dancelvr

Because of the lack of clarity of the meaning of a "re-vote," after the voting at tonight's meeting I asked Michael Shaeffer of the Planning Department what, exactly, it will mean. He confirmed that it will not eliminate the designation of a historic district, but will in all likelihood result in new boundaries for the district. He also confirmed that the City will not allow a doughnut district, i.e., a carve out in the middle of the district, or even within a few blocks, for those opposed. So I think SCDesign is correct -- we will need to stay on top of this issue to see what, exactly, the re-vote will mean. As for the South District, Shaeffer confirmed that for now the properties are subject to the restrictions. When I asked what would happen if those voting for the re-vote tonight [a clear majority] appeared at City Council to oppose the designation, he agreed that it would probably not be approved. That's no guarantee, but if those in the proposed Heights South District really don't want the district designation, they should appear en masse before City Council. Otherwise, once designated a district it will be subject to the same re-vote, and the vagaries associated with it, as the rest of us in designated districts.

As everyone pretty much expected the meeting tonight was different than the others. It looked like about 500 showed up and the opponents of the new ordinance were dominant. At the end Sue Lovell had a hand vote by District “For” and “Against” having a revote on the Historic District application. The vote broke down this way:

Heights South: For – 65 / Against - 40

Heights West: For – 38 / Against - 25

Heights East: For – 49 / Against - 31

Because there was a clear majority in favor of a revote Sue said that there would be one (I recorded the meeting).

Now we need to make the City, HAHC and Sue Lovell make very clear to us how this vote will be interpreted and we must insist on having access to the ballot preparation as well as the ballot counting. I see three ways that they could interpret the vote and the most likely one leaves the possibility of a majority “no” vote still resulting in the Historic District being adopted:

Possibility 1, and in my opinion the least likely, is a democratic "for" or "against" vote for the whole District. They have already said that they will adjust the boundary to fit the support so I think this would be unlikely, though it makes the most sense and ould be the easiest.

Possibility 2, and also unlikely, is a block by block determination. If they did this than there would likely be blocks scattered around and it would be very difficult to know what block was Historic and which wasn’t. This also would defeat the idea of what they are trying to accomplish.

Possibility 3, and this is the one I think most likely because it would result in the largest amount of Historic District land, is the "electoral college" method.

Example:

Take a 3 block area as an example, each block having 20 houses and each house using their vote:

Block 1 has 11 for the Historic District and 9 against, so it will count as FOR

Block 2 has 20 houses against, so it will count as AGAINST

Block 3 also have 11 for and 9 against, so it will count as FOR

In this scenario the actual vote will be 38 AGAINST and 22 FOR, but it could be interpreted as 2 blocks FOR and 1 AGAINST so all three will be considered Historic because more than 51% of the BLOCKS are for it.

I'm sure there are other permutations but you can be sure that whichever way yields the most land in Historic Districts is the method that will be used. We need to make sure this is an open and fair process and the on;y way to do that is have representation in every aspect of the process from this point onward.

There is a very real possibility that this will be the way this vote is interpreted unless we make the City define EVERYTHING before they do this ballot.

RedScare: They are going ot use the 51% number, not the 67%. Sue did make that clear.

I was wondering the same thing. I went to the City Council website and best I can tell, it appears it was "tagged" again, this time by Sullivan (District E) and Rodriguez (District I). Here is the link. Scroll down to item #37(a). Who knows what this means and what is going on behind the scenes, but I find it disturbing how little we're hearing about this topic through "normal channels", and we, the people it impacts, have to scour the internet to learn more. I have emailed councilmember Ed Gonzalez (District H) on this topic but heard nothing back from him or his staff yet.

http://www.houstontx...sec/agenda.html

However, if you read to the bottom, it could still be reviewed tomorrow:

"NOTE - CITY COUNCIL RESERVES THE RIGHT TO TAKE UP AGENDA ITEMS OUT OF THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY ARE POSTED IN THIS AGENDA. ALSO, AN ITEM THAT HAS BEEN TAGGED UNDER CITY COUNCIL RULE 4 (HOUSTON CITY CODE §2-2) OR DELAYED TO ANOTHER DAY MAY BE NEVERTHELESS CONSIDERED LATER AT THE SAME CITY COUNCIL MEETING"

I think that's just a reflection of what happened last week.

Would someone who attended the hearing today share with the rest of us your impressions of where this is going? Thanks.