Direct every cent of city drainage fees to flood control
When the Rebuild Houston advocates were promoting their ballot proposition that imposed a drainage fee on city residents, they did so by playing to Houstonians’ well-justified frustration with flooding and, in particular, the failure of the city to spend the money necessary to prevent flooding. One TV commercial run by the pro-Rebuild campaign showed a Mr. Rogers character in a workshop drawing flood marks on a post and then promising that “the best part is the politicians can’t divert a single cent.”
If you listened carefully, Mr. Rogers slipped that the money could also be used to “rebuild our streets.” And if you were one of the few nerds, like me, who actually read the charter amendment, you would have also known that there was a huge loophole that allowed 25 percent of money to be spent on “maintenance and operations” without defining what that was. It turned out that meant the city would start paying for more than 500 full-time employee positions out of the Rebuild fund, none of which had anything to do with flood control.
Through June 30, 2018, the city has collected $784 million in drainage fees. By its own accounting, only $337 million or 43 percent has been spent on what the city calls drainage projects. But what the city calls drainage projects are actually projects that frequently include non-drainage components. Most of the $337 million has been spent on completely refurbishing certain subdivisions’ streets, sidewalks, curbs and storm water drains.
I have not been able to find anywhere that the actual drainage benefit of these projects has been quantified. In other words, we have no idea if the so-called “drainage” work done by the Rebuild Houston program has done anything to actually reduce flooding.
Houstonians should find this opacity especially disturbing after Hurricane Harvey.
You see, there are two types of flooding in Houston. One is when the bayou system is over-
whelmed and backs up into neighborhoods. In Harvey this type of flooding did most of the damage along Brays and Buffalo Bayous. Preventing it is the responsibility of Harris County.
The other type of flooding occurs when city storm drains leading to the bayous are overwhelmed and the water cannot get out of the neighborhoods fast enough to keep from backing up into peoples’ homes. This is the type of flooding that has plagued Spring Branch and the areas around Sims Bayou for years and is the city’s responsibility.
The flooding in the Sims Bayou watershed during Harvey was a dramatic illustration of this problem. Over the last 30 years the Harris County Flood Control District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have made extensive improvements to Sims Bayou. As a result, Sims Bayou has not been out of its banks since 1994. Even though Sims never flooded during Harvey, more than 6,300 houses in its watershed did flood simply because the city did not have adequate storm drains to get the water to the bayou.
There is no way to know how many Houston families would have been spared flooding in their homes in the wake of Harvey had the city actually spent all of the $679 million it collected in drainage fees on flood control. But the number is certainly in the thousands. Yet even after the devastation of Harvey, City Council this year again approved a budget that diverts the drainage fees to balancing the general fund budget by paying for 530 full-time positions. Almost none of these positions have anything to do with flooding. For example, the city recently posted a position for a bike and pedestrian coordinator to be paid from the Rebuild fund.
But fear not: The public works director recently said the city had set a goal of spending half the drainage fees on flooding this year. Not exactly the kind of response you would expect from a city that saw tens of thousands of its residents flooded only one year ago.
This is really pretty simple. One hundred percent of the drainage fees should be spent on flood control. No exceptions. No excuses. Fees should be kept in a separate account with every expenditure individually approved by City Council and posted online so that taxpayers can see precisely how their drainage fees are being spent. It is only after Houstonians demand that the city prioritize flood control and hold their elected officials accountable for how every cent of the drainage fees are spent that we will see any real progress reducing flooding caused by the city’s storm water system. Houstonians should vote NO on Proposition A and instead insist on a real lockbox.