Houston Mayor seeks property tax hike for Harvey recovery

Water is dumb and doesn't care about boundaries we arbitrarily come up. It's a Houston Metro problem that will require a lot of investment.

 

How do you think anything gets paid for in a state without income taxes and a governor who doesn't want to use the rainy day fund for a literal rainy day?

 

When my property taxes and/or insurance go up, those are not passed along to the renter. The reason I increase rent is in correlation with inflation.

 

I worked on the campaign to stop the rev cap from being implemented 13 years ago.

We failed, and now the city is too broke to pay for disaster recovery.

Hooray.

 

gotta love the libertarian/far right on these issues.... refuse to spend money up front to enhance infrastructure and provide resources the city would benefit from particularly in disaster situations but then b**** when the city's lack of infrastructure investment forces the city to raise taxes in order to help recover.

we just went through the worst and most expensive flooding disaster in american history but paying an extra 8% property taxes for one freaking year is just too much for people of his ilk.

 

****k this proposition. Keep those taxes low b****

 

It's not gonna be popular, but it's needed to improve the city. Hopefully, the planning/survey part won't be too bureaucratic and drain the funding, requiring more taxes.

 

I too want to see an accounting.

I actually have no issue with raising the property taxes to pay for the recovery if that's needed, but I don't trust the mayor here either. I want to see an accounting of what they are going to spend money on and how much is unfunded. For example, improvements on the Addicks and Barker reservoirs are federal projects aren't they? That's federal land now and it's managed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

I don't want them to raise taxes just as an excuse to generate revenue, but I'm all for it if that's what it takes to rebuild and make infrastructure improvements.

It does suck though that as someone who is getting hosed by flood insurance and will be out a lot of money to get myself back to where I was that I'll also spend more money in property taxes on a property I can't live in to pay to rebuild the city.

 

Exactly. This is what happens when you're beholden to ideology above all else. There's a good debate to be had here: how much funding it's going to take to rebuild, where those funds should be coming from, how those funds should be allocated, etc. However, the OP isn't the person to have this debate with, he's here to b**** about Democrats and leftists and offer no solutions besides telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or some garbage like that.

 

Why? Is their a rule that forbids you from factoring taxes or insurance into your rental rates?

 

The notion of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is completely lost on so many Americans. This is how decades of poor leadership and planning manifest themselves.

But shame on Mojo for playing his usual petty politics. Of course Mojo has no shame.


Emmett calls for sweeping changes to region's flood control strategy
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...for-sweeping-changes-to-region-s-12189908.php


Calling Tropical Storm Harvey's devastation a "game-changer," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett on Monday called for a sweeping reexamination of the region's flood control strategy, a process that could include billions of dollars to upgrade aging dams, building a new storm water reservoir and ramping up regulations to tamp down booming development in flood-prone areas.

The set of options outlined by Emmett on Monday, if implemented, would be the biggest change in decades to how the Houston region protects against its perennial rains and floods. Emmett said everything would be on the table, including large-scale buyouts, banding with surrounding counties to create a regional flood control district and seeking authority from the state to levy a sales tax to pay for what likely would be a massive initiative.

Emmett, a Republican who has served as county judge since 2007 and largely is seen as a pragmatist, likened the changes to a post-flood push in the 1930s that led to the creation of the Harris County Flood Control District and the construction of the Addicks and Barker dams on the city's west side, which today protect thousands of homes of homes, downtown Houston and the Texas Medical Center.


"We can't continue to say these are anomalies," Emmett said. "You've got to say, 'We're in a new normal, so how are we going to react to it?'"

 

no one here is saying hand over a bunch of money to the city with no accountability - you're literally the only person who somehow thinks a whole swath of people are ok with that. the mayor has already stated that there will be public input and discourse re: this tax hike. what i find odd is that in light of quite literally the most expensive storm in american history, you seem to be of the belief that the city's request to raise finds is nothing more than an opportunistic cash grab.

as anticope said, if you can't rationalize that in a scenario like this money would be desperately needed to help the city recover than you have absolutely let ideology trump any form of pragmatism.

 

Only people who can afford insurance and reconstruction shall be allowed homes.

Personal choice matters.

 

That's about as clear an explanation of why a temporary tax increase makes sense that I've seen here. Kudos, JV. Houston is paying the price now for bad decisions in the past. Bad decisions by the city, by the surrounding municipalities, and by the counties in the area. Bad decisions by the state's leadership and legislature to constantly focus on lowering taxes while the state's infrastructure falls apart, and that very often against the advice of the state executives responsible for leading the agencies that serve the public. I know a bit about this since my significant other was a state executive for a few decades, helping to lead the staff of a legislative commission that has a hand in writing many of the most important pieces of legislation every session. What the commission's staff would recommend and what made it out of the legislative process were often quite different, usually not in a good way.

Infrastructure? Back in the 1960's and '70's, the road system in Texas was the envy of not only other states, but of many other countries around the world. We had asphalt farm to market roads where many states had gravel, for example, and visitors were frequently stunned to see the extent and quality of our highways and roads. No longer. The state agency who's job it is to keep those roads and highways safe and in good condition has been underfunded for years. The huge growth in the state's population, something that has been going on for several decades, means that the highway department can't catch up with basic maintenance, much less major repair work that has been treated with "band-aids" for years, or expansion to handle increased traffic. Many of our bridges and dams desperately need work. And flood control? Can there seriously be any argument about whether we have adequate flood control? How can someone seriously argue against spending public funds in the pursuit of ensuring the safety of the public and their property? The unrestrained building of subdivisions and the attendant development has destroyed much of the natural environment that acted to reduce flooding in the past.

We need a regional plan of action to attack all causes of catastrophic flooding, with strong zoning laws that allow building where it is sensible, and restrict it where it is not. This needs leadership from all levels of government in Coastal Texas, with help from the state, not neglect, which is what we have now. It should include those federal agencies that could contribute both expertise and funds. The way to preventing the worst of what we saw from Harvey is to learn from the Netherlands. They don't build to meet "hundred year floods," or "500 year floods." They build their most critical flood control structures to prevent a thousand year flood, or a flood even rarer. The Dutch can show Coastal Texas what it needs to do. It will be expensive. Good things often are, but consider this - is it cheaper to pay $10 or 15 billion or even more to protect millions of Texans from the ravages of flooding, or to pay well over $100 billion to repair the ravages of Harvey? I think the answer is obvious.

 

Texas should have had a state income tax the minute they surpassed New York in population. Barring that some kind of 1-2% division order interest on all oil and gas production: to create a second Permanent Fund for disaster relief, flood prevention and to reimburse companies and shift workers to incentivize longer, more orderly evacuations.

 

We had our chance in the early 90s. Bob Bullock was ready to commit to it after the education funding system was declared unconstitutional. He was originally all in on a full state income tax. He later compromised and suggested a corporate income tax earlier before dropping it altogether. Granted it was political suicide to pass it but the Democrats were on the verge of being wiped out in the Senate anyway (they lost it in 1996) so in hindsight it was a huge mistake. Bob Bullock admitted as much later.

 

Bullshit! If you're not considering all of the costs then, as a business owner, you're not a very good one.

 

Also when property taxes are cut, I dont see property owners reducing rent. That argument goes both ways.