VicMan

On City Data I heard something about an apartment complex that NFISD built -- Testomo said that NFISD built an apartment intended for low income housing, but HUD refused to give funding because they believed the apartments were too upscale. Testmo said that's why NFISD lost money

Could anybody find more info on this?

Whether they'll say it in the open or not, I can't imagine that HISD administrators are too happy with the prospect of taking in NFISD's student population.

I can also imagine that they don't want the student population.

Personally I'm in favor of taking them NFISD. It will encourage homebuilders to develop northeast Houston. It will allow gentrification to more easily proceed in central Houston.

Also it looks like HISD will get its fourth stadium that way.

This will be good for other districts since they won't have to send as much Robin Hood money.

Turns out there are actually people who are campaigning to keep North Forest open. Sheila Jackson Lee is one of them http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/North-Forest-advocates-vow-to-fight-to-save-2267606.php

The TEA commissioner said that the TEA has revoked NFISD's accreditation and formally ordered it to close. HISD will annex the district. This pends the approval of the justice department.

http://www.khou.com/...-133715073.html

Many aspects have not yet been answered

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/North-Forest-ISD-nears-closure-2265052.php

Among the questions to be answered: Will HISD keep all the North Forest buildings or move some students? What, if any, debt will HISD have to assume? Will the district retain any North Forest teachers? Are the students properly identified as gifted or in need of special education?

I agree that businesses should not be forced to provide parking. In dense urban areas, it is a given that you need to walk and/or take public transportation

If the city still wants people to take cars, it should encourage development of parking garages in any vacant lots

This Fondren Elementary, right? http://schools.houstonisd.orondrenES

It's now in the City of Houston, but at the time it may have been in an unincorporated area

We moved into Pamela Heights when it was newly built. The first three streets were Knotty Oaks, Trail Lake and Ebbtide and they were only one block long. That was 1957. No nearby schools at all. I rode a bus to Fondren Elementary in Missouri City.

For junior high in 7th, we (2 or 3 of us in the 'hood) were bussed in to Cullen Junior. Then they built Albert S. Johnston and we went there in 8th.

San Jacinto High was made into a 4 year school so for 9th grade, we were bussed into town. Finallly, Westbury was built and we had a high school home!

I graduated in spring of '64 from Westbury. We moved shortly afterward.

Yes, we picked the mascot and colors, named the newspaper, yearbook and drill team. And yes, the #9 post sums it up real well. We never considered ourselves racist, we were just "rebels", for whatever reasons.

There is a very good website started by an early Westbury graduate that has an essay about the (now) controversy over the mascot and flag.

www.westburyhshouston.com

It's not the fact that it's "rebel" per se, but that its specifically based on the Confederated States of America. The CSA stuff is not popular among large segments of society today.

AFAIK "Rebels" are still the mascot for Westbury, but they've removed all of the CSA-related stuff

A Rebel was way better than my schools ours was a fish, the Marlins. Is Westbury still the Rebels? Or has PC made the school change it. btw that flag that had the X of bars and stars was never the flag that flew over the Confederate States, that was a battle flag that was only flown going into battle. Another fact is 70% of the solders that fought on the south's side never owned a slave, They fought because they felt the North infringing on states rights, was steeling the south's natural resources, and was over taxing the south. I hate political correctness. So if your called a rebel today does that mean your a racist or the caller is a racist?

Just to be thorough, the letter has the organization's phone number, 832-356-7834

I am going to use http://www.numberingplans.com/?page=analysis⊂=phonenr to trace it

I'm not sure if this gives additional insight, but anyway here are attributes of the organization's phone number

"

It's good that TheNiche is putting the info in text, because now the info is searchable on Google. So somebody will be able to find out who the president of the organization is

In case the organization takes it down, here's a saved copy at http://www.webcitation.org/635B4Lfhg

The phone number and PO box are not enough. It is important to know the real names of the leadership, and the address of the organization's offices. Since it does not have an office, it defaults to the residences of the leadership.

Sorry, but you are simply constructing a reality that is not there. The RUDH website has a phone number, PO box and email addresses. It does link to the stopheightswalmart.org page under the initiatives page. The stopheightswalmart.org page and the facebook page post notices for public meetings. I also found a list of directors on the stopheightswalmart.org page on the organization's letterhead. It looks like they post a lot of their communications with the City. If you are trying to be anonymous, you usually do not put your name on an organization's letterhead and open your meetings to the public. It took me about 3 minutes to find all of that. Far less time than you spent digging up personal information and gazing on googlemaps street view at people's houses. The fact of the matter is that the only one who is clinging to anonymity is you so you can make a cowardly personal attack on people you do not even know.

And your argument about the houses is just plain stupid. Where in that mission statement does it say anything about historic preservation? You have just foisted that concept on the organization in order to justify your personal attacks. I have never heard, a bit to my disappointment, anything from RUDH about historic preservation. Many people have argued that it is not necessary to preserve historic homes to preserve the character of the Heights. I disagree strongly with that. But maybe that is RUDHs veiw. Or maybe they have not taken a position on the matter. The fact of the matter is that beyond your personal interpretation of a single sentence, you cannot point to anything from the organization about historic preservation. Most everything I see has to do with sustainable, neighborhood friendly urban development. Nothing about the historic ordinance or historic preservation. Thus, your personal attacks are unjustifiable, unless you recreate the world to fit your version of reality.

The mall was refurbished very recently. Its name changed to "PlazAmericas"

I am from central Houston (Lamar class of '98 btw), not all that far from the Montrose Library. I now live far west just past Dairy Ashford (the location i choose was the closest one avail). I don't have many old Sharpstown stories. We did shop at the mall from '87 on. I do remember it was a nice mall. I don't exactly remember when we stopped going there. I know it was after the mid '90s. I know we were still some times going there past '99. We also bought some of my daughters first school uniforms from the uniform store that was next to the Foley's and that would have been around 2003. Seems to me though that right around high school we started shopping at the Galleria more often. By then, though, the mall had started going down hill. I am not talking about the people there, either. The mall itself started to look really bad. It started to look dirty and unkept. The stores where also not that neat or organized any more. When it was my regular mall, I went there for clothes, excories, Christmas shopping and hair cuts. I also got my ears pierced there (anyone remember Piercing Pagoda). I loved shopping at Foley's and Clairs. There was also a pizza place (well more of a stand) I really liked (also had really good baked ziti) in the food court (started w/ a V). My brother lived for the Babbadges.(sp). I have a friend that grew up there (went to Strake and later SHS). His parents still live there. I do sometimes travel past and through Sharpstown. I feel it is perfectly save to drive through (I can only think of two neighborhoods not safe for that and Sharpstown is not one of them). Now I will say this, no I don't believe it is all that perfectly safe. Sharpstown is like a lot of Houston neighborhoods, a mixture. Parts are bad parts are good. The problem is they are starting to run into each other. I will tell you this. I would never tell any one it is safe to wander around at mid in any neighborhood...ever. Not alone at least. If you want to fix Sharpstown then get rid of the gangs. You don't have to get rid of the poor, at least not completely. Before building anything new get rid of the old and run down or fix it. Start building up parts for low middle class people. Meaning to attract low middle class. You can build it up from there. I would like to see a refurbished mall. (w/ real security at least for the moment)

If it IS deemed to be cost effective, I could think of some of the stops (not every trip would stop at every stop)

Which stops do you think would be viable?

Terminus: Houston

Suburban Houston: Aldine/Greenspoint, Spring, The Woodlands, Conroe, Willis

In-between (Houston to Dallas): New Waverly, Huntsville, Madisonville, Centerville, Buffalo, Dew, Fairfield, Streetman, Richland, Angus, Corsicana,

Suburban Dallas: Ennis, Palmer, Ferris, Wilmer-Hutchins

Terminus: Dallas

Of the in-betweens, I certainly think Huntsville and Corsicana would be fairly important. Not sure about the others.

Two more words: Environmental Standing.

So how would these guys claim environmental standing?

The best way to oppose the "Responsible Urban Development for Houston" is a protest outside of their headquarters. Unfortunately http://rudh.org/ only indicates a PO box and not an office address

However a WHOIS (a search of the parameters of a website registration) reveals the registrant is "Christopher Athans" - So we know the name of one person responsible, and can send negative feedback/can protest against this person's actions

If the address of an organization is also the owner's residence, would it be acceptable to hold a picketing drive outside of the said residence?

edit button is missing from my post above? but I wish to expand on my 'cut off your nose to spite your face' comment.

lets look at this from a purely financial standpoint.

Sue and lose. Does the city have to pay attorney fees? time wasted. Low amount of property tax from location, Low amount of property tax from adjoining locations, no sales tax from location while bickering about this. So yeah, city loses more money.

Sue and win. City has to pay attorney fees. Land stays fallow for however long, builders probably will leave it alone for years to come cause they don't want to deal with NIMBYs, so low property taxes from site and surrounding, no sales taxes for however long. No road improvements get done.

Either way, the CITY IS GOING TO LOSE MORE MONEY THAN IF THE LAWSUIT DIDN'T HAPPEN!!!! It's so plainly obvious that this is not being done because the people suing are concerned about MY tax dollars, and now you are JACKING WITH MY TAX DOLLARS, out of spite because of your selfishness.

Congrats RUDH you are costing me higher taxes. If I didn't agree with your practices before, I really hate you now. Stay away from my neighborhood, I will be glad to put signs out and perhaps even occupy something as a demonstration showing my anger.

This is what I will be putting on my sign:

Responsible Urban Development Houston Irresponsibly Wastes Tax Dollars!

A friend of mine lives in one of the small apartments complexes in that area. So far he's had a good experience!

Thank you for this info. My wife and I actually drove around the area again because our Realtor highly recommends it. It's nice to actually hear from someone that lives in the neighborhood. The main negatives we found were some very bad streets.. and traffic seemed pretty bad during rush hour (at least when trying to get to the area). We also thought there seemed like a lot of older people still living there... so it's good to hear about kids in the neighborhood. One thing that also worried us was the chunk of old apartments around Longfellow. We still are just trying to nail down an area within the loop, so thanks for the info.

Honestly I think United Airlines should buy the naming rights.

That would make it up for how UAL didn't put its HQ here.

Sugar land has an airport????? dear god.

Yes, and it used to take commercial flights in the 1990s (intrastate propeller flights).

There is a possibility that discount and leisure airlines like Allegiant and Spirit could try to fly to Ellington and take advantage of the Houston-area cruise ship traffic.

Several of the news articles analyzing the Borders collapse said that because Barnes and Noble got to work on the Kindle and an online presence sooner, B&N adapted to modern times better than Borders did.

I'm not sure how Books A Million is adapting. They had to have done something that prevented them from collapsing like Borders did.

Also Downtown and Katy Mills are Books A Million's only locations in the Houston area.

Nah, it will tank as people just sit on the couches and read the books for free and look important while they suck up the free wi-fi on their laptops.

My book buying habits have changed considerably in the last two years. Almost everything I buy goes to my kindle, but things that I use for research I keep in actual book form and keep on my shelf.

Unless they change it up the business model, the popular bookstores are going to go the way of blockbuster.

edit: damn auto correct

While $100 ($0.02 x 5000) doesn't sound like much, I think that is what Books-a-Million is paying in rent this year.

And now that Borders is going away, Books A Million may be getting more bang for its buck out of its HP location.

HISD hasn't stated what it will do with the campuses

Unlike Wilmer Hutchins, I think the NFISD campuses are in okay shape, so I think they will remain open.

This may be a blessing for Kashmere, though, as HISD could rezone Settegast to Kashmere and leave other NFISD areas zoned to NFHS.

If it were up to me I would redraw the boundaries of Kashmere, NFHS, and Furr so that some territory of NFHS goes to Kashmere and Furr- that way each school has about 1,000 students. - More or less I would rezone Settegast to Kashmere. The area around East Houston post office would remain NFHS. Dyersdale would remain NFHS. Lakewood.. it may go to NFHS, or it could go to Kashmere...

Standardized testing strikes again...

I have several friends who graduated from Forest Brook and Smiley and are successful in life as I hate to see this.....when the shift towards testing popped up in the school system it has become deadly...Humble ISD has atttracted alot of the alumni of NFISD who could've sent kids there and there isn't enough diversity to boost scores across the board.

If they close, will HISD absorb their facilities or they'll shift them to Kashmere?

But NFISD used to be predominately white at one time.....another district that has fallen victim of white flight inside the Beltway

The State of Texas has ordered North Forest ISD to shut down in 2012. The district management is trying to fight it:

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=8248590

It's about time that the district goes. Houston ISD will be the one picking up the territory in 2012.

The U.S. Department of Justice will have to approve of the closure. Since it approved the closures of Wilmer Hutchins ISD and Kendleton ISD (other small, mostly African-American school districts), I don't see it denying the closure of NFISD.

It's not faster for me to have to input the fruit code, since I don't know it by heart.

While AFAIK they don't have self-checkouts, HEB has PLU stickers so that checkout by human of fruit, etc. is expedited. PLU stickers would really help with self checkout.

Typically if I have a lot of produce I go human, but if I have just a few items and all are barcode, I do self.

To nitpick: Why Parc?

Unless it's an acronym, that spelling should be confined to Paris or Montreal. The pretentiousness is embarrassing.

And Abidjan, New Orleans, Beirut, Casablanca, and Kinsasha too, right?

I was looking for vacation deals to Aruba and/or Noumea and some of the packages called for United flights... for which I had to PAY for my drinx whilst on the plane. UGH. Never mind. I'll stick to Funjet.com where all my alcoholic beverages were free (all inclusive) since I stepped foot on the plane.

No thanks.

Charter flights are very common with vacationgoers in Europe, but not so much with the United States

Continental hasn't been to Noumea in a long time

Delta hasn't announced plans to drop snacks yet.

Some people are always going to buy junk food, but making healthier food more affordable is a good step.

And another step is to tax junk food and/or to make it ineligible for purchase using Lone Star cards