Mayor Whitmire sucks

Potholes yes. Poor trash pickup, no. We were already having problems under Turner, but I think its gotten worse instead of better with Whitmire.

Was thinking about this. It was something that already rubbed me wrong in the election. He has this smugness, that he is the experienced leader who knows what needs to be done and he doesn’t really need to hear others’ opinions on anything. I think he used it to good effect to get elected and maybe it’s a good or at least inevitable feature of an elected leader. They have a mandate from the election to lead and they’re going to use it. Maybe it’s because I don’t like what’s he’s using it for, but I think he’s taking this idea to run roughshod over others. The bike lane thing, for example. I’m not aware of anyone agitating to get rid of them, and he hasn’t any public process to find out what people want. I don’t think even City Council was involved. He’s just taking them out because that’s what he wants. I don’t think this is good leadership, just doing what you think is best without engaging with the public about what they want.

 

I can’t believe I found this. I started a thread about the revenue caps way back in 2004, though it didn’t get much traffic. In the OP, I worried that we might be setting ourselves up for trouble. Given it’s still an issue 20 years later, I think the answer is Yes.

https://bbs.clutchfans.net/threads/prop-1-vs-prop-2.86145/

 

Friend shared the effort to recall Whitmire: https://recallhouston.org/

I wasn't even b****ing at the time.

 

From a few days ago: https://houstonlanding.org/houstons...p-the-controllers-projections-at-148-million/

Hollins and Whitmire playing a game of Gotcha over overtime spending. And, I get it, we have serious budget problems. But if we need to spend on overtime to get my trash picked up, then do it. Raise taxes, if you can't pay for it. Or put a trash fee. Or privatize trash pickup. But I'm sick to death hearing about being more efficient, because they seem to think being efficient means not rendering service.

 

Bumping for Whitmire's budget proposal. He has produced a balance budget, eliminating the $300 million deficit we were showing. 58% of the budget goes to paying for police and fire, which seems pretty damn high. I don't begrudge cops and firefighters their wages, but I think it shows how little our city does for us aside from the really basic functions of government. Anyway, he says he balanced it by finding efficiencies and I hope he's right. Here is an article if someone doesn't want to bother with google.

But I looked at the budget for the specific things that I care about. First thing is Waste Management, and I'm under-impressed. As I've complained before, recycling and heavy trash are habitually late, and tree and yard waste pickup is an absolute fiction. But here are the short-term goals of the department (see pdf p. 243):

So, some crap about being more efficient, but nothing about running all their routes. And the budget presentation is complicated because they have a number of funds they spend out of. But, the main one seems to show the theme -- hold FTEs steady and spend somewhat less my magically waving away overtime hours and "finding efficiencies". And, I'm all for efficiency, but I'm even more into getting service. And I'm skeptical that they will actually find efficiencies at all, never mind so much efficiency that they will be able to start running routes again that aren't even enumerated among their Goals.

My other fixation is the construction permitting, which takes far too long now and is a drag on small business creation especially. If I sleuthed it out correctly, that's the line "Development Services, Design Review, and Support Services" in the Planning and Development department (pdf p. 225). And I'm encouraged to see their first short term goal is: "Improve service level review time goals, for commercial and residential projects." (Bike people will also have to wonder what this goal means: "Develop new Bike Plan to direct neighborhoods to trail systems.") And budget and FTEs for Development Services go up a little in this budget.

But, I'm discouraged by their performance metrics, a couple in particular:

(1) They are somehow projecting a significant decrease in the number of applications they receive. Is this based on data or wishful thinking?

(2) They had a metric for commercial projects reviewed in 13 business days, which they update now to within 7 business days, with targets in 2025 and 2026 of 80%. But their actual performance in 2024 was 32%.

(3) The have a similar metric for residential projects, again with targets of 80%, but an actual 2024 performance of 14%. How tf are they going to triple and quadruple their performance with a modest cost of living increase on their budget?

And I'm not sure what exactly they're measuring -- maybe how many days before they open someone's application? -- because commercial project review is measured in months and years, not business days. So, I don't know if it tells you anything even if you get 100% of projects "reviewed" in 10 days if they still take a year to be approved.

 

I wish they would. Then you could make sure trash collection was fully funded without having to make painful tradeoffs on essential services to stay under the city's revenue cap. But, if Whitmire was going to propose it, he would have done it with or before this budget proposal. So I doubt it'll happen this year.

I also toy with the idea of leaving trash collection to the free market. The problem with both a free market approach and a fee-based approach is what do you do with nonpaying customers. It's an issue with city water too. But, with city water, you can turn off the tap to an individual home and only that resident suffers. If you don't collect the trash from one house, though, the neighbors all suffer. So, how would you force a resident to pay?