Infrastructure on the Campaign Trail

 

Whether you love him or hate him, if you’re are in the civil construction business you have to thank President Barak Obama for bringing infrastructure construction projects back into the arena of public awareness.  While we in the business eat, sleep and live this stuff, the average citizen on the street never thinks twice about where the water comes from, where the toilet goes to, or how a road gets built.  Unfortunately it took the crash of the U.S. financial market and the loss of millions of jobs to make the term “shovel ready” a household term.  And while we wait for the other 95% of the Obama stimulus money to trickle down from Washington, it is interesting to note the number of candidates for city council that list infrastructure as one of their key concerns.  In the past, if infrastructure was mentioned it was usually in reference to road congestion or flooding, but this year seems a little different with several candidates expressing their concerns over funding for infrastructure projects and aging status of our underground utilities.  Let me be clear up front, this is not an endorsement for any candidate, nor am I claiming that that anyone not mentioned doesn’t care about infrastructure.  These are simply my thoughts on some of the candidates as I was perusing through their web sites.  

 

Steve Costello is a good place to start.  Mr. Costello is running for the Council At-large 1 position being vacated by mayoral hopeful Peter Brown.  Mr. Costello is a civil engineer by trade and is the president and co-founder of Costello Inc. a civil engineering firm here in town.  His bio talks about his experience with flooding and storm water management as well as his work with TxDOT on drainage related issues.  I think it is safe to say that he understands infrastructure.  Another interesting candidate is Noel Freeman who is running for the At-Large 4 position.  Noel works in the City Engineers office and on his web page under policy issues lists infrastructure as his first concern.  In his position statement he says that “We are currently billions of dollars behind in infrastructure improvements.  We're being outspent two to one by cities half our size, and it's only going to cost us in the long run….we must work to make infrastructure a top priority at City Hall.” Not bad.

 

Brenda Stardig, running for District A listed street improvements and water and sewer line maintenance as her primary concerns when addressing infrastructure.  She also cited her involvement with five CIP projects and her appointment to the Memorial City Redevelopment Authority as giving her experience in this area. Robert Kane, candidate for District F actually knew that 60% of the underground utilities are approaching the end of their 50 year life span.  However of all the web sites I reviewed, and there plenty, Annise Parker’s had the best response to the question of what to do about the city’s aging infrastructure.  Under issues, she actually has a four page plan that does a decent job of laying out a plan for improving the city’s infrastructure.  In the paper Ms. Parker suggests creating a dedicated fund stream for infrastructure maintenance and upgrades and provides a potential revenue source, that is not a new tax.  She also proposes doing an infrastructure audit and creating a long term construction plan that would remove district politics from construction planning and thereby reduce emergency repairs.  She also has a plan called Hire Houston First that is designed to promote local businesses.

 

It is good to see these potential city leaders focusing more attention on the infrastructure issues that have been looming over, or should I say under, the city for many years.  Now is the perfect time for the City to follow their lead and address many of those issues by increasing the amount of work that they put out on the street.  With the construction market down to a twenty year low and the average construction bid coming in at 20% to 30% below the engineer’s estimates, the city should be reaping the benefits of these cheap prices by building as much as they can now.   For the industries sake let’s hope they move quickly because these prices won’t last forever.  Eventually one of two things will happen; either the economy will pick up and save us all or it won’t and many of the current companies doing work for the City will close their doors and the surviving companies will raise their prices. I hope that Mayor White will recognize this benefit being offered to the city and will move quickly to accept it.

 

 

Mayor’s Race

 

Just when you thought you knew who all of the players were going to be in the November mayor’s election, up pops one more to muddy up the water.  It is being widely reported amongst the political rumor blogs that State Representative Sylvester Turner is considering a third run at the mayor’s seat.  Representative Turner lost in a bitter runoff against Bob Lanier back in 1991 and came in third behind Bill White and Orlando Sanchez in 2003.  Turner is quoted as saying that it is a remote possibility that he will jump into the race but that he will take a look at it and make a decision fairly soon.  If Turner did decide to run the probable affect would be to split the black vote, giving Annise Parker the advantage in the mayor’s race and probably the top position, but she would still lose some votes to Turner.  It would also set up an interesting battle for the second spot in the runoff election, probably between Representative Turner and Gene Locke, but it could open the door for the sole Republican candidate, Roy Morales to sneak in.  Gene Locke, who is the odds-on favorite in the race, served as the City Attorney during the Lanier administration and has already acquired the support and active backing of his previous employer Bob Lanier along with several endorsements from the House and Senate including Senators John Whitmire, Rodney Ellis and Mario Gallegos.  Rumor has it that the active support of Mayor Lanier may be one of the considerations fueling Turners flirtation with the race.  Of course that is all conjecture until he actually files for office.

 

Congratulations!

 

I want to personally recognize Mr. John R. Blount P.E. who recently was promoted to the position of Director of the Harris County Public Infrastructure Department, Architecture and Engineering Division.  HCA has worked successfully with Mr. Blount in the past and we look forward to meeting with him again in the near future.  Congratulations on your new position.

 

Also, congratulations to Dave Keim and Four Seasons Equipment on their successful open house last month.  Over 300 contractors turned out for the event which highlighted the company’s new product lines of Dressta dozers, Champion motor graders and Superior brooms.  Another HCA member, Naegeli Transportation co-sponsored the lunch provided by Goode Company BBQ. Congratulations on a successful event.

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Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Director of the Board, Butch Robinson Gives a Rodeo History Lesson to HCA

 

 

This month’s speaker was a bit of a change from the usual HCA fare, but very entertaining.  Mr. Butch Robinson is the Chairman of the Board for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and May’s HCA luncheon speaker.  Mr. Robinson noted in his opening remarks that in looking around the room he could tell that he would be preaching to the quire that day.  He began by surveying the crowd to see how many attendees were either officers, members, volunteers or supporters of the rodeo.  I don’t think that it would come as a surprise to anyone that there were a large number of hands that were raised in the audience as HCA’s members have always been known for their support of the rodeo.  Mr. Robinson thanked them for their participation noting that without their support the rodeo could not exist.  According to Mr. Robinson, there are 21,000 volunteers that come out to the rodeo and work every day doing the things that need to be done to allow the rodeo to function properly and run smoothly.  They are all volunteers and he thanked everyone present for their support.

 

Mr. Robinson compared the rodeo to a business stating that in business you always try to execute your business plan in a certain, efficient way and make your business profitable. Most people never think about the business plan for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.  Mr. Robinson started by looking at the beginning of the rodeo, stating that in the beginning the rodeo started with seven guys who decided to hold an agricultural show.  Those men, according to Mr. Robinson, decided to have an open show covering all aspects of agriculture, a youth show for the kids, all varieties of livestock, and a fair.  After that was done it was decided that the show needed to be promoted which covered all aspects of advertising.  A parade was added along with trail rides and barbeques.  Mr. Robinson went on, noting that as the show continued to grow, more and more people were needed to work it.  They decided to try and get volunteers, those volunteers eventually began paying for the privilege of working at the show.  The event continued to grow over the years adding a rodeo that has become the largest regular season rodeo in existence.  Concerts were added and the venue was moved to a 70,000 seat stadium.  Mr. Robinson stated that as the rodeo grew, costs to put on the show grew as well and it was decided that they needed to sell tickets, however it was also decided that the tickets would be sold for half price to encourage people to attend.  Mr. Robinson noted that selling a product at half of its actual cost wreaks havoc on a business plan, but that the directors were certain that they would be able to get large sponsors to help cover the difference.  Mr. Robinson stated that even with the discounted prices, the rodeo makes a lot of money which they in turn donate back to the community.  The rodeo gives away the money that it earns in the form of educational grants and buildings to the county.  Mr. Robinson stated that he would hate to have to sell that business plan to an investor, but that he likes selling it to the volunteers in our community, because they come out and make it work.

 

Mr. Robinson then gave the history of the rodeo stating that the show was begun in 1931, first show was in 1932.  It  moved to the Sam Houston Coliseum in 1938 and also added a parade and a rodeo that year.  The first entertainer that the rodeo ever had was Gene Autry.  Mr. Robinson stated that the rodeo moved to the Astrodome in 1966, but what most people don’t know is that the rodeo had an option.  The rodeo owned the property at 610 and Hwy 290 that is now the Milby bus barn, and could have built their own facility there, but opted to move into the Astrodome instead.  In 2010 the rodeo will put on its 78^th consecutive show..  The rodeo has grown to the point where now there are 35,000 members, 21,000 volunteers that spend an average of 68 hours per year volunteering their time.  There are over 100 committees that put in a combined 1,400,000 service hours, and if you had to pay all of these people it would cost approximately $27 million a year.  Mr. Robinson said that they have the largest rodeo in the world and gave out $1.5 million in prizes.  There are over 400 commercial exhibits, 30,000 livestock, horse show entries and youth and open shows, and junior sales at the rodeo have set all the world records for junior auction sales. 

 

Looking at the concert aspect of the rodeo Mr. Robinson stated that they always get the biggest entertainers and listed off such names as Elvis, George Strait, ZZ Top and Garth Brooks as examples.  He went on saying that one of the biggest questions he gets asked is how does the rodeo select the performers.  Mr. Robinson stated that while he is not involved in the selection process he does know that they look at the music industry  information such as trade publications, ticket sales and radio airplay time etc…One other thing that Mr. Robinson pointed out that affects the selection process is that the rodeo is a family friendly organization and not every entertainer can fit that bill.  Then there is a certain time frame when the entertainers have to be available, then it is up to them to decide if they want to perform at the rodeo.

 

The 2009 rodeo is over stated Mr. Robinson, and while it is not completely in the books he was able to give some interesting facts.  The rodeo had set a record general attendance in 2009 with over 1,890,000 people attending the show.  That is the largest event in Houston with the exception of the Astros, but it takes them 80 games and six months for them to do it.  The rodeo does it in twenty performances in one month.  The gross in dollars according to Mr. Robinson is somewhere around $85 million.  According to Mr. Robinson, the rodeo had the largest, one time, paid attendance day this year on “Go Tejano Day” with 74,174 attendees.  There were over 217,000 people who went to the barbeque.  There were also over 75,000 children who went through on school tours, and 70,000 who went through the rodeo’s “Fun on the Farm” program.  In the birthing center, there were 77 piglets, 17 lambs and 12 calves all born during the show.  There were over 250,000 stuffed animals given away at the carnival.  20,500 pony rides were had.  Looking at the food consumed, there were over 6200 cheesecakes on a stick sold, 9600 orders of chicken-fried bacon, 14,000 pounds of popcorn seeds were popped, and 84,000 turkey legs were consumed.  Mr. Robinson went on the note that there were 1,826 international guests from 94 countries that attended the show.

 

As a charitable organization, the rodeo is committed to bettering agricultural practice, education of Texas youth, providing affordable, family entertainment and preserving western heritage.  According to Mr. Robinson, the rodeos charter states that any profits earned by the rodeo must be  spent by the next fiscal year on scholarships, educational endowments, agricultural research projects and other similar programs.  The scholarships are a by-product of the rodeo and to give away the money they have to put on a quality show, said Mr. Robinson.  According to Mr. Robinson this year the rodeo has budgeted $16 million for youth education.  Over the history of the show, the rodeo has given out over $235 million.  In 2009 over $5 million was given out in livestock show awards that went to exhibitors, judging contest winners and calf scramble participants.  The first scholarship was handed out in 1957.  Since then the show has contributed over $130 million to the youth of Texas and currently there are 1934 students on rodeo scholarships.  The rodeo gives out several different types of scholarships totaling 8,250,000 scholarships in all.  The rodeo also gave out $2,750,000 in grants.  Mr. Robinson stated that the rodeo also has scholarships to graduate students in agricultural school, scholarships to the Texas A&M Veterinary school and the Texas Christian Ranch Management school, and there are numerous other smaller scholarships that cover other areas of agricultural sciences and western heritage.  Not to mention the rodeo built the Astrohall and Astroarena and donated them to Harris County.  The rodeo also helped with Reliant Center and Reliant Stadium.    The final thing to look at, according to Mr. Robinson is the economic impact that the rodeo has on the city.  The total direct expenditures in the Houston Metro area are nearly $180 million per show.  The direct expenditures outside of the Houston Metro  area are another $42 million.  The total worldwide impact of the three week show is more than $385 million.

 

In the future Mr. Robinson stated that the rodeo will continue to grow.  This year the number of volunteers increased from 20,000 to 21,000 a 5% increase over the previous year.  Attendance will grow as the rodeo grows.  We are constantly tweaking the show said Robinson which means more youth awards, more scholarships, more grants and a larger impact on our community.

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May 2009 V.P. Report

 

Pay or Play Review.

 

Back in February of this year I began to look into the City of Houston’s Pay or Play program.  It has been about a year since the program was first put into place and Velma Laws had just given a briefing to the City Council MWBE Committee on the status of the program. I thought this might be a good time to see what kind of participation the program is getting and how the program has fared over the last year.  For those of you unfamiliar with the program, it requires contractors with a contract over $100,000 or a subcontractor receiving over $200,000 to either provide health insurance to their employees “play” or pay the sum of one dollar per hour per employee not covered into a special City fund, “pay”.  The goal of the program is to offset the cost of healthcare for the uninsured in Houston and Harris County.

 

I began by reviewing the Pay or Play Program annual report filed by the Affirmative Action Department for 2008.  In this report, Affirmative Action stated that they had a total of 92 POP eligible contracts.  Out of those 92 contracts, 65% of the contractors offered some level of insurance to its employees and were considered “playing”.  This number included hybrid contracts where the contractor both paid and played.  The 65% breaks out to 50% of the participants were all “play” and 15% were a combination of both pay and play.  Only 12% of the contracts had contractors that opted to pay only.  The remaining 23% of the contracts received waivers that were requested by the departments letting the contracts.  The majority of the POP contracts 60.8% are in the construction and professional services sectors.  According to the report, of the 92 contracts 36 are construction related and 20 are for professional services.  Contracts related to the automotive and the health industry followed with 9 and 7 contracts respectively.  In terms of contract value, the construction industry accounted for $359.5 million or 50.6% of the total contract value amount of $709.3 million.

 

Looking at the 23% of the contracts that received waivers, (22 total contracts) there were ten waivers granted because the vendor was a sole source provider, eight due to inter-governmental or inter-local agreements.  What that means is the city used a pre-existing purchase agreement with the state for the purchase of some high volume or high dollar items.  Police cars are a good example of this type of contract.  There was one waiver granted due to an emergency and two contracts were deemed essential and given a waiver.  A breakout of the departments shows that the General Services Department had the most contracts with 19.  Administration & Regulatory Affair was second with 18.  Public Works came in third with 16 total contracts, but it needs to be noted that many contracts that would have been eligible for the POP program were not included because they were put out for bid prior to the July 1, 2007 start date for the program and therefore were not eligible. 

 

You might be wondering how much money the city has collected with this new program.  As of the writing of this report, the City had deposited over $52,000 into the Contractor Responsibility Fund.  That number had increased to $124,000 as of February 18^th according to responses by the City to an open records request filed by HCA.  A check of the Controller’s office as of May 8^th showed that the account currently holds $308,666.27.  According to the study, the money collected in this fund is to be used solely for the purpose of defraying the cost to healthcare providers of furnishing medical services to uninsured workers in the Houston area, and that the funds are to be distributed annually.  100% of the funds, according to the study will go to healthcare providers and/or non-profit entities.  Also, funds may be distributed more frequently if the amount collected exceeds $50,000.  There was no mention as to when a payout would happen, to whom it would go or how much they would receive.  It does not appear that any of the funds collected to date have been disbursed even though the dollar amount is well past the $50,000 mark, however the City is rumored to be working on a way to distribute the money as we speak.  It should also be noted that the report does state, under goals for year two, is the disbursement of monies in the contractor responsibility fund.

 

Term Limits Revisited…Maybe.

 

HB 3006, co-sponsored by State Representatives Garnet Coleman and Carol Alvarado could be bringing a change to the election process in Houston.  The bill, if passed would allow the City of Houston to vote on a proposition to extend the term limits for the mayor and members of city council from six years to twelve years.  The bill would require the mayor and city council to decide whether the election will authorize term limits consisting of a maximum of three four-year terms or two six-year terms. 

 

Two years ago Rep. Coleman submitted a similar bill that went nowhere, however this session the resubmitted bill has already passed out of the House and has been referred to the Senate Intergovernmental Relations Committee for further review.  Proponents of this bill claim that the current term limits are too short creating a revolving door for inexperienced politico’s who must leave office shortly after they figure out how to do the job.  The bill would double the politician’s potential stay in office from the current six years to a maximum of twelve years, and would increase the time they serve between re-elections.  Supporters claim that this will allow elected officials concentrate more time on serving the public interests and less time raising money and running for office.  They also claim that with the longer terms politicians will be less beholding to large campaign donors and special interest groups that they currently rely on to fund their re-election campaigns.  There is no word so far on whether this bill will get past the senate, but I will be watching its progress closely.

 

 

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May 2009 Cover Story

 

Mayoral Candidate Annise Parker Talks About her Vision for the City.

 

This month’s speaker is no stranger to HCA, having spoken several times to this group in the past either as a City Council Member or more recently as the City Controller.  This month however, we invited Annise Parker to address us as a hopeful mayoral candidate who will be on the ballot in November.  Anise is one of the two top mayoral contenders in the upcoming race to fill the mayor’s seat.  Upon taking to the podium, Mrs. Parker thanked the contractors for their support over the last twelve years noting that she had many friends in the room with whom she has worked with in the past and even some she had vacationed with.

 

Mrs. Parker began by briefly comparing the different roles that her positions while at city hall have taken stating that council members are only interested in protecting the interests of their constituents.  If there is a mess in the streets and it is affecting the residents, then they will want it cleaned up.  As controller she stated that her relationship with contractors changed to where her sole responsibility was to make sure they got paid on time and now I am about to embark on a whole new relationship with the citizens of Houston.  She said that when she was elected that she was really proud to be an at large member of city council and that her main focus was on quality of life issues.  She stated that she wanted to work on neighborhood development issues, air quality, she wanted to see more parks and more green space and more libraries out in the community. 

 

As Controller she stated that her focus has been entirely upon the budget of the city of Houston.  According to Mrs. Parker the City has a $2 billion general fund budget with another $2 billion dollars in debt that we spend in our enterprise funds.  The City is a four billion dollar corporation stated Mrs. Parker.  Every few years you turn that corporation over to a brand new group of folks to run because of term limits.  “There is not going to be anyone else in the race for mayor with the depth of experience in city government that I can bring.” stated Parker.  Annise has served twelve years at the city and said that she would not have been ready to serve as mayor after her term on council ended, even though she would have thought that she was.  Learning the ins and out of city finances over the last five years, making sure that the bills get paid and the checks go out the door and making sure that the city can keep pushing projects out even during this economic downturn has been a real learning experience said Parker.

 

The City and this region are in better shape economically than any other part of the country.  We see cities asking for federal bailouts, the state of California is not going to be able to meet its bills and other states are going into financial crisis.  Houston will not have a lot of extra money to spend next year or the year after that, according to Parker, but we will make sure that we meet our commitments.  Mrs. Parker promised that if elected mayor, she would not balance the city budget on the back of our infrastructure.  Mrs. Parker stated that she worked in the oil and gas industry during the economic downturn of the 80’s and witnessed firsthand the city’s attempt to balance the budget by neglecting the maintenance of our infrastructure.  She said that after the economy turned around that the city had to dig itself out of a big hole and it took a long time to get our infrastructure back in order.

 

Another issue that Mrs. Parker said we need to be looking at is how does the city keep and promote jobs in the greater Houston area.  She stated that she has already put forward a policy initiative intended to address that topic called “Houston First.”  According to Parker, the goal is to make sure that when we do contracting in this area and when we purchase goods and services, that we spend local tax dollars with local companies.  Mrs. Parker stated that this is the first of three initiatives that she has been working on and the only one out to the public at this time.   She did state however, that her next initiative topic will be a discussion on local infrastructure spending and what we need to do to keep projects moving forward.  She said that her third initiative will be a discussion on education and while Mrs. Parker admits that the mayor’s office has no authority over the education system, the mayor has a responsibility to make sure that the education system keeps improving.  If we don’t have a good education system then people won’t want to live here and that will have an effect on the work force of tomorrow.

 

At this point Mrs. Parker stated that she preferred to answer questions from the audience rather than make statements so she opened it up to the floor.  The first questioner stated that bids on city construction projects are coming in 20 to 30% lower that the engineer’s estimates.  This is money that could be turned around and put back out on the street in the form of additional projects.  What can be done to encourage the city to get additional projects out there? 

 

Mrs. Parker stated that she was not sure that there will be any new infrastructure spending but said what we need to do is to hold the line on the current CIP and continue at the level that we have.  Mrs. Parker commented that there is always pressure being placed upon the elected officials to put more and more money into public safety, and thereby put less into public works.  She stated that while she absolutely supports public safety, she thinks that instead of giving them more money, we need to look at spending their current funding more wisely.  There are a lot of changes that can be made on the operations and maintenance side of the ledger to be more effective and efficient so that we don’t have to touch the capital side.

 

The next questioner stated that HCA is concerned about Metro and the construction of the new rail lines, the specific concern is that it does not appear that any of the construction will go to local companies except to fulfill the federally mandated small business requirement.  What are your thoughts on Metro?

 

Mrs. Parker said that she is fully committed to a built out light rail system in Houston, however she stated that she does not think that Metro is transparent with their dollars.  Mrs. Parker said that looking at the cost numbers that Metro has put out, the numbers do not add up.  She also stated that she does not agree with the way the Metro Board handled the vote on approving the construction saying that they neglected their fiduciary responsibility and that we need to clean house over there.  Mrs. Parker then went back to her earlier discussion of her “Houston First” initiative stating that she firmly believes that money spent locally benefits all of us.  She stated that there is a bill in the state legislature right now that is for smaller purchasing contracts.  This bill states that if a local contractor is within 5% of a non-local low bidder, then the local second bidder could be considered as low.  Mrs. Parker stated that she does not want to spend a dime more on a project than is necessary, but likes the idea of letting a local bidder match the low bid in order to keep the money in the community.  Mrs. Parker stated that there are other opportunities to change the way Metro operates.  She stated that she believes that citizens are willing to spend money, but they have to trust that you will tell them exactly what you are spending it on and that you won’t waste it.  She then asked the audience when was the last time that anyone had seen or heard from Frank Wilson. She then commented that it had been several months since the last time even she had seen him.

 

The next questioner asked how would you compare your mayoral style with that of Mayor White?

 

Mrs. Parker stated that she does not like to comment on the practices of other mayors, but did say that she is a firm believer in hiring really good people and letting them do what they are supposed to do.  “I don’t micromanage.”  She stated that her responsibility is to hire good people and to hold them accountable.  Mrs. Parker also said that she never goes into a meeting and asked someone their opinion if her mind is already made up.  She will tell you if she has staked out her position, and that is it.  If her mind is open on a subject, then there can be discussion on the issue and a position can be reached, but she did say that she doesn’t play games.  Finally she stated that she likes to get out into the community and have conversations with people.  She stated that in her opinion, it is very difficult for a mayor to stay connected to the community.  Many times a mayor will schedule four or five events in one night where the mayor will drop in, make a quick presentation and then move on.  This keeps you from really knowing what that organization or community is really thinking or needing.  Mrs. Parker said that she has always been willing to meet with anyone and spend time discussing what is important to them.

 

In closing Mrs. Parker stated that the number one issue facing this city, near-term, is the economy.  The number one qualification needed for a mayor is someone who can manage the City’s bottom line while we get through this difficult economy, and that, according to Mrs. Parker, she can absolutely do. 

 

For anyone wanting more information on her campaign please visit her website at www.anniseparker.com. 

 

 

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April 2009 Cover Story

 

Harris County Commissioner, Sylvia Garcia Speaks on the State of the County and Precinct 2

 

 

One of our old friends in County government, Commissioner Sylvia Garcia was the guest speaker at this month’s HCA luncheon.  The Commissioner thanked HCA and its members for all of the support that she has received over the years from our organization both as Commissioner and before that when she was the City Controller.

 

Commissioner Garcia began her remarks by reminiscing about how she grew up in a small, farming community.  She stated that she grew up relying on the county to provide all of the infrastructure needs for her community, not having the sales tax base of support that a city has to rely on.  She said that she tries to keep this in mind when she travels around her district.  Mrs. Garcia remarked that if you took all of the unincorporated land in Harris County and put it all together, it would be bigger than the city of San Antonio.  The Commissioner noted that cities have multiple sources of income to fund their public works projects while the county relies solely on its property tax base.  What that means is that the county has less money to cover a large area that needs much more in the way of services.

 

Harris County is not broke like TxDOT, commented Garcia.  We are still working, and we still have money, in fact, said the Commissioner, “there will be $68 million in projects in my precinct that will be up for bid between now and the end of the year.” Commissioner Garcia noted that there are about seven major projects currently underway in her district right now and that there are another 15 that will to be bid out by the end of the year.  The following is a list of projects that were presented to HCA by the Commissioner at the luncheon; Dell Dale Rd. from Woodforest Blvd. to Wallisville Rd., Railroad Ave. from Center St. to S.H. 225, Burke Rd. from Red Bluff to Southmore St., Genoa Red Bluff Rd. Phase I from Beltway 8 to Scottline Dr., Main St. from S.H. 225 to Southmore St., Southmore St. Phase 2 from Richey Rd. to Johnson St., Thompson Rd. from Ellis School Rd. to S.H. 330 and Bay Area Blvd. from I-45 to S.H. 3.  All are concrete roadway improvements most with curb, gutter and sewer work included.  Scarborough St. from S.H. 225 to Southmore St. and North Main St. at Wallisville Rd. will both be base repairs with asphalt widening and overlay projects. There is also a traffic signal inter-connect and a detention pond scheduled for construction in 2009. 

 

Commissioner Garcia stated that if you had heard that she was going to make Fairmont Parkway in La Porte a toll road, she said that decision has not yet been made.  Mrs. Garcia stated that they are looking at many different options and alternatives concerning the road.  Her main goal, said Garcia is to keep trucks out of the neighborhoods while helping the businesses in the area.

 

Moving to a discussion of the economy, the Commissioner noted that she thinks that for the County, the bigger challenge will be looking at the next fiscal year.  Harris County recently passed its fiscal budget, stated Garcia, and already there is less revenue this year than in the prior year.  The Commissioner said that appraisal values are down noticeably from last year and that no one in County government is sure what is going to happen next year.  Commissioner Garcia stated that when you look at the property tax numbers and then begin factoring  in other things such as the downturn in the economy, the number of home foreclosures, and the increase in unemployment, the number of homes that are on the tax rolls starts to be affected.  She also noted that on the commercial side things are looking hard as well with some smaller businesses beginning to close down and abandon space in strip retail centers.  “Unless the economy really picks up over the next two quarters we are probably going to have a more challenging budget year next year.” stated Garcia.  She said that we are finally seeing the downturn that the rest of the nation has been feeling for some time now.  Things are going to be a little tougher as everyone begins to tighten up stated Garcia, but for the County, the projects will continue as long as they don’t have to raise taxes or run out of bond money.

 

Other issues that the County is having to deal with are increased insurance rates and what they have done to county healthcare benefits.  Also, Harris County is looking at spending more money on the Port Authority in order to keep them fully functioning.  The Hospital District needs added funding as well to cover a growing number of patients.  The Commissioner stated that as the times get tougher, the county hospitals are seeing more people who have been recently laid off, or those who work for companies that do not offer health insurance.  Furthermore, thanks to Hurricane Ike, and the closure of UTMB in Galveston, Harris County has seen a sudden influx of patients from the south.  All of these issues weigh heavily upon the county healthcare system and are straining its ability to serve the community.

 

Like everyone, the County has also tightened up its belt.  According to Commissioner Garcia, they have stopped all of the capital projects in terms of construction of any buildings until they find out how their newly improved AAA credit rating will affect their funding stream.  With the economy still in such a state of flux, we will have to review all of our financial arrangements to make sure that we are getting the best bang for the buck.  Commissioner Garcia stated that they will be re-visiting everything sometime in September. 

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