Ups and downs
Texting and driving eye-opener, Hermann Park vermin and a dire Zika virus warning.
Who woulda thunk that AT&T would unleash its scientists on a study showing anti-texting laws work. Only four states don’t ban texting while driving? You guessed it: We’re there with Arizona, Missouri and Montana. Those four, the data show, have a 17-percent higher rate of that potentially deadly behavior. We know what you’re thinking: How do you tell the difference between a texting passenger or driver? AT&T says it calculated for that. What should have you furious is that Rick Perry vetoed a potential anti-texting law, a state senator killed a similar bill last session and Gov. Greg Abbott has been mealy-mouthed on the issue.
If the price of oil has your job downgraded, outsourced or 86’d, don’t cancel vacation. Whole Earth Provision Co. is celebrating Texas State Parks month in a public-private partnership that gets results. Guides at their stores show you the best way to take the family to, say, Paris — Texas, that is — to experience one of our 95 parks.
All God’s children should have shelter. But the main playground at Hermann Park shouldn’t be a rat- and trash-infested man camp. It is and seems to be happening under the nose of Houston’s Parks Department. The parks staff and the city’s homeless experts need a creative solution. Let’s return swing sets and bathrooms to kids, and get the drifters the social services that break the cycles that imperil them.
Few writers capture the gestalt of our state as those on the masthead of Texas Monthly. Sometimes, though, we wonder if their bosses have ventured out of Austin’s city limits. This month TM brings us a special issue devoted to our gun culture and includes a dozen portraits of Texans and their firearms. With the exception of one Civil War re-enactor who may be black, the entire spread is photos of white folks. That got us looking at the magazine’s archive. The last African American individual on the cover who wasn’t an athlete or entertainer was in the 1970s. Really.
The Metro board, for the first time in many years, is without a Hispanic member. Houston, of course, is 41 percent Latino and they, by far, are the largest users of bus service. The demographic makeup of boards ebbs and flows, but those who make the appointments need to remember this is 2016, inclusivity is not optional and if Hispanics are riding Metro they should have a loud voice in its governance.
The Public Works department released its annual report about streets and transportation. In a section labeled “Measuring Success,” we learn the city constructed 51.6 miles of sidewalks in 2015. That’s down from 78.6 in 2014. Houston may have the worst sidewalks (and bike lanes) in America and at this rate they’ll be fixed in 2066.
You can hear Mayor Turner address Metro, sidewalks and lots of other stuff at Monday’s State of the City address. Bring your checkbook. You’ll need to come up with $110 (plus about another $20 to valet your ride) to the Greater Houston Partnership to see the speech. If the mayor is being used as a profit generator, the bucks ought to go to pay down city debt.
Dr. Peter Hotez, Houston’s leading expert on tropical diseases, sounded a loud alarm about the pending mosquito season and Zika virus in the New York Times: “We need a robust program of mosquito control and environmental cleanup in the poorest neighborhoods of our Gulf Coast cities and in Florida … if we don’t start working now, by the end of the year, I am afraid we will see microcephaly cases in Houston … This could be a catastrophe to rival Hurricane Katrina or other miseries that disproportionately affect the poor.”