Meeting the Municipals: The Official Take

OK, my head is done swirling from the wonk-talkfest over at Kaveh Kanes on Sunday. Somehow, we made it through four whole hours of policy talk without creating a Newsletter or Bylaws committee. The aim of the event was twofold: first, to put candidates in touch with local bloggers and writers who would likely be covering local politics. At least in mine and Kuff's case, that meant that we'd likely offer up more coverage than the Chron and Press combined. Prove me wrong, Kristen Mack.

Secondly, we wanted to highlight the fact that the event represented 100 Days till Election Day ... an important cutoff point to realize that city elections are fast approaching (we're down to 99 days right now ... see what I mean).

Given that the idea was slapped together on a Monday with the intention of having it the following Sunday, I could not be more pleased with the results. It would have been nice to have had some other bloggers from the other side of the spectrum as well as a candidate or two from District B, but we were pretty cramped in our quadrant of the coffeehouse as it was and the non-brunching coffeehouse patrons were battling over seating, which led to a nifty defensive move on Anne Clutterbuck's part to ensure her seat while waiting in line for brunch.

Since almost all of the candidates were kind enough to break out the chapstick and tell us bloggers what a fun event it was for them, I'll return the favor and say it was a pleasure to help make it happen. Whether I or any other blogger agreed in part or in full with any candidate took a back seat to my own pleasant surprise that each candidate arrived with a sincerity and concern for helping their hometown of Houston get a little better over what, I'm sure, each is hoping is a fun 6 year ride on council.

Kuff offers up a slew of recollections from the first segment of the meeting. I sat through the whole thing and I think the only major difference was that the first crowd was more of an agreeable affair, right down to George Hittner stating his agreement with Jay Aiyer in support of Mayor White's Bus Rapid Transit plan. The topic didn't get as much coverage in the second segment, but I did get some one-on-one time with Herman Litt to ask him about the issue and he's down with it as well. My bad for not following up with Sue Lovell, Peter Brown, and Brian Cweren. An issue that the first group did seem to indicate as a major issue for METRO is the level of transparency in their decisionmaking.

While the first group broke some minor fissures over how to resolve air quality issues in Houston, the second group had a few more high elbows with Brian Cweren stating a distaste for the growth in area management districts that create another layer of government as well as adding a few shots at unnamed opponents who have worked with creating such districts and (presumably) others who have taken money from owners and/or operators of massage parlors around town. That was about as close to fireworks as we got.

I'll encourage a read through all of Kuff's take for the first section. Kuff did a yeoman's job of facilitating much of the convo in that round, with Robin Holzer tackling a good deal of it for the second round. I'm grateful to both for that since that's not my fort?. With the second group being a bit smaller, it was rather refreshing to watch the discussion occassionally become a 10-15 minute conversation among the candidates - civil, productive, and informative to watch. Much of that happened by the time it got down to Cweren, Herman Litt, and Sue Lovell.

Herman gave a pretty good defense of the Houston Community College board's record on taxes, I thought, complete with a knock on Harris County Tax Assessor Paul Bettencourt for misrepresenting that record whenever Bettencourt is doing work that doesn't quite qualify as his area of expertise. Good for Herman. If I recall correctly (rather iffy since this was in hour three of the 'fest), the board raised taxes once in 1999 or 2000 and turned over another to a vote in a bond election (which passed). Bettencourt's MO is to factor in appraisal increases for calculating the amount of tax increases ... unless he's calculating the county's taxes - then it's just the tax rate he looks at. Of course, the HCC board has nothing to do with the appraisal district. And the only reason the district exists is to remove culpability from Bettencourt's office ... and besides, they're being taken to court anyway. So maybe Bettencourt should turn his attention elsewhere.

Sue Lovell, I'd seen before, so I got a second helping of her strengths of community work and her efforts in creating an award-winning Katy Mills work training group. One of the items that was discussed more in the second session included some other "quality of life" issues not brought up in the first session. In this instance, Sue reminded us that there used to be plans to make much of lower Westheimer a walking mall area. I think we'd touched on the issue some in the first group, but it got more attention later. The importance of it being that Houston has long had a "driving" mentality that leads to people driving their car from the Galleria to the other side of the street for more shopping rather than walking across the street. I noted that during the Super Bowl week, it almost seemed like an alien culture in the area as there were more people actually walking around the Galleria then due to the tourists. Funny thing is, people will think nothing of a 6-10 block walk downtown, but once you're out of downtown or midtown ... the difference in construction makes it less amenable to do this. So yeah, like I said, we talked endlessly about exciting subjects JUST like this all day. Who could ask for more?

One item that came up in some reoccuring ways throughout both conversations involved "what can a council person do" in order to have an impact. There was widespread agreement that members of council play a big role in allocation of local CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) funds. This covers things like street repair, sidewalk improvements, street lighting, and other sorts of really sexy issues that affect our neighborhoods. Having seen this play out as a campaign issue in my own District F as well as having sat in on part of a local meeting where citizens give their input to a member of city council, I can attest to the importance of this. Some members of council practically go begging for input on what to fix, what to build, what to patch in their district and this is a golden area that I think gets way too little attention.

Another area of influence the candidates seemed to highlight was the ability to influence the agenda on council if you've got 8 members of council lined up on it. With a strong mayor form of government, this isn't always easy. But it's the only way to really move the agenda unless it's already on the Mayor's frontburner.

Kuff and I are already plotting a followup event for sometime in September. Since this time around was to put candidates in touch with writers, we're looking for a way to have the next event open to our readers and whoever the heck else can make it out (within the confines of the space we can get for the event, of course). Much of the conversation from this event will likely go a long way towards informing local bloggers for our coverage of the City Elections, so in that regard alone, it was a success. But considering that I arrived on Sunday thinking that if we had 5 candidates and 5 bloggers, then we'd have a hit on our hands ... we topped that considerably. My most profuse thanks to the bloggers, writers, and candidates who made it out. Stay tuned for the sequel to Meet the Municipals.

SIDENOTE: Robin and Christoff from the Citizen's Transportation Coalition may yet have a forum carved out on their site to cover the local/area races going on this year. There was talk of the matter later on, but even without, it's a good forum for many of the issues that were brought up at the brunch.