The pros and cons of Renew Houston (credit, how much)

[Wonderful Jellal]

Last week I was briefed on the Renew Houston city charter amendment initiative, which is trying to collect 22,000 signatures this month so it can be on the ballot in November. The basic argument makes sense: we pay dedicated fees for water and sewer, which keep them maintained properly year after year, but we pay for roads and drainage out of the general fund, which is always being short-changed by the politicians for nearer-term needs, leading to massive underinvestment, flooding, and decay - so let's make roads and drainage work the same way as water and sewer, with a dedicated set of funding sources. Drainage fees would be roughly proportional to the amount of land you own and how much you've covered it with an impermeable surface - which seems pretty fair to me.

Another benefit is that this initiative seems to shut down selling bonds for roads and drainage. That may seem like a bad thing, but the problem is that politicians want to have a short term impact, so they sell a big bond issue to build something (and get the credit), and then make future administrations pay for those bonds, including significant amounts of interest. If we operated instead on a pay-as-you-go basis, we could save all of that money going to interest and put it into actual infrastructure.

But the devil is in the details, and I'm hearing that the details were not vetted with some big players before going to petition.

Houston Strategies

[SouthernBoy205]

That's alright.