While I’ve been relaxing with anime lately (and dealing with the Hou-Mom’s chemo), there’s been a lot of other things going on with this fair city. I don’t have to tell you to head over to BlogHouston and play catch up do I?

Tom Bazan’s efforts to watchdog Metro on the stray current issue are keeping their feet to the fire. Also, the City of Houston tries, and fails, to avoid trial over failing to notify people that they may be living in hazardous homes.

The IDF messed up and took this guy alive, so no pizza for joo!

Our new friends from New Orleans learn that we may not have enough police to handle accidents, but if we do happen to catch you for murder, you’re going to spend time cooling your heels. Don’t worry though, if you get the needle, the Chron is worrying over how much it will hurt. No word on when they’ll demand a local anesthetic so the condemned criminal poor, unfortunate soul won’t feel the prick of the needle. God knows, it takes an anesthetic to read most of the Bozonicle these days. Two shots of Jack Danials Black Label usually does it.

City politicians have been trying for years to justify charging for garbage collection; we all remember that great “new” service (charge) called Add-a-Can, that Brown came up with. Now White wants to charge townhome residents because they have narrow private streets the trucks can’t get through. As usual, the developers don’t care about after-market issues like that; they just want to make a buck and get out.

It’s quality-of-life crap like that which pisses me off about developers in this town. At the very least, they needed to provide space at the end of the alleys for those huge cans to be set out for collection, or provide space for a commercial trash bin, like at apartments. Too many times, we’ve seen developers pull stunts like put all the townhomes on one meter (which means someone in Code Enforcement had to “overlook” that detail in the plans, or the inspector “fail to notice” that the plans & actual constuction don’t agree), leaving Public Works holding the bag and having to be the heavy.

And on the flip side, it’s the citizens that sometimes piss me off just as much. From the Chronicle’s one really good reporter, via Bloghouston:

The interior units are probably no more than 60 yards away from a curbside,” [townhome resident] Kressenberg told the City Council recently, arguing that he and his neighbors are eligible for service. “To use that as the basis for denying us trash collection is ludicrous.”

Sixty yards of trying to maneuver a huge, noisy truck down an alley, that will undoubtedly have a vehicle parked in it, making it impossible for anything larger than a VW Beetle to get by. That’s 180 feet. It’s not a short distance, I grant you, especially in the heat and humidity, or even rain. But if you can’t push the can that far to get it to the edge of the public street (my idea of a compromise), you’re just a lazy bastard. And if you refuse to pick up the garbage as leverage to charge yet another fee, you’re a greedy bastard.

Living inside the city has certain prices to pay, and because your builder wanted to maximize the home’s footprint is no reason to ask drivers to attempt impossible maneuvers (and then bitch when they hit something!) Think about this crap before you buy; the builder is out to make a buck, not provide you with a quality living experience. If he can shave a corner that a former apartment dweller won’t notice, he’ll do it. And if people let the administration come up with another excuse to charge a fee, he’ll do it. How long until we have a Garbage Authority?

I mean, if the city wants to make a cool million a year, you’d think they’d charge the company running the Houston Zoo for all the water they use instead of supplying $100k of it per month for free. The actual situation appears to be more complex than that; there’s some internal money transfers going on in the city between Parks and Rec & Public Works. I don’t claim to have a firm grasp on it yet. But either the City is supplying the water for free, or the Parks Department is paying for it, which is the same thing.)

Slipped that one past everyone, even the union, didn’t they?

Zoo task force pushes privatization proposal / Admission prices would rise under city plan
MATT SCHWARTZ, KRISTEN MACK
15 June 2002
Houston Chronicle

The city would give up control, but not funding, of the Houston Zoo under a privatization plan that goes before City Council next week. The plan being pushed by zoo supporters and a task force assembled by Mayor Lee Brown will be the subject of a City Council Neighborhood Protection and Quality of Life Committee meeting Monday. It calls for daily admission prices to rise from $2.50 for adults to $5. Children under 13 would pay $2, up from 50 cents. Senior citizens would pay $3, up from $2. The proposal likely will go before the full council June 26, where it appears it will enjoy general support.

Oh, and when I cruised by almost 2 years ago (the day I took the picture at the top, in fact), admission was $7 for adults. That didn’t take long, did it? Well in fact, it took exactly one year, because buried in the contract was that the contractor could raise the rates the second year to that level. In other words, Outta-Town-Brown sold the plan to the public with deceptive terms. The plan was, all along to nearly triple the admission rate!

This is the efficiency we get from privatizing government,” rememeber?