Light Rail Accident Spike; Building More Galveston Beach; Gentry House Apartment Blaze

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Photo of former Kirby Court Apartments on Steel St.: Swamplot inbox

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  • Absolutely ridiculous, so just after a story about Houston’s complete inability to service it’s existing debt loads based on revenue projections in HBJ the county now thinks they’re responsible enough to take on more debt for roads that will not generate new revenue? City/County revenue projections haven’t even been revised downward properly to reflect the prolonged energy recession we’re heading into. Wish we could replace them all with a bunch of 90-yr old grandma’s that actually know how to balance a checkbook. This city has a very serious revenue issue if we have to create new regressive fees every time we need to do basic maintenance on infrastructure and services. Obviously the sensible thing to do would be adjust taxes first to allow for proper maintenance and smart efficiencies.
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    “The judge says some voters may be hesitant to approve more debt, but Harris County will eventually have to pay for these improvements. He says the bonds would simply allow them to get a head start on the projects.” – seriously, this is one of the poorest excuses i’ve ever heard for going into debt and risking your future welfare.
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    And not looking forward to the western Allen Parkway re-construction starting while the Shepherd closures continue to drag on. Still don’t understand why they don’t just close portions of it at night and use a night shift to double productivity and save costs in the end.

  • @joel, I live in the area and take Shepherd daily. They are already working nights and weekends and during the 100-degree days. They got behind during the extremely rainy weeks.
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    They have already completed the most difficult and time-consuming part of the construction, which was digging up the westernmost lane to a depth of many feet, installing giant concrete pipes under the roadbed, filling in, laying new rebar, pouring new roadbed. Since they aren’t putting the pipes under the easternmost lanes, the work on those should go much faster.

  • knew they’ve been working weekends, but didn’t know they were working nights. just haven’t seen them out at that time, but guess I do hibernate mostly after work hours. good to hear about the pipes since I had assumed they had to do the same to the east side and we were in for another year of closures. traffic has levelled off to a decent volume actually, but would of course be exacerbated by removing the dunlavy/allen pkwy option.

  • Re: $848 Million of Road Bonds
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    I heard this story on the radio and County Judge Emmett was going on and on about how this money will go to pay for the roads in unincorporated Harris County since the original plan was that subdivisions out there were hoping to be annexed by the City, thus putting the upkeep costs on City taxpayers. (The transcript says it all.)
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    So, because this pipe dream went bust, the County wants all of us to pay for this? No, thank you. I’ll see y’all at the ballot box in November.