Ross

I think all of the sex crimes have been investigated to the extent possible. If HPD cannot find the victim, there's not much they can do unless the victim contacts them. That's just the reality of crime investigation. It's like when there are shots fired and people on Nextdoor are asking why HPD isn't doing anything, it's because without any sort of video or other evidence, there is nothing the police can do except take a report.

The paint lines look a bit...strange. They appear to based on distance from the top of the windows instead of being the same on all sides. I don't think I've seen that color scheme before, so that's at least something different.

The Admiral Byng of HPD? Something about "to encourage the others"?

We do not need images of sign permits. Just stop. You already put the essential information in text. The images just slow down page loading, even with gigabit fiber and a high end PC.

2023 Chronicle article on police staffing and some of the issues https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/houston-s-1b-police-budget-won-t-fill-staff-18108477.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG91c3RvbmNocm9uaWNsZS5jb20vcG9saXRpY3MvaG91c3Rvbi9hcnRpY2xlL2hvdXN0b24tcy0xYi1wb2xpY2UtYnVkZ2V0LXdvbi10LWZpbGwtc3RhZmYtMTgxMDg0NzcucGhw&time=MTcxMzMxNTI5MDc2OQ%3D%3D&rid=NDhhN2ZkODktOTA0Ny00ZjM0LWEyNjgtNThhNWNkY2RlZjY3&sharecount=MA%3D%3D Detailed FY2024 HPD budget is here https://www.houstontx.gov/budget/24budadopt/III_HPD.pdf The budget shows 2875 patrol officers and 1357 investigators. If you assume the patrol officers are split into 7 shifts to provide 24/7 coverage, that means that at any given time there are about 400 officers on the street to patrol 600+ square miles. The real solution is to hire 1,000 or more new officers.

The mindset of police in the 1950's was to beat up Blacks and blame them for every crime. HPD is very short of officers. Hiring an officer costs about $100,000 per year all in, so hiring 1,000 more is another $100 million. Protections for police and fire pensions are enshrined in State law, they aren't going anywhere. How would you measure police performance while not providing incentives for them to game the system?

I am going to be the mean guy today. Those pictures are copyrighted, and you CANNOT store them and repost them unless you are willing to risk massive fines for infringement. Like it or not, Cityliving has absolute control of the images, they are his intellectual property, and he can stop anyone from using them without his permission.

The 1% sales tax that Houston gets is budgeted to raise $865 million. That tax it at the maximum allowed by state law, so it's not going up. We will probably see a garbage fee sometime in the near future. If it's like Dallas, that will be $35 per month. The tax money for solid waste now is $20 per month. Water delivery is not covered by property or sales taxes, that's an enterprise fund with its own budget.

Houston company that does amazing wood work for commercial buildings. They've been around for decades https://brochsteins.com/

Are you saying we don't need to pay any taxes? That crimes will magically solve themselves? Houston is short of about 1,000 police. Adding that many would cost $100 million per year. Currently, the HPD and HFD budgets exceed property tax collections by over $200 million and firefighters are going to be entitled to over a billion dollars from the contract settlement. The City has a revenue cap that limits increases in property tax collections to the lower of 4% or the combination of population increase and inflation. Unless you think there is a few hundred million dollars the City can cut from the non-public safety portions of the budget, there will have to be a tax increase to increase the number of police and to pay for the HFD pay raises and back pay.

Usually a better deal on rent. On the cynical side, another reason is proximity to the CEO's home. But, the Noble CEO lives in River Oaks, and I doubt that CityWest is easier to get to than Sugar Land.

The barriers are great. It's always fun to watch some idiot not paying attention hitting one of those barriers and destroying a tire and wheel, and hopefully a lower control arm. I saw that just East of Shepherd where a Honda Accord driver tried to speed up and get into the left lane rather than waiting their turn. Bam! they paid the price.

The existing townhomes in Midtown generally have the parking in the back, not facing the street.

One of the empty blocks is the old YMCA location owned by Chevron. The taxes on that property are about $500,000 per year. The block immediately to the North is also owned by Chevon and the taxes are just under $7 million. Under a LVT would the tax on the vacant property also be $7 million, or would the developed lot drop to say $3 million and the vacant lot increased to $3 million? Or would the vacant lot be taxed at $7 million and the developed lot at $3 million? The land value for both those blocks is about the same under the current scheme as $32 million, but the developed block is valued at $334 million. Is the thought that Chevron would build a 40+ story building on the empty lot? Who would occupy that space? Or would we get another 5 story apartment building? I suspect that Chevron would just pay the taxes on the vacant land and leave it undeveloped.

An LVT would force land owners to build buildings that are not needed and that would not produce enough income to cover the costs of the development. If buildings were economic to build, land owners would build them.

It looks like it's actually both a detention basin and athletic fields. That's much like the Timbergrove Sports Association fields off of East TC Jester/ The fields sit a couple of feet below the surrounding area https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7968899,-95.4219177,295m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

The Sunnyside site was a landfill and had an incinerator for many years. It is already a polluted site that cannot be easily remediated. Using it as a solar farm is an excellent way to use a brownfield site.

What toxins are leaching into the ground water in Needville? Modern panels have minimal amounts of toxic metals and chemicals. And no, it's not a horrible nightmare.

Images of land grants are available from the General Land Office website at https://s3.glo.texas.gov/glo/history/archives/land-grants/index.cfm The GLO site says that the Prentiss grant was 4428.4 acres, which implies Prentiss was granted a full league of 25 million square varas. English field notes for the grant https://cdn.glo.texas.gov/ncu/SCANDOCS/archives_webfiles/arcmaps/webfiles/efns/1-152.pdf Image of the grant, in Spanish from 1833 https://cdn.glo.texas.gov/ncu/SCANDOCS/archives_webfiles/arcmaps/webfiles/landgrants/PDFs/1/0/2/8/1028887.pdf Railroad Commission map of the grant(The RRC GIS site is the best tool I've found for seeing the outlines of land grants) https://gis.rrc.texas.gov/gisviewer/ There may be some conflict with other grants, but that happened a lot. The last vacant pieces of land created by errors in surveys were not identified until the middle of the 20th Century https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/land-vacancy I've seen a correction to a land grant to one of my ancestors in Jackson county that had a 300 acre conflict with an earlier grant. That was identified in the 1940's, long after my ancestors had sold the land.

As far as I can tell, Houston was laid out with wide right of ways for streets before cars became ubiquitous. I've seen sources that say that started with the Allen Brothers, who wanted wide streets to make commerce easier. I think the downtown/Midtown streets became one way in the 1950's, but haven't been able to confirm that yet.

Just sent an email to the Mayor pointing out how much safer 11th is now, how there will never be enough police to keep traffic under control(HPD could write 500 tickets in one day, and the next day the speeders would be out in force again). I also said that the opposition comes from people who are mad that they can no longer drive like maniacs. I also do not believe for one second that HFD has to use other streets. Someone is lying about that.

It was far worse trying to get around in the 70's and 80's. Traffic was heavier and the drivers were worse. During the late 80's it was easier to get around for a while, because the city was dead after the oil busts. The people driving from Clear Lake to The Woodlands could move if they wanted to, but they don't. They like where they live, they like their jobs, and the commutes are just something they tolerate.

Dallas is also the city that destroyed old businesses by deciding to rezone them out of existence without compensation. I expect the drive through to be closed, followed by closure of the entire restaurant and then redevelopment into trendy places that the nearby residents can't afford.

We live inside the loop.. We have a 1/4 acre lot and live within a few blocks of Kroger. We still use the car to shop for groceries. Anything to do with the yard is going to require a car. I've known a few people who tried to live without a car in Houston. One managed pretty well, but he was a coworker who was literally a rocket scientist, but was absent minded. He never learned to drive. All the other gave up after a month or so. The other issue is getting to and from work. Unless your office is downtown, public transport is tough. When we lived in Midtown, I had to take the bus to Bellaire for work for 6 weeks after TS Allison flooded my car. 6 block walk to the bus and it dropped off across the street from my office. It turned a 10 to 15 minute commute into 45 minutes or longer. Why would I not use a car for that?

You've obviously never bought 400 pounds of mulch. Or a month's worth of groceries. Or anything else in quantity. The issue in the Heights is that the streets were laid out when people had one car at most. So the streets are narrow, the driveways are narrow, and some people are jerks about how they park. My great grandparents lived on W 17th from about 1910 to 1919. The had a car, since my great grandfather was a car salesman. So cars in the Heights isn't a new thing.