Marksmu

You mean like I just proved you wrong with the criminal statues that easily handle intentional misdeeds by an OBGYN??? Are you aware that not only is an intentional act against another a tort, but if the intentional act is outside of the consent to treat (which it always is if an OBGYN is intentionally hurting, raping, etc) that was granted, it is also a battery? Hmmm...guess you just overlooked that after getting proved wrong for the 99th time. I have no problem admitting when I am wrong. I have no big ego or pride issue....if I'm wrong about the fees in medical malpractice, an area in which I do not practice and am not familiar with, then I am wrong. I do not need to spend hours looking it up to make you happy. You have changed your facts, and lied on more than 80% of your posts here...forgive me for not trusting a thing you say. When you have a reputation for being dishonest people stop believing what you are saying, even if what you are saying is true.

Well your in luck - we dont need med mal to punish those doctors who rape women, operate while intoxicated or drugs...we have criminal statutes that deal with all of those situations. I dont know enough about it all to fully go line by line proving how wrong you are about everything you have written, but basing it on your history of being emotional, irrational, and flat out wrong 99% of the time, I am going to assume everything posted above is complete and utter rubbish...

That is nothing a licensing board can not easily deal with.

More doctors in the state sounds like a good thing to me....

I get tired of you spouting off something ridiculous, having it refuted with facts, just to have you not even acknowledge how stupid you sound and then change topics and spout out something equally ridiculous! It's asinine. Its like arguing with a brick wall....Last post its big Ag and Big Grocers fault that Wal Mart sells unhealthy food, and stupid lazy people buy it...You are met with facts showing how you dont actually know anything other than what you saw on a documentary by Michael Moore, and what do you do? You jump topics and spout out something that sounds just as dumb. A quick google search on med mal in Texas instantly proves you wrong though. Texas does not have a cap on attorneys fees at all in a med mal case. (http://www.mcandl.com/texas.html) As long as an attorney has a winning case he will get paid what he deserves. That is he will get a reasonable fee for his services! Will he get $4,000,000 because a doctor made a small mistake? NO - but you know what? We have doctors here, and I would much rather have doctors than Personal Injury lawyers! I do not think personal injury attorneys deserve even a fraction of what they receive so I have no problem at all at preventing an attorney from collecting a huge sum of money when his client gets hurt. The lawyer gets what he deserves, a reasonable fee for a reasonable service. Does he have to roll the dice and take a chance he gets nothing? Yes he does, but that is what causes him to actually make sure that you are actually injured BEFORE he takes your case....its what separates the frivolous suits, from the legitimate ones. Legitimate suits still get filed, every single day. And you are incorrect about how a recovery works in med mal case too....the attorney gets fees and costs of court - that includes expert testimony, documents, etc. That does not come out of the clients settlement. When fees are bifurcated from the recovery as they are in med mal in Texas, the attorney will collect his reasonable fee and the costs of court will be included in that. The client gets up to the statutory maximum, and the attorney gets what he earned and nothing more. Are there some patients who are not going to be happy about their recovery? Yes, but having millions of dollars is not going to fix their injury....its just going to make them feel better about it. Doctors do not hurt people intentionally...bankrupting them over an accident does not fix anything..it just means we have one less doctor when we need them. Finally, much of the increases in health insurance premiums are a direct result of hospitals and doctors not getting paid for treating people without insurance. An overwhelming number of those without insurance in this country are illegal immigrants. They use our hospital resources, and they skip the check. That cost gets passed onto the people who actually pay their bills...those with insurance. Each person with insurance is being forced to cover the tab of those who feel its their right to get good care without paying for it. A hospital is not going to operate a loss. When they lose money treating illegals because it is against the law to turn them away, they have to raise the cost on those who do pay to cover for it....the super majority of those who pay have insurance. Insurance companies are not going to operate at a loss either, so they raise the rates to cover the new premiums....its a vicious cycle. But that cycle does not come full circle back to Walmart like you seem to think. Do you ever get tired of sounding like a fool? What is your next topic of idiocy?? I wait with anticipation....its not big ags fault you are fat, its not big grocerys fault you are fat, its not the televisions fault you are fat....its your poor choices. You are fat, you are lazy, and you are unwilling to change. Now lets blame all those things on someone else....who has lots of Money??? Oh OH Walmart does! Its their fault! Maybe we can get being fat and lazy declared to be a disability and you can collect more money for doing nothing! Heck you can probably find an attorney to take that case for CHEAP, since they cant make any money doing medical mal, there should be plenty of them sitting there just waiting to sue someone like Big Ag, or Big Grocery! They have lots of money!

Do you get all of your facts from Michael Moore Movies? Seriously? Do you? Let me do some enlightening for you, since this is actually a topic I am guaranteed to be 100x more experienced than you are in, since I am involved in this daily. I run a ranch part time, and I actually receive a grain subsidy. Do you know how much grain I plant? None. Not a single acre. I am actually being paid not to plant grains because the price of grain is too low and the USDA does not want more competition in grain farming....I farm grass, not the type that you go buy at Home Depot, or Houston Garden Center, but good ole native coastal variety grass...the kind that was here before people started changing everything up. Why do I farm grass? Because I have cows. Lots of em. I love working with cows, I love raising cows, I enjoy being around cows. Now, lets get to your alleged points. First and foremost being that all cattle are raised entirely on grain. Wrong. Very Very Wrong...just another stupid Michael Moore inaccuracy. There are grain raised cattle, but they do not in any way make up the majority of cattle marketed and sold in the United States. The majority of beef cattle (I am excluding dairy since they are not beef cattle), as in somewhere along the lines of 80-85% are raised on grass. They are born to their mother on pasture. They are left to nurse off their mother for an average of 242 days (recommended weaning date) After +/- 242 days they are weaned off their mothers milk. By that time they are usually approaching 550-700 pounds, depending upon breed of cattle. Up until this point, only 2 vaccinations are given. BOTH are required by law if you intend to market them for consumption. 99/100 farmers/ranchers do not use antibiotics because antibiotics are expensive, and farmers/ranchers are usually cash poor(not actually poor). It is at this weaning date that cattle go one way or the other....(1) most of these cattle (80%) goto pasture again and are allowed to approach 1000 pounds, at which point they are about 1 year old and are moved to a feed lot and fed grain mixed with hay for 30 days to add fat to their meat....Grass raised beef is far leaner than grain raised. These cattle are not given antibiotics like you suggest. That is all BS you see on movies. A sick cow is given antibiotics, but the FDA prohibits the slaughter of a cow if it has been given any antibiotics, and that includes medicated feed (creep feed). The FDA requires that cattle given antibiotics be held for 30 days after the antibiotics administered and prior to slaughter. Feed lots do not want to hold a cow for an extra 30 days, it costs about $6/day per animal to feed them....that adds about $180 to the cost of animal, whose profit is about $100/animal. The antibiotics are only given when a cow becomes ill....it is cheaper to save the cow then allow it to die. But when antibiotics are given, the feed lot will lose money on that animal. The second option and the one you like to pretend all cattle in America follow, is the grain feed yards. This represents about 20% of cattle in America, and this usually represents the more expensive, much higher quality cuts of meat. These cattle are still raised on pasture for 242+/- days and weaned from their mothers. They are given a medicated creep feed when they are weaned to stimulate certain microbes in their rumens to aid in the digestion of the grains...some of the creep feeds contain a steroid to make the cattle gain weight faster. These cattle are moved to feed lots, and fed out a high quality mix of grain/hay. They are not medicated unless they become sick, except during those first 30 days that they are on a medicated creep feed. These cows do eat mostly grain, about 65% of their diet, and they have a higher fat marbeling as a result of it. These cattle are off of medicated creep for at least 60 days prior to slaughter to allow the antibiotics to run their course. Again, these cattle make up about 20% of all cattle in America and are by no means considered the cheap cuts of meat. This is the meat you get at a fine steak house...this is not what you will find in a Wal-Mart. The only intelligent statement in your entire post above is that health care costs are out of hand. I agree with that. Though I do not agree with the methods we are using to tackle those costs. Its not your right or the governments right to dictate what we eat, even if your neighbor being fat effects you. You want cheaper health care? Cap medical malpractice verdicts. Cap the percent a personal injury attorney is allowed to recover in a med mal case. Allow employers to get together with other employers and pool their employees so they can leverage their group size against the insurance companies. Allow insurance to be bought across state lines. Those are ways to drastically reduce costs....but the government does not want to do those things because that hurts their labor unions...so they come up with the crap we have now. I actually do agree with one other thing you said. We do need to eliminate all farm subsidies....they are artificially driving the prices of goods. Even though I receive a subsidy I support ending them. But I support ending all subsidies. The free market will find a good equilibrium. Food Prices in the US do not represent the true costs of production because of subsidies. Bottom line - people will make poor decisions no matter what you do....cheap processed foods are not to blame. If you eliminate processed food, people will just start frying chickens and eating donuts....that is not any better....just because you eliminate one source of fat, does not mean they are not going to find it somewhere else if they want. You can not eliminate fat from the world. Its not possible. Its about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Its the individuals responsibility not yours. I take great offense to your notion that you need to control what I can purchase and eat.

I wanted to see the rest - I completely agree with everything you said. People are just lazy.

Just tired of other people thinking that they actually get to dictate to me what I should do with my life....whether or be what I do with my money, where I shop, what I eat, or what I do to the property I own....All of these people who think that they, or some elected bureaucrat should get to decide these things for me, make me sick. Hippy though? No, I dont think so, pretty far from it.... Just highly protective over the rights I still have, and not willing to give any more of them up, so that people like S3MH can decide what I get to eat, or what the outside of my house looks like because they have nothing better to do with their life.

I fully understand the time constraint. I am a family of 3, 5 if you count dogs (I dont count the dogs) ...add another kid next year and it will be even harder....but instead of watching the football game on Sunday, watching your nightly news or television shown, sleeping in, or whatever it is that people do with their free time, they need to make the conscious decision that they are going to put a healthy lifestyle above these other things. If you do do a little something every day it will make it all much easier. If you set a menu on Sunday, buy all of the food for the week, then its very easy. When I start doing the dishes from my dinner each night, I look at tomorrows menu, get the things I need out, and set them aside, thaw them, marinade them, or whatever it is that needs doing. Its not hard and it it does not take more than a couple minutes each day...I had to make a big life adjustment to get dinners ready after our baby came along...it was tough at first but once its been made a part of a nightly routine, its easy. If its routine it will get done, if its an exception then its an inconvenience and it wont get done. There will be always be exceptions when you need to buy something processed, or when you eat fast food...but those exceptions should not, and would not matter if you were eating properly. Every family has time to provide a healthy alternative for breakfast, lunch, and dinner...it just comes down to putting the time and effort in. Its much easier to be lazy and go the unhealthy route. People are lazy. There are affordable options for every family with every set of time constraints....they just take some effort. People who want to blame WalMart are just idiots. Its not the store's fault...they did not force you to buy it, they did not force you to serve it, they did not force you to eat. They gave you an option. I would prefer to have cookies and ice cream for every meal, but it is not healthy or practical. If you let kids decide what they are going to eat, they are never going to decide to eat healthy. That is the parents responsibility...not the neighbors, not the grocery store, not the bureaucrats....its YOUR responsibility to eat healthy and provide healthy food for your family. PERIOD. People who want to blame someone else are just weak minded!

Are you really that ignorant and do you really need to blame someone else for everything so badly? Do you really think that someone else SHOULD decide what is good for you? I know you do, because I read the rest of your posts, and you believe the government and regulation is the solution to everything.... but I dont and neither do most Americans. Whaf it the powers that be decided too much environmental waste is created by eating fresh food because its thrown out before its used??? Then they tell you that YOU can only buy processed food...you would probably switch sides then....So you have no more right, duty, or prerogative to tell people how to eat than you do tell someone else how to vote. Walmart buys processed food because it sells, not because it has a long shelf life. If it does not sell, they stop buying it...They want to make money, not fat people. Processed Food sells because people are lazy. It is not your right or duty to tell other people how to eat and how to live their life. WalMart sells fresh produce and unprocessed meats that do not go bad in the freezer isle. People's life style choices are to blame, and it is not your right, nor should it be your right to be able to tell people that they need to change their lifestyle. Both my wife and I work full time jobs....she works on average 12 hours a day, while I work about 9.5....we have a daughter, who goes to daycare. I leave early in the morning so I can pick her up...my wife leaves later so she can drop her off.....we both have no time at all in the evenings yet, because it is important to us we eat quality food...we cook...we plan our meals.... We eat fresh veggies....we make a menu every Sunday, we buy a weeks worth of food, and we freeze/unfreeze it as we use it...its not hard, it just takes getting off your butt. Buying processed food does not save these families any money either...I am sure if you added it all up, it actually cost substantially more than eating healthy. When you dont have quick processed foods in the house there is nothing to snack on, so you dont snack...when you do not snack constantly you are less prone to getting fat, and you save money! If the families would adjust their lifestyle to eating healthy (something they are too LAZY to do) then obesity would not be a problem. Even the families working multiple shifts and whose parents are SOOO busy have the time to put together a casserole and stick it in the fridge...its healthy it just needs to be microwaved, and its ready to go. They dont because they are lazy, not because they are poor, or because they work too much. Everything in moderation is a great theme to live by. We dont need you or some other bureaucrat telling us what to eat....we dont need it! We dont want it! For someone to be successful they have to want to change....fat lazy people dont want to become skinny and productive....they are happy being fat and lazy. When they pass that onto their children we get more fat and lazy.... Wal Mart is not in any way to blame for any of it. Neither is bag ag or big grocers. You really do believe everything Michael Moore tells you dont you? Get a brain, learn to use it without regard to what the tv tells you.

Dont even have to read it to discredit it....Its not even indirectly Wal Marts fault. People are responsible for their own weight. Just because you are lazy, dont exercise, and do not want to cook something healthy is not Wal-Marts fault. For the same price as anything unhealthy that is frequently on sale and located more prominently throughout the store, anyone can buy the big bag of frozen chicken breasts for next to nothing, and some frozen vegetables. People dont buy healthy, because they have to do more than open the box, or microwave it....they actually have to *GASP* cook something, and then *GASP* clean it up!!! That is not Wal Marts fault....its the idiot who buys the foods fault. Its ridiculous to post something like that and claim its even indirectly WalMart's fault.

I do not see what exactly is paranoid or "nuts" about believing that the city will use whatever tactics necessary to achieve their goal of larger Historical Districts throughout the Heights. The original survey was obtained fraudulently. People were not allowed to remove their names from a list that they signed years ago and under completely different pretenses and sets of circumstances. The "re-survey" was done more dishonestly than anything I have ever seen done. Counting a non-returned ballot as a yes, and not allowing owners of contiguous property to have their percent ownership counted the same as everyone else is also dishonest. The resurvey was THE most dishonest, disingenuous, back handed, back room, political process I have ever witnessed. It does not even begin to pass basic tenants of democracy...yet that is how it was done. The original wording of the ordinance required a positive vote of 67% of respondents....that is it actually required a VOTE. That wording was deliberately dropped. If you read Sec 33-222.1(e) it reads "The notice shall include a card to be returned by the property owner which shall indicate whether the property owner does or does not support designation of the historic district" (f) "After the deadline for returning the cards mailed in accordance with subsection (e) has passed, the director will determine if owners of 67 percent of all tracts in the proposed district support the designation of the district" NOWHERE in that text does it require a returned card to be a yes.....they could very easily, and likely would again use a non-returned card as a yes vote. All that is required is a card be mailed and that the card have an option for it to be a yes or a no. The method of counting the yes and no is not described. It is DELIBERATELY not described because they want to have the ability to use whatever method they believe will leave them with the highest probability of success..... I also believe it was written this way to remove the chance that the ordinance as written be used against them in attempts to invalidate the current Historic District designations because they know they could never achieve 67% of the owners to actually vote affirmatively to form the district. Its not nuts, its not paranoid, its not even a stretch of imagination to conceive....its an unfortunate reality of the world we are now operating in. We have idiots, actual idiots, people with low IQ, in charge of our city, our laws, and now, unfortunately our private property.

I am with Samagon here, and I do not think he is being paranoid....look at the past for a prediction of the future...same crooks, same back handed deals....the wording drops respondents....I absolutely read the wording to allow the director to decide whether or not an un-returned card can count as a yes again. With the crooks currently in office, the same process could repeat itself....it makes me want to vomit profusely.

I read the ordinance to allow the blocks to be redrawn following a vote, but the 67% is a full 67%, it does not assume the 10% is a given. Each district vote will need 67% of the cards counted to be created when received....if they can get to 67% by cutting out blocks that did not support the ordinance they will...and if that means only one side of a block is protected they will do that too. The bigger question is if they just continue to use an un-returned card as a vote in favor of the district. That is very dishonest.

Woohoo! S3MH - liar liar pants on fire! Its fun to say Its proven and its more than 10 minutes old, so we must forever protect the historical status of SM3H as a liar. I will work on the ordinance, but in the mean time we will need an administrator to go ahead and tag S3MH's future statements with a disclaimer that says "it is an exceedingly high probability that all content in this post is completely untrue, based loosely in the truth, or is a figment of my imagination being asserted as fact" I read the posts from SM3H, and I have to think that he/she is a she....lots of folks call him a he, but I believe he is a she.

I withdraw my previous statement saying it has "nothing to do with historic aspect at all" You are correct - I should not have spoken in such absolute. The Heights has appreciated rapidly because of its proximity and its quality, it has less to do with the historic aspect. There are certainly those who love its historic nature, but I believe, they are the minority of the homeowners. Thank you for pointing out the hypocrisy in post. Unlike some other posters, I have no problem admitting when I have made an error.

You really need to learn to speak less in absolutes. You come off as unintelligent not only because the things you are typing are stupid, but also because they are absolutes. I can say with almost (notice its not a certainty) 100% certainty that realtors can do more than just one thing well...even if that one thing is drive a car, or dress nice. That is strange because I live on a block that is "busted" and I just went back on the hcad values, and I can tell when the new homes went up next to the old ones...can you? Both are adjacent to new 2006/07 construction 3000 sq ft, and neither have ever been updated. Both are 1920s well maintained shacks Tax Year: 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 Appraised Value: $180,000 $183,666 $146,926 $149,371 $116,039 Its strange that new homes on my block were completed in 2007 and again in 2009....I guess that new home block bushing really crushed the value of his home huh? Maybe it was just this one...lets look at my other neighbor....nicer house, 2200 sq ft larger lot. Tax Year: 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 Appraised Value: $221,000 $203,643 $185,130 $168,300 $153,000 Just as I thought, your facts are not facts at all....in each and every case I looked at on my block and 2 others the values of the well maintained shacks rose the most the years FOLLOWING the construction of a new home, and my block is about 60% old 40% new...Perhaps you can point me to just ONE example of an owner whose overall value went down after a nice new house was built next to his/her well maintained shack. So you recognize the real truth....]The Heights is appreciating rapidly not because it is "historic" but because its become a nice, safe area of town that is also an easy commute. It has nothing to do with the "historic" aspect at all. Most worthless thing you have said yet....imagine that...a safe area of town in close proximity to a large workforce that appreciates rapidly. This area of town could be a corn field and due to its proximity and the fact that the homes being built are nice, and the yards are well maintained, it would appreciate at the same rate. The "historic" aspect of the Heights has had little impact at all on the rate of appreciation....and even if the ordinances stays in place, 10-20 years from now I would still expect the Heights to be significantly more valuable than it is now....unless of course the environmental crazies find a way to permanently stop the exploration and drilling of oil/gas....in which case I would expect values throughout Houston to tumble or at best remain where they are now.

Someone needs to be denied the right to do what they want because of the ordinance for their claim to be ripe. But given Red's statement above about being red-tagged already as a result of the ordinance (which I thought was not even possible given the grandfathering of work in progress) I would say his claim is now Ripe. The problem is that the HAHC, could theoretically grant variances to prevent claims from becoming ripe. You have to exhaust all available remedies at the city level prior to filing a lawsuit....If Red were to apply for a variance, and have it granted, he would no longer have standing to sue because the ordinance did not actually prevent him from doing anything he desired to do. There are other ways, but I am not going into them all here.

First the Heights was made this way THEN because at the time 1920 - only 1 in 13 families owned a vehicle or could even dream about buying one. The Heights is the way it is, because cars were considered a huge luxury at the time. It was not till the late 20's early 30's that Americans began to have cars in large numbers I have to problem at all seeing what the Heights is about....To you its about History, that is your perception...It is not what the majority of people perceive it to be. The majority of people believe it to be a small, relatively safe, trendy, rapidly appreciating neighborhood, where until recently a person could pretty much design and build whatever they wanted. The mix of people, homes, and architecture was great! People flocked to strange homes, old homes, new homes....everything was perfectly fine until the vocal minority got involved. Most builders will goto extremes to save mature trees. A mature tree is worth a huge sum of money...Mature trees are beautiful, and enhance property values. Builders and lot owners only cut down mature trees when they leave the lot economically un-developable. I also do not care that your block looks like it did in the 20's. That means NOTHING to me. If you could not go up and down your beautiful "historic" block and get the actual owners of those homes to agree to preserve them by signing your "reasonable" restrictions, it just proves that you did not, and still do not have the support that you pretend you have. People dont want what your selling, you forced it on them. It was backhanded, it was dishonest, and it was un-democratic, but you dont care because you got your way. Furthermore, you think the street that is redevloped looks like a mess - again your perception. Many may find it beautiful and wonderful. Camelbacks are your preservationist idea...not builders. A builder would only do that if thats what a HOMEOWNER wanted. They do them to still be "fauxhistoric" and have a home that is not a well maintained shack. And again with your perception that the HISTORY of the Heights is what makes it great....its not. If people want an old home they can get it here...but the majority of people who OWN and want to own in the area really dont care about the fact that a house is old. You do....thats great, but you dont have the right to force your desire to preserve history onto the people who own the properties. Again your failure to perceive reality. Its your reality,but its not the reality of the majority. Second, timbergrove did not explode like the heights for 2 reasons. 1) deed restrictions already in place 2) flood zone...it is all in a flood zone....you are in HOUSTON - flooding happens...people dont want to live in flood zones if they dont have too. TImerbergrove is great, but it floods badly. Oak Forest is not as convenient to the city as the Heights. Location, diversity of people and homes, are what makes it great, not history...you like to brag your historic, but not everyone does. Your perception is not the perception of the majority...that is precisely why you could not get the support of your neighbors. Yes - YOU - YOU are forcing your selfish desires on everyone else who does not agree with you. Which is the MAJORITY. That is why you could not do the process legitimately. There was no will of the community. There was an ordinance crammed down everyones throats because no matter how hard you and your selfish friends tried they could not get the support of community. You are the selfish one here. Some people dont "get it" because they dont WANT IT. At some point you need to realize your desires are not the desires of everyone else, or even the majority.

I dont mean to burst your bubble here, but the Heights was a "suburb" at the time it was created, and it was also new construction and cookie cutter homes at that time. All things you are apparently adamantly opposed to. There are also plenty of nice new homes that are not lot line to lot line, but are set well within set backs on nice 50'x132' lots (6600sq ft). The width of many of these is actually smaller than the width of the older well maintained shacks, or dumps that they replaced. The only difference being the depth being much deeper, or height of the new homes towering over the single story well maintained shacks. However the owners of the single story well maintained shacks who support the ordinance, seem to want no two story homes. I see lots of complaints about the fact that the new homes tower over their back yards. But, I can drive through the Heights, historic and non-historic areas, and find plenty of OLD, "historic" two story homes. They are less common, but there are many many old two story homes in the Heights, and I see nobody complain about them. I personally do not care to have one oft homes built lot line to lot line with no yard, but I do not think they are out of place. Half the old homes are crammed lot line to lot line, with less than 6-8 feet between walls. The original lots in the heights were platted 4400 sq ft. About the only thing I am adamantly opposed to that has been occurring is subdiving lots to cram more houses in. Otherwise, I find most of the new construction incredibly more attractive than the Camelbacks, if not infinitely more attractive, and most, are more attractive than the older well maintained shacks that you seem to wet yourself thinking about....though I do like many of the older well maintained shacks as well. What makes the Heights great is the diversity of homes, and the friendly people....both things the ordinance effectively destroys. Now we are stuck with one type of home, and soon we will be stuck with one type of person....arrogant, selfish, needy people who think either they or the government know what is better for you, than you do. Edit - those McVics as you call them also seem to be selling like hotcakes and people pour hundreds of thousands into them...what is your point?

You will take the camelback....I think most would prefer not to. Camelbacks are hideous. I believe the greater population of Houston, or for that matter the US, or possibly even the world would prefer to own a nice new large Victorian style home. Your use of the term McVic is derogatory in nature, similar to the way that I claim you have a well maintained shack because you live in a small old house. You like to call it a bungalow but I think that is just a trendy word for a well maintained shack. I dont really believe that, but it makes my point.

I dont think builders will stop...they just will not buy a lot until they are ready to build upon it. The process between purchase and the start of construction needs to be very fast to ensure a new submittal of 10% would not catch them with their pants down. As soon as the lot closes a permit should be applied for....Its my understanding that once a permit has issued the rules can not change in the middle of the build, even if the actual construction has not begun. Pre planned & designed homes rather than semi-custom would be more the norm simply because the floor plan can be easily dropped into the survey of a lot that meets its footprint. I would think the new homes, which are selling great, would entertain a premium due to decreased supply because only a few builders could afford to have a floor plan ready to go within days of purchase of a lot....The smaller builders without floor plans of their own already ready would be forced to other areas.

I agree with this. It may be time to buy some more property that is not protected! The builders don't want to abandon the Heights - they want to stay, its the place to be. The properties outside of the Ordinance are going to go up in value disproportionately to the ones inside the districts. The 11th - 14th streets from say Nicholson to Ashland, with a cut through Ashland for the awful ordinance covered area are going to be prime real estate soon....Good chance Heights Annex, and the west side of Shepard start improving quickly as well...the only thing that has been holding that area back is the flood plain, IMO. The only thing preventing the area south of 11th from being just as hot is the outpatient mental facility on Waverly at 10th.

If you are as intelligent as you claim, do you honestly, (be intellectually honest here if you are capable of doing so) believe that the process of voting was legitimate? Do you believe the outcome would be the same if a non-vote was counted as a vote to keep historic districts out? I do not believe there is a silent majority who favor preservation. I do not believe there is a majority who favor either side of this debate. 30/35% favor preservation, 30/35% favor no restriction, and the rest are apathetic, or completely uninformed. I believe most people just buy a house they like and live in it, and want to be left alone. I believe most people did not return the ballot because they were either uninformed, misinformed, or just did not have a stamp. Only those who were active in the process are likely to have returned the ballot. Especially with the fact that you had to provide your own stamp. I had to make a special trip to get a stamp to return my ballot. I seldom even check my real mail. I receive absolutely nothing in the mail except for the water bill that is of any importance. Everything else I receive comes electronically, and is paid electronically. I actually pay my water bill through my bank's bill pay option because I do not have stamps ever! I am not in the minority here. The process was not democratic, and was completely rigged to favor a specific outcome. Can you imagine the result of the 2012 presidential election if you could vote against Obama by simply not voting at all? Really? Can you imagine that!? He would be voted out by the largest margins in voting history...it would be staggering.....it would be in the 80+% range or possibly even higher! This was no different....they conducted a rigged vote, during a very busy holiday season designed specifically to get the outcome they got. I actually bet they were surprised that the response against the ordinance was as high as it was. This is not even taking into consideration how the votes were counted...we do not know. Did they count votes who may have left a zero off their hcad acct #?? I dont know....but I surely would not put it past them.

I just threw up in my mouth when I read that! These people will stoop to any level to get their way...this is a sickening display of politics gone awry...