Public Works grapples with change
Parker to name new leader of a department some call insular, resistant to ideas
Flanked by two smiling City Council members on 19th Street in the Heights last month, Mayor Annise Parker praised Houston’s first “parklet,” a parking space converted, via flowers and benches, into a tiny green space.
The idea provides a needed respite amid Houston’s bustle, Parker said, letting citizens “connect with each other and the city.” A week later, an inspector from the city’s Department of Public Works and Engineering tagged the site with a red warning notice. The furniture and flowers were in the right of way, it said, and had to go.
“You really can’t make that up,” said Jeff Kaplan, who pushed for the parklet and owns the adjacent New Living store. The matter, soon dropped, was a miscommunication within Public Works, Kaplan said, but getting the department on board had been tough from the start.
“I do think the city’s thinking about ways to create these types of places, but it does feel like there are parts of the city that are still kind of operating as if it were the 1950s,” he said. “It really was a cultural thing. It just took a lot of explaining.”
Confusion about the parklet is emblematic of broader tensions over the culture of the Public Works
Department as Parker prepares to name its new director as early as Wednesday. City Hall observers describe the department as rigid and insular, wary of public input and resistant to new ideas. They say this leadership turnover, created by Dan Krueger’s resignation last month, is too good an opportunity to squander.
It was unclear Tuesday who Parker would pick, but sources said the list recently had been whittled to one candidate from inside the department and one from outside. One particularly progressive candidate who had been considered was not believed to be one of the final two.
Tom Bacus, managing partner at Sherwood Design Engineers’ Houston office, said the department is at a “pivotal point,” with billions being poured into infrastructure upgrades for roads, trails and drainage during the next decade. The key, he said, is “not to do it the way we were doing it 30, 40, 50 years ago.”
Bacus, whose firm helped design and sponsor the parklet, said the mayor should look at the new appointment as a chance to help “rebrand” the city.
“You have a mayor’s office that wants to do these more innovative projects, but didn’t have a director in the past who lined up with that,” he said. “Let’s let that leadership flow down into the Public Works Department and find somebody for that role who’s going to take that opportunity.”
Some of the department’s impenetrable image likely stems from its sheer size, Councilman C.O. “Brad” Bradford said. With about 4,100 employees and a nearly $2 billion budget, Public Works dwarfs most other city departments. The department’s size leads to poor communication, Bradford said, making it difficult for constituents and even council members to track projects.
“It’s a very complex department, and we never had really good accountability for the enterprise dollars and the general fund dollars,” Bradford said. “More importantly, the citizens are not happy with it. When I go across the city, they think it’s bro- ken, and many of us on council think it’s hard to navigate.”
Public Works spokesman Alvin Wright said he sometimes is surprised by council criticism, given how often members meet with department officials. As for citizens, Wright said they sometimes feel ignored when, in reality, they simply have been told why Public Works cannot fix their problems in the way they want them fixed.
“The department has always been amenable to any kind of communications or conversations about project plans,” Wright said. “Can we do a better job of communication? I’m sure we can. But you have to be receptive to the information. You can’t just come in and say, ‘This is what I want, and I don’t want to hear a word you have to say.’ There are always going to be critics, and we’re always going to listen.”
Wright acknowledged Krueger’s delivery style, as a former military commander, did not help: “I would sometimes say, ‘Could you take the Colonel out of that one?’”
Councilman Stephen Costello, however, said the criticisms of Public Works predate Krueger by decades. “Engineers, by nature, are introverted. We’re not good communicators. We’re problem solvers,” said Costello. “What I’ve been advocating since I’ve been on council is we need to be more inclusive, if not accepting ideas, then at least listening to ideas and getting the public engaged in our projects. Everyone thinks it’s a black box over there, and we can do a lot more to open up the box.”
Costello praised a recent Public Works meeting that answered citizens’ questions on a road construction project, but said similar meetings should be held during the design phase.
Councilman David Robinson, a former neighborhood leader, said it has been an uphill battle to get Public Works officials to attend meetings. Robinson, who has pushed for a more progressive approach, called the appointment of a new director a “great opportunity” but acknowledged reform will take more than one person. “I have a very, very healthy respect for what the Public Works De- partment has to do in the city of Houston, the vast expanse of things we have to provide for and maintain,” Robinson said. “But as a citizen prior to elected office, my sense of what goes on there was very obfuscated by the bureaucracy and now, as a council member, it is one of the least transparent departments that I’ve been able to work with.”
David Crossley, of the progressive planning nonprofit Houston Tomorrow, said Public Works must undergo a culture change. “We need to be able to talk about Houston as a place that becomes walkable and is safe for people on bikes,” he said, “and is not entirely about how fast cars can go.”
Costello, however, said he sympathizes with the department’s confusion over progressive ideas. Engineers, he said, are programmed to work by the book. “I see it as a large cruise ship that’s going to take quite a bit of a radius to turn around,” he said. “You can’t just rewrite design criteria and expect it to happen overnight.”