceived mass transit, ignoring 5-10 major floods, and ignoring pressing issues like the need to widen the Ship Channel, until of course, its too late to actually do anything about it.
Basically I see the decisions that they have made over the last few decades coming home to roost now. We should have already dealt with a lot of these issues. The transportation one particularly irritates me because there are probably very few people alive today that remember a Houston that didn't have ridiculous traffic problems. This has been an issue for literally 70 years. When the Gulf Freeway was opened in 1948, it was having bumper to bumper traffic jams within a year. By 1951 they were already trying to figure out what to do with it and how to expand it. And yet there are STILL people (though it seems like less than before) who insist we don't need to do anything about this other than add more concrete!
If the people who've been running Houston over the last few decades had been running the place earlier in the 20th century, we'd probably be a slightly larger Beaumont and perhaps the saying would be "Fort Worth, the Eagle has landed."
Agreed. It all started with going against what the voters approved in regards to the large heavy rail plan in the 80s. If that was built, we'd see a completely different Houston today in my opinion. If we had the same leaders the last 4 decades like Houston did pre-1950, Houston would be a Chicago-Orlando mix right now. But the oil/energy industry made everyone fat, so they all got complacent and played to those interests. As if the energy industry was going to up and leave for New Orleans or Beaumont.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SanJac
I hadn't realized how bad things were in Houston until reading the posts here from city boosters. I'm depressed now. It does suck to live here after all and this city is going nowhere.
Somebody please tell the NCAA Final Four not to come here in 2023, or the World Cup in 2026, or the Democratic National Convention in 2020. Stop the renovation of Memorial Park and expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts. This is Loserville, U.S.A.!
See, there's a difference between bashing and pointing out areas to improve. Just because people are doing the latter doesn't mean that Houston still isn't a great city with a lot going for it. What we see is that there could be even more going for it. Take Amazon. They cancelled their NYC HQ and are instead expanding jobs in the 17 markets they said no to initially. What if Houston was one of those markets and was able to get some of those high paying jobs? It's not though because city leaders didn't put forth a greater vision years ago. Luckily that's changing some and ironically it was Amazon passing on Houston that did it...
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