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A drive by Houston City Council members to make it easier to install speed cushions hit an obstacle of its own Wednesday amid a debate about their powers under a recent charter change.
Council members voted 11-6 to refer a proposal to tweak the city’s speed cushion program to committee, delaying for now a priority for district members besieged by neighborhood groups who want traffic-taming devices. Another proposal from council members to extend the city’s parking meter hours was delayed for discussion until next week.
The seemingly mundane proposals sparked a wide-ranging debate over how much leeway members have to set their own agenda under the voter-approved Proposition A, which allows three or more members to submit ordinances for debate.
The charter change marked a major shift away from the city’s historical “strong-mayor” system, which long granted the chief executive near-absolute power to set the legislative agenda. As the council meeting showed, however, the details of the shift still are being worked out.
Mayor John Whitmire wants council members to funnel their ideas through a newly-created committee, while District J Councilmember Edward Pollard said doing so would violate the intention of voters when they passed the proposition in November.
Feisty debate
On its surface, the discussion hinged on an issue that occupies a surprising amount of district member time. Under current ordinance, residents’ requests for speed cushions require an elaborate approval and funding process.
Under existing rules, residents must petition the Department of Public Works to install the traffic-calming devices, requiring the department to conduct a traffic study and create an installation plan, followed by a public comment process. Each speed cushion must be approved by the full City Council and, typically, individual council members must come up with the cash from their own district funds to pay for installation.
Speed cushions, which include cut-outs intended to allow wide-bodied vehicles, including ambulances and firetrucks through without delay, largely have replaced traditional speed bumps.
To avoid simply re-routing traffic, the department often insists on installing speed cushions on multiple nearby streets. That can quickly drive up the cost of what appear to be simple requests, council members said. District B Councilmember Tarsha Jackson said she has a backlog of requests dating to 2011.
“I have had so many requests for speed cushions we can’t afford … These speed cushions are $6,000 apiece,” Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castex-Tatum said.
Pollard said one of the inspirations for the proposal to ease the process was a request from a school for speed cushions. The Department of Public Works responded with an all-or-nothing plan covering a larger area.
Under Pollard’s proposal, the public works director would have the discretion to approve projects covering a street or two, a scale more attuned to district members’ $1 million annual budget.
District I Councilmember Joaquin Martinez said he was familiar with the demand for speed cushions as a former district chief of staff. Still, he had questions about whether there could be “unintended consequences,” which have yet to be answered by the public works department.
Martinez moved to refer the proposal to a new Proposition A committee created by Whitmire last month, setting off a lengthy discussion of how the new charter change should work in practice.
Power politics
Before Wednesday’s meeting, council members had yet to succeed in placing a proposed ordinance on the agenda. Whitmire’s administration says it created the Proposition A committee in part to come up with rules and procedures for doing so.
Pollard and his cosponsors – Tiffany Thomas, Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, Fred Flickinger and Jackson – beat the committee to the punch.
Pollard said he did not believe a council member proposal could be referred to committee, but a representative of the city legal department said such measures can be treated like any other.
The westside council member said he had no objection to the Proposition A committee in principle, but he did not believe that member items should be forced to route through it.
“If you want to take it to a committee, cool, that’s your prerogative,” Pollard said. “But to force it to a committee, when the charter doesn’t say it has to go to a committee, goes against the intention of the voters.”
In the ensuing debate, Whitmire accused Pollard of making a half-baked proposal that already had required tweaking by city lawyers. The mayor said further improvements could be gained by going through a committee hearing.
“What is wrong with having a committee hearing?” Whitmire said. “I would just ask the simple, common-sense question: What are you afraid of? Let’s let the sun shine in on this process.”
Whitmire voted to send the proposal to committee for further study along with Councilmembers Martinez, Flickinger, Amy Peck, Mary Nan Huffman, Mario Castillo, Julian Ramirez, Willie Davis, Twila Carter, Letitia Plummer and Sallie Alcorn.
Pollard, Thomas, Evans-Shabazz, Jackson, Castex-Tatum and Abbie Kamin voted against referring the proposal to committee.
Parking proposal parked
One of the authors of Proposition A, Urban Reform Institute President Charles Blain, said he did not see immediate cause for concern in the council’s vote Wednesday.
“The conversation was necessary. I’m glad it happened. But I do hope that moving forward, councilmembers can retain the ability to have it go directly to the agenda,” Blain said.
The speed cushion debate highlighted what appears to be an emerging group of council members, including Pollard, who are willing to question Whitmire’s plans in public.
Pollard, Thomas and Flickinger asked pointed questions of administration officials Tuesday about a proposed $1.5 billion settlement with the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association.
Separately Wednesday, the trio introduced an ordinance to extend the time parking meters are in operation, from the current 7 a.m. – 6 p.m. period to 7 a.m. – 2 a.m.
The trio said the change is needed to bring in more money in response to the city’s structural budget deficit and Whitmire’s request for non-public safety departments to submit proposals for 5 percent budget cuts.
Downtown business groups have raised alarms about the parking meter idea, but it never came up for debate Wednesday.
After his defeat on speed cushions, Pollard “tagged” his own item, delaying consideration of it until next week. Pollard said after the meeting that he hoped to answer lingering questions about the parking meter plan to avoid having it sent to committee.
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