Council passes projects plan
Harvey-related fixes make up bulk of spending
Houston neighborhoods hoping for street repairs, parks improvements or new community centers will have to wait longer under the annual projects plan City Council adopted Wednesday.
The reason? Houston’s capital spending is on a “Harvey hiatus,” as Councilman David Robinson put it.
It is difficult to track incremental delays and schedule shifts among the $9 billion in airport, utility, streets, drainage, police, fire, health, library, parks and other projects listed in the city’s five-year Capital Improvement Plan, but it is hard to miss the weight being given to the storm. Even some project codes, which typically read something like “N-321038,” now simply say “D-HARVEY.”
The city has budgeted $91 million in the five-year plan on Harvey recovery spending in the portion
that is supported by the general fund alone, replacing flooded vehicles, repairing leaking roofs, or returning severely damaged facilities to working order. There is another $130 million budgeted in the portions of the plan that are supported by water bills or airport fees.
“The federal government puts us in a position of having to fund the Harvey recovery projects,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said Wednesday. “The only way we can fund the Harvey recovery projects is to take it from the existing CIP. Otherwise, we don’t have the money.” Unclear what’s ignored
The police complex at Riesner just west of downtown will cost $28 million, and citywide roof replacements will take more than $15 million. Replacing Fire Station 104 will cost $11 million, as will repairing the main municipal courts building. City Hall and its annex will need $9 million.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will require, depending on the circumstances, a local match of between 10 and 25 percent for those repairs. It is unclear when FEMA will begin reimbursing the city for its 75 percent to 90 percent share.
Houston also has budgeted another $605 million in spending next year on activities for which FEMA could reimburse the city, but it is unclear how directly each of the two dozen efforts listed are tied to Harvey.
It is similarly hazy exactly which projects fell victim to the need to free up dollars for Harvey repairs, though about 65 projects listed on last year’s plan disappeared from the draft proposal released last week. An additional 65 projects were dropped from the plan but may have simply been completed during the current fiscal year, since those projects had no budgeted spending beyond this summer.
It is hard to know for sure because Houston has never consistently tracked actual capital spending so that residents can compare what City Hall did to what officials said they planned to do.
City officials said they will begin tracking actual spending on capital projects for the first time beginning next month. Other projects
In other action, the council:
Approved a three-year labor contract giving Houston’s 12,500 municipal workers a guaranteed 6 percent raise over the life of the agreement. The cumulative cost to the city will be $112 million, about 37 percent of which will come from the general fund, which funds more core city services through property and sales taxes. The deal does not include police or firefighters, whose unions negotiate labor contracts separately.
Approved an agreement with Harris County aimed at speeding up work on long-delayed Project Brays, an effort to lessen the flood risk along Brays Bayou. The city will borrow $46 million from the state Water Development Board and give it to the county Flood Control District to redesign and replace eight bridges over the bayou. The county will repay the city when it gets reimbursed by the federal Army Corps of Engineers after the work is done. The deal has been discussed for more than 18 months, but city flood czar Steve Costello said the bureaucratic delays have not cost additional time because the designs for the bridges are only now being completed and sent out for construction bids.
Approved the city’s “action plan” for its first round of Harvey recovery funding, one of several requirements mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is providing the funds. Houston expects to receive this $1.15 billion tranche in September. The city plans to invest $600 million in repairing or building singlefamily homes and $375 million to fix or construct apartments. At least 70 percent of the HUD funds must benefit families making no more than 80 percent of the area’s median household income, or about $60,000 for a family of four. The funds must address the city’s “unmet housing need” — families displaced by the storm whose lives and homes were not restored to normal with whatever aid they may have received from FEMA or the Small Business Administration.