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Houston

More on the Metro security robot

Jan 16th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Looks like this is finally getting rolled out.

Typically, when a security guard weighs 400 pounds, it means they are not well suited for foot patrols. K5, however, was built for it.

Soon the spaceship-shaped sentries will roll into action at transit stops and continue keeping watch on a parking garage at Bush Intercontinental Airport, under tests to see if more mechanized monitoring can help people navigate places and provide a bit more security in spaces that could use an extra set of eyes.

Airport officials deployed two K5s, built by Silicon Valley-based Knightscope, in early December. In the coming weeks, once they are properly branded with logos, Metropolitan Transit Authority said it will roll out K5s at a park and ride lot and a transit center in the area. A stationary K1, also built by Knightscope, will be installed at a rail platform. Metro’s board approved a $270,000 contract with Knightscope about 11 months ago.

Robots likely will hit the beat in a few weeks, transit agency spokeswoman Tracy Jackson said. Officials have not confirmed the locations where the units will be deployed.

The intent at Bush, airport parking director Walt Gray said, is to see if the robots prove helpful addressing minor issues that come up in the garage, such as someone who cannot find their car or a traveler who returns with a trip to find a flat tire. A button on the robot can be pressed to speak directly with someone, with the robot able to pinpoint the exact location.

Gray said the robots are supplemental tools to on-site security, though airport officials could have bigger plans to let K5 loose in the terminals to help travelers with directions.

See here for the background. That contract was approved about a month before COVID shut everything down, so I presume that that is the reason why it took so long to get from contract approval to actual pilot test. I don’t have anything to add to what I said back then, I just look forward to the day when I can find myself on a rail platform and encounter one of these things.

The Minute Maid mega-vaccine center

Jan 12th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

More like this, please.

The city partnered with the Astros organization to transform [Minute Maid Park] into a site to provide the Moderna vaccine to up to 3,600 health care workers, residents ages 65 and older, and patients with underlying medical conditions. Vaccine distribution was moved from the Bayou City Event Center, which was needed for a different event, giving the city a sneak peek at how the stadium would operate as a mega-site when it officially opens in the coming week.

Divided into three sections, the stadium’s lower level was reserved for the elderly and those with mobility challenges. Volunteers first led participants to a section to complete additional paperwork for the vaccine, then to a waiting area and the official vaccination stations, and finally, an observation area, where health workers watched for any adverse or allergic reactions at least 15 minutes.

[…]

[Mayor Sylvester] Turner, who toured the site, greeting residents with fist and elbow bumps and encouraging volunteers and essential workers, said Minute Maid Park is the largest vaccination site that the city has hosted so far — inoculating 350 people an hour and tripling the total amount of people vaccinated last Saturday at the Bayou City Event Center.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who attended an afternoon press conference at the ballpark, said it’s also the first model of a mega-site in the country, which could serve as an example for other major cities also looking to establish similar sites.

The outcome, however, was more than Turner and health officials had originally expected.

The city had around 1,000 doses of the vaccine as of Thursday and decided to scale back vaccinations for the weekend when a delivery was not received, but by Friday morning, the city unexpectedly received an additional 2,600 vaccines, Turner said. The city and the Houston Health Department quickly switched gears, scheduling appointments with people who had pre-registered to ensure that the vaccine was distributed and not sitting, wasted on shelves. They also opened up registration, receiving an additional 1,000 applicants within 20 minutes, Turner said.

Marcel Braithwaite, the Astros’ senior vice president of business operations, said the stadium had already begun preparing earlier in the week and officials were confident in the infrastructure.

“It was more about the logistical flow” and ensuring that there was enough physical space within the building to allow for social distancing in waiting areas and immunization pods, Braithwaite said.

This is great, and as a proof of concept it’s clear that this model can work well. I meant it literally when I said “more like this”, because we’re going to need to replicate this on a much bigger scale in order to make progress against COVID. Remember what I said about the scope of the problem. There’s nearly five million people in Harris County. If we want to get everyone vaccinated by the end of the year, we need to be doing over sixteen thousand inoculations per day, every day. That means we need the equivalent of five of these mega-centers, again operating every day. We need them to be accessible by public transit, we need them open at night so as to get people who can’t get off work (remember those 24-hour early voting centers we had last year? Like that), we need them to take all comers whether they have insurance or a personal physician or access to the Internet to make an appointment, we need people working at these locations who speak a broad variety of languages, and we need all of the personnel for this to be local, both to minimize COVID risk (so no one has to travel) and because literally everywhere else will be doing the same thing so we can’t expect to bring in volunteers from other places. Oh, and baseball season will start in April, so at some point Minute Maid becomes unavailable. How’s all that sound? It’s what we need. And we’re going to need a highly-functional federal government, as well as a much better response from the state government, to have a chance.

Assistance for renters coming

Jan 10th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

Good, but of course much more is needed.

Houston officials expect to get up to $70 million in federal stimulus funds to help renters in the city make their monthly payments and use toward other housing expenses.

The $900 billion federal stimulus package Congress approved late last year did not include more assistance for cities and states, but it did allot $25 billion in emergency relief for renters. Those funds will pass through states and local governments that represent more than 200,000 residents.

Mayor Sylvester Turner said Wednesday he expects Houston’s share of those funds will arrive soon. Bill Kelly, the city’s director of intergovernmental relations, said he estimates the city will get an allocation of $65 million to $70 million. The money will go through the Treasury Department, and the law calls for making the payments within 30 days of its passage, which would be Jan. 26.

“My personal goal is to make sure we have this thing done by February 1,” Kelly said of developing the city’s program.

[…]

To be eligible under the law, households must be renters and have at least one individual that qualifies for unemployment or has experienced financial hardship due to COVID-19; demonstrate a risk of homelessness or housing instability; and have a household income at or below 80 percent of the area median income. For a family of four in Houston, that would be $63,050.

The law prioritizes applicants who have been unemployed for 90 days and households below 50 percent of the median income, around $39,000 in Houston for a family of four. The city could adopt additional requirements and priorities.

The city previously used about $30 million of federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act funds to direct toward renters. It also used roughly $20 million for direct assistance, in which recipients can use the money as they see fit. BakerRipley, a community nonprofit, administered those funds.

The first round of $15 million was distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, but the city pivoted in the second round to distribute the money based on need.

I’m sure this will help a lot of people, and I’m sure the city will do everything it can to get the program up and running quickly. More is obviously needed, but I expect another, bigger relief package coming as soon as possible after January 20, so at least part of the problem should addressed. But look at all the qualifiers in the two paragraphs above, and ask yourself how many people might not know they’re eligible, or might not know how to apply for the funds, or who just need them faster than that to avoid eviction or other hardship. In normal times, it makes sense to make sure all the funds are used super-efficiently, and not wastefully. The cost of making it harder and take longer to get the funds is worth the tradeoff. We’re as far from normal times as we can get. Maybe we just need to make it easier to get as much money as is needed into the hands of everyone who might need it, and not worry too much if some of it goes to the “wrong” people. There’s got to be a better way to alleviate suffering in crisis times.

The Republican war against Harris County

Jan 9th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

To be fair, it’s not just Harris County that’s in the crosshairs, it’s the big urban counties, and cities in general. But it’s real and it’s dangerous and it’s anti-democratic.

Republicans in the Texas Legislature are gearing up to bar local governments from hiring lobbyists, punish cities that reduce their police budgets and restrict county judges’ power during future pandemics when lawmakers convene in Austin later this month.

The measures are sure to escalate the long-running feud between Texas’ conservative leaders and the mostly Democratic officials who run the state’s largest cities and counties. And while higher profile items such as coronavirus relief and redistricting are expected to eat up much of the 140-day session, Republicans have made clear they will carve out time for items such as the lobbying ban.

“In terms of (taxpayer-funded) lobbying, it’s morphed into a kind of partisan struggle,” said Michael Adams, chair of the political science department at Texas Southern University. “The Dems were hoping, particularly in the House of Representatives, they would fare better (in the November elections). But that didn’t happen, and so we still see the dominance of the Republican Party in all branches of the state government. And certainly I think they will send a signal.”

Local officials have been bracing for an especially difficult session since October 2019, when House Speaker Dennis Bonnen was caught on tape saying he had tried to make that year “the worst session in the history of the legislature for cities and counties.” Bonnen said he made his goal evident to “any mayor, county judge that was dumbass enough to come meet with me.”

[…]

Last session, Republicans nearly ushered through a bill to prevent large cities and counties from spending tax revenue on lobbying, but the measure died in the final days when voted down in the House. Bonnen in 2019 announced he would not seek re-election after he was heard on the same tape recording targeting fellow Republicans who opposed the lobbying ban.

Though the Legislature does not begin until Jan. 12, lawmakers already have filed numerous bills related to cities and other local entities. State Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, has proposed making cities liable for damages if they release someone from custody who was the subject of a federal immigration detainer request and that person commits a felony within 10 years.

A bill filed by state Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, would prevent cities and counties from requiring businesses to adopt labor peace agreements — in which employers agree not to oppose unionization efforts in exchange for employee unions agreeing not to go on strike — in order to receive a contract. State Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, has filed legislation that would allow business owners to halt local laws in court if the law “would result in an adverse economic impact” on the owner.

Swanson also filed a bill that would abolish the Harris County Department of Education, unless voters decide to continue it through a referendum on the November 2022 ballot. Conservative lawmakers have long sought to shutter or study closing the agency, the last remaining countywide education department in Texas.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, filed legislation that would codify a Texas Supreme Court decision that blocked Harris County from sending mail ballot applications to every registered voter in the county ahead of the November election. Swanson filed the House companion bill.

That’s a lot, and it doesn’t count the revenue cap, or this little gem that I had been unaware of:

During the 2019 legislative session, Abbott quietly backed a bill that would have maintained the current system in Texas’ rural Republican regions while changing it in more densely populated, mostly Democratic counties. That bill, which failed, would essentially have allowed the Republican governor to pick judges in the state’s Democratic areas, while Republican voters picked judges in the conservative areas.

I have to say, on reading all this my first reaction was why would anyone in Harris County want to be governed by people who hate us and want to do us harm? Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Harris County were its own state. We’d have something like ten electoral votes all on our own, and we wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of bullshit.

It wasn’t always like this, of course. It’s not that long ago that “local control” was a Republican slogan rather than a quaint idea. But it’s also not that long ago that Harris was a Republican stronghold, and the radical shift in philosophy isn’t a coincidence. It’s very much of a piece with the Trump administration’s attacks on blue states, and of the increasingly bizarre and undemocratic legal arguments being made about this past election, including the one that the Supreme Court briefly considered that federal courts could overrule state courts on matters of state administration of elections. It has nothing to do with federalism or “states’ rights” or local control or any other mantra, but everything to do with the fact that Republicans don’t recognize any authority that isn’t theirs. If they don’t like it, it’s not legitimate, and the laws and the voters can go screw themselves.

This, as much as anything, is the tragedy of Dems not being able to retake the State House. With no check on their power, the Republicans are going to do what they want, and the best we can do is try to slow them down. It makes the 2022 election, and the continued need to break through at the statewide level, so vital. I’ll say it one more time, nothing will change until we can win enough elections to change the balance of power in this state. And if someone can give me an answer to that “how can Harris County become its own state” question, I’m listening.

CM Jackson’s residency questioned

Jan 8th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Tarsha Jackson

The election in Houston city council’s District B was put on hold for a year as courts addressed whether one of the two finalists for the seat, Cynthia Bailey, was eligible to run for office.

Now, the winner of last month’s runoff, Tarsha Jackson, is drawing scrutiny of her own, just weeks after she prevailed against Bailey and took office at City Hall as District B’s city council member.

Some civic leaders in District B are asking the city attorney’s office to review Jackson’s eligibility because she lives in a portion of Harris County that Houston annexed for limited purposes. Residents in those areas can vote in city elections — Jackson’s voter registration shows she lives in District B — but state law appears to bar them from running for office. The Texas Local Government Code says residents in those areas are “not eligible to be a candidate for or to be elected to a municipal office.”

A city map of Houston annexations shows the north Houston address where Jackson lives was annexed by the city in 2002. The city planning department said it was a limited purpose annexation, in which the city does not collect property taxes but can levy a sales tax. Jackson does not pay city property taxes on her home, according to the Harris County Appraisal District.

That could make Jackson ineligible, although the city has not taken a stand on the issue. City Attorney Arturo Michel declined an interview request.

[…]

The city does not vet candidates’ addresses in determining eligibility. Instead, city attorneys confirm the address listed is in the district they hope to represent. The mayor’s office said in 2019 it declared eight candidates ineligible after those checks and others to ensure candidates have marked a box swearing they have not been convicted of a felony. More than 100 people ran for city council in 2019.

Jackson, a criminal justice organizer, said she did not know about the phrasing in the Local Governmental Code or her neighborhood’s annexation history. She votes in District B elections and said she did not have any concern about eligibility. Jackson said she disclosed her address on her ballot application and the city allowed her to run. She said her mind is on getting to work for District B residents.

“I’ve been forthright on everything when I applied to run to represent the residents of District B. My address is on all the documentation,” Jackson said. “I looked at the criteria we needed to run, and as far as I’m concerned, I met that criteria.”

She was sworn in by Mayor Sylvester Turner on Dec. 21.

Doug Ray, an Austin-based attorney with Ray & Wood who specializes in election law, said it is possible someone could pursue what is called a quo warranto lawsuit, a special type of filing designed to challenge officeholders. The county or district attorney would have to bring the suit themselves, or on behalf of another individual if they approve the claim.

“It’s within their discretion, and if they don’t sign on, it would be subject to dismissal,” Ray said, referring to the county and district attorneys.

He said the annexation question gets complicated based on the different types. The planning department said Jackson’s neighborhood is part of a limited purpose annexation through a strategic partnership with a municipal utility district.

“Assuming all those things are true … that limitation would apply,” Ray said of the barrier on running for office.

Man, I don’t know what to say. As the story notes, the city generally doesn’t enforce this unless there’s a complaint or it’s otherwise brought to their attention, as was the case with Michelle Bonton in 2019. On the one hand, the uneven nature of the enforcement is frustrating, and we always seem to hear about these things at a time when it’s too late to do anything about them. I generally have no patience for non-city of Houston people who try to run for city of Houston offices. (Plenty of them find various ways to bend the rules to make themselves appear eligible – I can think of at least one other serving right now.) This case feels more like a technicality, but one should probably be aware if one is paying city of Houston property taxes or not, especially if one is planning to file for a city office. Against all that, there was a ton of time for this information to come out, and the people of District B waited a long time for this election. What are we supposed to do with this information now? I guess we’ll see if someone pursues this. I don’t know what else to say.

Coronavirus 2.0

Jan 8th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Happy New Year.

The first known case of a new and possibly more contagious coronavirus strain has been reported in Texas, in an adult male resident of Harris County who had no history of travel, according to the state health services department and County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

The variant known as B.1.1.7 was first identified in the United Kingdom, where it has spread quickly, and cases have been found in several U.S. states, including California and Colorado. It does not cause a more severe disease, and vaccines “are expected to be effective against it,” the health services department said, citing the existing scientific evidence.

“The fact that this person had no travel history suggests this variant is already circulating in Texas,” said Dr. John Hellerstedt, commissioner of the state’s health services department. “Genetic variations are the norm among viruses, and it’s not surprising that it arrived here given how rapidly it spreads.”

While this variant doesn’t appear to be any nastier, as far as we know, and should still be covered by the vaccines, it is apparently capable of spreading faster. Really makes you want to stay away from people, doesn’t it?

On the plus side, maybe.

State officials will start distributing most of Texas’ vaccine doses next week to a handful of large pharmacies and hospitals, creating “vaccination hubs” where more people can get a shot quickly, the Department of State Health Services announced Thursday.

“As the vaccination effort continues to expand to people who are at a greater risk of hospitalization and death, in addition to frontline health care workers, these vaccination hubs will provide people in those priority populations with identifiable sites where vaccination is occurring and a simpler way to sign up for an appointment with each provider,” the department said.

Those hubs could vaccinate more than 100,000 people next week, officials said.

DSHS issued a survey earlier this month to vaccine providers gauging their ability to operate community vaccination sites. The state will release the final list of large-scale providers later this week, after the federal government decides how many doses Texas will receive next week.

We expect another 200K total doses next week as part of this preparation. That’s good, but as we’ve discussed before, the numbers remain daunting. Texas has almost 30 million people in it. At 100K shots a week, you’re looking at six years to get everyone vaccinated. The optimistic interpretation of this story is that 100K per week is a starting point, and we’ll accelerate from there. Great, I sure hope so, but if we want to get enough of the state done to get close to herd immunity this year, we need to get to 500K per week, and every week we operate at less than that makes the target number have to be a little higher. (A better and more organized federal response will surely help.) I know, it’s a hard problem, everyone’s doing the best they can (well, not really, but let’s be generous for these purposes), and so on, but this is the math. As someone once said, the stars may lie but the numbers never do.

More COVID restrictions are about to happen in Harris County

Jan 7th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

Blame Greg Abbott and the virus, in whatever order you prefer.

Houston and its surrounding communities on Tuesday became the latest region to require new emergency restrictions after seven straight days of ballooning coronavirus hospitalizations.

The rollback, mandated under Gov. Greg Abbott’s emergency protocols, includes restaurants dropping to 50 percent occupancy from 75 percent, and bars that have not reclassified as restaurants closing immediately. The restrictions remain in place until the region drops below 15 percent COVID-19 hospitalizations for seven straight days.

As of Monday, the latest day of available data, the Houston region was at 19.9 percent, up from just over 13 percent a week earlier. Infections and hospitalizations have been rising steadily in recent weeks, following spikes in other parts of the state and amid holiday gatherings.

All but four of the state’s 22 hospital regions were over 15 percent as of Monday.

Texas Medical Center Hospitals in Houston announced earlier Tuesday that they were putting a hold on certain elective surgeries to save resources for coronavirus patients. Under the governor’s protocols, hospitals are required to postpone elective surgeries that would deplete COVID-19 resources.

“The best thing we can do is take this threshold as a wakeup call,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a news conference Tuesday afternoon. “This is the time to take this for the red alert that it is. We are only going to get through this if we are able to quickly stem the tide of hospitalizations.”

More here.

The rollback comes as Texas Medical Center hospitals already had begun deferring certain elective procedures or readying such a managed reduction strategy, the same one they deployed during the summer when patient censuses spiked. The reduction is not the wholesale delay of elective procedures all Texas hospitals invoked in the spring.

Hospital leaders said Tuesday their systems will continue some elective procedures but suspend those non-urgent cases whose demands on staff and space detract from resources better used to treat COVID-19 patients. Procedures such as mammography and colonoscopy will continue because they don’t tax needed hospital resources, for instance, but some procedures like heart catheterizations might be better delayed.

[…]

The surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations has been relentless. The number of admitted COVID-19 patients in the Houston region has increased for 13 straight weeks, and the 25-county area anchored by Harris County had more than 3,100 hospitalizations on Monday, the highest since July, the peak of the first wave in Texas.

Houston Methodist was just short of 700 COVID-19 patients on Monday. Methodist CEO Dr. Marc Boom emailed employees that if this trend holds the system will surpass its peak July numbers in a matter of days.

“This may well be among the most challenging few weeks we’ve experienced during this pandemic,” Boom wrote in the email to employees Monday. “Together, we will get through this, but it will be difficult.”

Dr. James McCarthy, chief physician executive at Memorial Hermann, said his system exceeded 800 patients and should eclipse July numbers by the third week in January. The system’s number of patients has increased three-fold over the last month, he said.

[…]

The COVID-19 positive test rate statewide is now at 20.53 percent. Methodist’s is nearly 32 percent.

Porsa said said Harris Health is about to enter Phase 3 of its surge plans, which involves closing some of its clinics in order to deploy its nurses and other staff at Ben Taub and Lyndon B. Johnson hospitals, both of which are near capacity. He said the leadership is currently determining which clinics to start with.

Hospital officials said they are encouraged that ICUs aren’t being overloaded with COVID-19. They said their staffs have gotten much better, thanks to better treatment options and nine months of experience with the disease, at getting patients discharged faster now compared to early summer.

But with the Houston area now averaging more than 3,300 new COVID-19 cases a day — compared to roughly 2,330 such cases at the pandemic’s height in July — it appears the peak won’t come before late January or February, hospital officials said. They also worry a more contagious strain — not yet identified in Houston but maybe already here — poses an even greater threat ahead.

“January and February are shaping up to be our darkest days, given these record numbers,” said William McKeon, CEO of the TMC. “Hospitals lag behind in feeling the effects of increases in cases so expect the numbers to keep going in the wrong direction before things get better.”

We’re already passing the levels we had seen at the worst of it in July, and we’re probably a few weeks out from hitting the peak this time around. Remember all this next year, when it’s time to vote for our state government.

HISD Superintendent search is back on

Jan 6th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

For now, anyway.

Houston ISD trustees kicked off their long-delayed search for a permanent leader Monday, choosing three superintendent search firms to interview later this week.

The initial move comes as the state’s largest district seeks to fill a position that Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan has held since March 2018, when Richard Carranza abruptly left to lead New York City public schools. HISD’s search has been delayed because of the looming threat of state sanctions, a state order that temporarily halted the first search and lingering uncertainty about the trustees’ ability to hire a quality candidate, among other issues.

Trustees are scheduled to reconvene Wednesday and possibly Thursday to select from the three firms: Austin-based JG Consulting; Illinois-based Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates; and Nebraska-based McPherson & Jacobson. Board members opted against interviewing GR Recruiting and the Texas Association of School Boards’ Executive Search Services.

“I prefer to interview three and give those three more time with us,” Trustee Dani Hernandez said.

HISD trustees have not released a proposed timeline for completing the search. School boards typically take multiple months to choose a lone finalist.

As the story notes, the previous search was halted by conservator Doris Delaney, who cited the investigation into allegations that five HISD Trustees had violated the Open Meetings Act when they voted to bring back Abe Saavedra as interim Superintendent and force out Grenita Lathan. The recent Third Court of Appeals ruling that affirmed an injunction against the TEA takeover stated that TEA officials failed to follow their own procedures in conducting that investigation, which sort of brings us full circle.

The injunction did not explicitly say HISD trustees could resume the superintendent search, leading to uncertainty about the board’s authority. However, trustees are interpreting the injunction as giving them the power to restart their search, and TEA officials have not moved to halt the effort.

“Because of the turmoil, it’s been hard to know what has been the long-term vision (for HISD),” Trustee Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca said in November. “This process will help provide space to hear that, as well as the vision of others, as we do what’s best for kids.”

The potential for a bigger mess if the Supreme Court overturns the lower court rulings is very present, but one way or the other, the district deserves the opportunity to hire a new leader. Let’s just hope this results in less chaos and not more.

Waiting for our bike trail bridge to be fixed

Jan 6th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Of interest mostly in my neighborhood, but it’s my blog, so.

Bike riders who pedal through the Heights will need to keep burning calories past a key connection closed by fire in the region’s growing trail system.

Just in time for winter, however, parks officials at least have a plan to reopen the MKT bridge in place, news welcomed by local cyclists eager to cross easily over White Oak Bayou again.

“It’s just a killer to lose that bridge,” said Craig Arthur, 29, who bikes recreationally at least four days a week, often along the Heights Hike and Bike Trail. “I know a lot of people are wondering when it will reopen.”

The closest answer officials could give now is, probably in the spring. A glimmer of hope but also a long wait as cycling interest in the area grows.

As soon as Houston public works and engineering officials clear construction permits and verify the repair work, crews can repair abutments and slopes on the sides of the bridge, said Beth White, president and CEO of Houston Parks Board. Repairs would take between 45 and 60 days and cost about $100,000, paid for by the nonprofit parks board, which oversees the $220 million Bayou Greenways program.

The MKT bridge closed Aug. 19, when Houston firefighters responded to a call about a brush fire affecting the bridge. Crews arrived to find a small wooded area ablaze and charring the wooden beams of the bridge.

This Houston Architecture Forum thread has some pictures and other info from the fire – it was pretty dramatic, and it is still under investigation. The bridge and that part of the trail was opened in late 2009 – before that, the bridge was basically an abandoned former railroad bridge. It became part of the bike trail network as part of the “Rails to Trails” program, and I can tell you it is quite heavily trafficked when it’s open. As the story notes, and as you can see in the embedded image, there is a detour available, but it’ll take you a bit out of your way. I’m sure I speak for many people in my part of town when I say I can’t wait for this to be fixed.

There is a website for COVID vaccine signups in Houston

Jan 5th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
8 comments

You can’t use it right now, but it’s there.

Houston’s Health Department launched an online portal for residents to apply for an appointment at its COVID-19 vaccine clinic Monday but quickly ran out of available slots for the remainder of the month.

“The response to Houston’s first COVID-19 vaccine clinic was massive, quickly filling the appointment slots for the department’s current vaccine allocation,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a City Hall news conference where he was about to get his own shot in the arm.

“The vaccine clinic appointments are booked for the rest of this month, and the department is not taking additional appointments at this time.”

Turner said the city is working to set up additional sites and create additional capacity, although it is unclear when new appointments will be available. Turner said the city hopes to open a “mega site” on Saturday.

The portal, available at houstonemergency.org/covid-19-vaccines, added another way for qualifying residents to book for an appointment. A hotline also is available at 832-393-4220.

The city clinic vaccinated nearly 2,000 residents with the Moderna vaccine in two days. It is accepting residents from the first two phases of the state’s distribution plan, which include front-line emergency workers, people 65 and older, and those over 16 with certain high-risk health conditions.

It’s a good start, but at 2K shots a day, we’re talking two years to get to 75% distribution in the city. We’d like to go a little faster than that. Obviously, the city is limited by how much vaccine it can get, as well as the state regulations. Harris County had its own rough rollout thanks to confusion over who was allowed to sign up. On that first front at least, help is on the way, so maybe in another month or two we’ll see much higher numbers. And at least there is now a central location for this for Houston residents, something that had been sorely lacking before.

There’s some more vaccine coming to Texas, but it’s still not a lot.

On Monday, state health officials announced that 325,000 additional vaccine doses would be getting into the hands of 949 providers in 158 Texas counties over the next week, part of the first round of vaccinations for front-line health workers as well as nursing home residents, Texans over 65 and those with certain medical conditions, among others. Some 121,875 doses are earmarked for long-term care facilities such as nursing homes and assisted-living centers.

But with the number of vaccine doses available still falling far short of what’s needed to cover those who are eligible — and with state officials pushing hospitals and other providers to administer vaccine doses that the providers say they don’t have, aren’t sure are coming or have already administered — confusion and frustration have surrounded the initial few weeks of the vaccination rollout.

Providers have 24 hours to report their vaccination statistics to the Department of State Health Services, and the agency updates its numbers each afternoon with data reported by midnight the day before, so the state’s numbers could lag up to two days behind the reality on the ground.

Officials from the White House down to local doctors have warned that it would take months to have vaccine doses available to everyone who wants one.

“The problem is unrealistic expectations based on the reality on the ground,” said Marshall Cothran, CEO of the Travis County Medical Society, which received 700 doses through a local partnership and had them all scheduled within 48 hours for physicians and staff who are not affiliated with hospitals or other care organizations.

With the new shipments this week, the state has been allotted a total of 1.5 million doses through the first four weeks of distribution, officials said Monday. Providers in 214 of the state’s 254 counties will have received shipments by the end of the week, health officials said.

Some 793,625 doses had been received by providers by midnight Sunday, according to the Texas Department of Health Services.

Of those, 414,211 — just over half of those delivered — had been administered, according to the agency’s dashboard.

Hardesty said the nearly 16,000 doses his facility received are being administered “fast and furiously,” and about 10,000 people have gotten their first dose, with second doses to start in the next week.

“We’re giving them as quickly as we can,” he said.

I don’t doubt that, but let’s be clear that 1.5 million doses is five percent of the state’s population, and that 414K is just a bit more than one percent. Seven hundred doses for Travis County, with 1.3 million people, is a drop in the bucket. If you vaccinated 700 people a day in Travis County, it would take you six years to get everyone. In the end, this won’t take anywhere near that long, but we are talking months, and in the meantime the hospitals are also dealing with an insane surge in new cases. I can’t emphasize enough how much we needed to keep a lid on this, and how badly we failed at that.

Anyway. Here was the Harris County website for vaccine registration, which is still up but doesn’t have any method for signing up for a COVID shot at this time. Dallas County has its own website, while Bexar County had a similar experience as Houston did. It will get better, I’m sure, but the early days are going to be chaotic.

It still looks grim in the Houston area

Jan 4th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Brace yourselves.

As Houston left 2020 in the rearview mirror, the coronavirus continued to spread throughout the region unchecked, with some of the highest positivity rates since the start of the pandemic.

And that spike will only continue to climb, experts warn, because the numbers do not take into account additional surges tied to holiday gatherings from Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. The pandemic has already claimed the lives of more than 4,600 people from Greater Houston.

The positive test rate statewide hit a record Friday at 21.15 percent, according to a Houston Chronicle review — surpassing the previous high mark, 20.55 percent, in July.

“It’s looking bad,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “We still haven’t seen the full impact of what’s happened after Christmas and New Year’s, so you know it won’t get better — it’s only going to get worse.”

The positivity rate and hospitalization capacity data are such that more businesses will have to shut down, and others will have to reduce capacity, under Greg Abbott’s executive order. You’d think, given how much he hates the idea of shutting anything down, that Abbott would be working extra hard to get people to wear masks and observe social distancing and so on, but you’d be wrong.

As for the vaccination effort, that remains its own challenge.

Mayor Sylvester Turner on Friday announced the opening of a public clinic that will administer doses of the Moderna vaccine. Health care workers, people over 65 and people with serious underlying health conditions are eligible and must make an appointment by calling 832-393-4220 between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. starting Saturday.

But Hotez warned that Harris County and others across Texas face a “daunting” challenge to vaccinate enough people to neutralize the virus’ danger.

In Harris County, public health authorities will have to ramp up a vaccine distribution program to administer the medicine to some 500,000 residents a month, he said — a volume that the Texas Medical Center and other hospitals, clinics and medical practices aren’t equipped to handle.

“We’re not anywhere close to that,” he said.

Instead, the county should consider opening vaccination centers at places such as NRG Stadium or the George R. Brown Convention Center, he said.

“If we can just gear up to get people vaccinated, then nobody has to lose their lives from COVID-19,” he said.

Understand that even at 500K a month, it will take nearly ten months to vaccinate everyone in Harris County. Even if all we “need” is 75% of the people to be vaccinated, we’re still looking at seven months. This is going to take awhile, and we need to stay on the defensive until then.

Still waiting on that sewer consent decree

Jan 3rd, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Should be ready soon, once the federal court signs off on it.

Help finally could be on the way in the form of an agreement between the city of Houston and the Environmental Protection Agency aimed at upgrading the city’s embattled sewer system.

The proposal would cost an estimated $2 billion over 15 years and could increase water rates as soon as next spring.

Houston’s hundreds of sewage overflows each year, often caused by broken or clogged pipes, contaminate streams in violation of the Clean Water Act, and drew the EPA’s attention a decade ago.

Rather than fight the violations in court, the city and EPA negotiated a “consent decree” mandating actions Houston must take to reduce spills across its more than 6,200 miles of sewers, 384 lift stations and 39 treatment plants.

City Council approved the agreement last year. Federal officials spent months responding to comments on the proposal, and then, in August, asked a federal judge to approve the document and put it into effect. No ruling has been issued.

“After its review of the motion to enter, we expect that the court will approve entry of the consent decree,” said Houston Public Works spokeswoman Erin Jones.

The nonprofit Bayou City Waterkeeper has asked the court to withhold its approval until the agreement is improved, arguing that, among other deficiencies, it does not sufficiently address historical inequities.

A Houston Chronicle analysis four years ago found that a disproportionate share of the city’s sewer spills occur in low-income communities of color. And an analysis of Houston 311 service requests from the last two years shows historically Black southside neighborhoods such as South Park, South Acres and Sunnyside are among the most likely to report sewer problems even though high-income neighborhoods, in general, are more likely to call 311.

Kristen Schlemmer, Waterkeeper’s legal director, said her group feels the decree is needed but that it must deliberately prioritize repairs in historically neglected communities and require more transparency about the spills that occur there.

“What we would have liked to see the city do is to start with the impact on low-income communities and communities of color and craft its consent decree around that,” she said. “Instead they came up with their whole plan and when we raised the issue of environmental injustices, they’re like, ‘Well, completely incidentally, we’re addressing some of those issues.’”

EPA officials declined comment, citing the pending court action. In court filings, attorneys for Houston and state and federal regulators have said the decree is citywide and will not overlook any area. They also have noted that it requires the city to publish annual reports on the decree’s implementation and monthly reports tallying the location of each spill.

“Low-income communities are not being neglected,” one August filing stated. “Rather, low-income communities, especially those communities with higher numbers of (spills) and aging infrastructure, are being addressed with the ‘worst first’ prioritization.”

The decree would force Houston to clean its 5,500 miles of gravity-driven sewer pipes every decade, to carry out more preventative cleanings in problem areas, and to emphasize its program to educate residents not to invite blockages by pouring grease, oil and other fats down the drain.

The agreement would mandate a more aggressive schedule for assessing, cleaning and repairing the city’s sewer system, and prioritizes fixes in nine areas that experience voluminous spills during rainstorms, including the area around Mama Seafood.

See here, here, here, and here for the background. This will likely cause your water bill to go up, though we don’t know yet by how much. That wouldn’t be necessary now if we had been doing this all along, but here we are. If you don’t like it, go build yourself a time machine and travel back to, I don’t know, 1985 or so and yell at Kathy Whitmire about it. Otherwise, just know that there will be fewer sewer overflows in the future. That’s worth a few extra bucks a month on your water bill.

Astrodome renovation officially on hold

Jan 2nd, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Not a surprise, given everything that is going on right now.

Still here

The COVID-19 pandemic upended most aspects of normal life, but this year has clutched dearly to one bit of normalcy for Houston residents: inaction on the Astrodome.

For 12 years, the architectural triumph that put Houston on the map — or the past-its-prime hunk of steel and cement, depending on who you ask — has sat, largely abandoned off Loop 610. Harris County Commissioners Court in 2018 approved a $105 million plan to transform the facility into a parking garage and event venue.

Two years later, work has barely begun. The project is on hold indefinitely and its funding sources have dried up. Fans of the dome must face a hard truth: This plan to renovate the building appears doomed.

“The only construction we’ve done is removal of asbestos and demolition work to enable that,” County Engineer John Blount said. “There’s been no real construction toward building the parking structure.”

There are two reasons for what elected officials do or not do: money and politics. The current Astrodome plan strikes out on both, the county’s current leaders say.

Former County Judge Ed Emmett was one of the most vocal proponents of renovating the dome, which the Republican argued would be ludicrous to demolish since it is structurally sound and already paid for by the county.

Even though voters in 2013 rejected a $217 million bond proposal to convert the 55-year-old structure into event and exhibit space, Emmett convinced his colleagues to support the current, pared-down version in 2018, which he hoped to see through to its completion.

Nine months later, however, his re-election bid was denied in a stunning upset by Lina Hidalgo, who helped Democrats flip Harris County Commissioners Court for the first time in a generation. She immediately put the project on hold, concerned the project did not make fiscal sense.

Hidalgo, who was in middle school the last time the Dome hosted an event in the early 2000s, does not share the same enthusiasm for revitalizing the landmark as her predecessor. With an agenda to radically change how county government interacts with residents, through increased spending on social programs and infrastructure, Hidalgo has never seen the Astrodome as a pressing issue.

Hidalgo recognizes the Dome’s place in history but looks at the issue through the lens of what is best for the community, spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said.

“She’s not opposed to working to find ways to bring it to life, and we’ve been in touch with nonprofits on that,” Lemaitre said. “But right now, we can’t justify prioritizing putting public dollars or governing on it.”

[…]

Beth Wiedower Jackson, president of the Astrodome Conservancy, acknowledges there is little chance construction resumes on the 2018 plan. She said Hidalgo has said she is open to a new proposal, and agrees with the nonprofit that a repurposed Dome should produce a revenue stream for Harris County.

Jackson said that while the conservancy does not yet have a budget in mind, the group has begun searching for private funding partners and hopes to present a more expansive plan to Commissioners Court in 18 to 24 months. While frustrating to start over, she said the group instead views it as an opportunity.

“It is prudent to stop and push pause and re-center this project as many times as we need to,” Jackson said. “Do we have an opportunity now to think bigger, and more holistically, and greener and smarter about what it looks like? Hell yes. That’s exciting for us.”

The last mention I had of the Astrodome was September 2019 (“on hold for now”), and before that was January 2019 and October 2018, when Ed Emmett was still County Judge and we were looking at a March 2019 start to further construction. I wasn’t born here and don’t have the emotional connection to the Dome that some people do, but I support the Emmett-produced 2018 plan for the Dome, and agree with the assessment that the best thing to do is to find some use for it. I also agree that the county has much bigger priorities right now than this, and it won’t hurt anything to put it all on the back burner for the next year or so, when we are hopefully out of the current pandemic hole we are now in. If the plan has shifted by then from the Emmett plan to something that offloads most of the funding and responsibility to non-profits, that’s fine too. Even if we’d been working on the Emmett plan all along, it’s not like we’d have been doing anything with the Dome this year anyway. We’ll get back to it when it makes more sense to do so.

TEA still barred from taking over HISD

Jan 1st, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Still in a state of limbo.

Texas is still temporarily barred from taking over Houston Independent School District, a state appellate court ruled Wednesday, upholding a lower court’s order.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Texas Third Court of Appeals upheld a temporary injunction that stops the Texas Education Agency from replacing the elected school board of its largest district with an appointed board of managers. The appeals court ruling sends the case back to the lower court that in January blocked the state’s takeover effort.

The appellate judges said Houston ISD had a “probable right to relief” since the TEA did not follow proper procedure and acted outside its authority as it moved to sanction the district. It also ordered the state to “pay all costs related to this appeal.”

The TEA plans to appeal the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court. “While the Agency is disappointed with the split ruling from the 3rd Court of Appeals, this is only a temporary setback,” the agency said in a statement. “We are confident that the Texas Supreme Court will uphold the Commissioner’s legally-authorized actions to improve the educational outcomes for the 200,000-plus public school students of Houston.”

[…]

[T]he appellate court’s ruling Wednesday said Texas’ “proposed actions are not authorized by the Education Code.” The opinion stated that the state did not have the right to appoint a conservator to oversee the entire school district in 2019, force Houston ISD to suspend its search for a new superintendent, or impose sanctions based on an investigation, among other things.

The opinion was written by Judge Gisela Triana, who was joined by Judge Jeff Rose in the ruling. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Thomas Baker wrote that Texas is authorized to take over Houston ISD, the injunction should be removed and the district’s claims should be dismissed.

See here and here for the background, and here for a copy of the opinion. The Chron story goes into the opinion in some more detail.

To start, HISD’s lawyers argued Wheatley High School did not trigger a state law requiring the school’s closure or the board’s ouster after the Fifth Ward campus received its seventh straight failing grade in 2019. While the law is intended to punish districts with campuses receiving failing grades in multiple consecutive years, the justices found that the TEA failed to take a technical step — ordering HISD to submit a campus turnaround plan for Wheatley — that it says was required under the statute.

The two justices also ruled that the TEA incorrectly interpreted a state law that says Morath can replace the school board in any district that has had a state-appointed conservator for more than two years.

State officials appointed conservator Doris Delaney to oversee long-struggling Kashmere High School in 2016, then clarified that her authority extended to district-level support in 2019. TEA officials argued Delaney’s presence since 2016 met the criteria for triggering the state law, but the two justices ruled that only her time as a district-level conservator counted toward the two-year requirement, which thus hasn’t yet been met.

Finally, the two justices found that TEA officials failed to follow their own procedures related to a special accreditation investigation, which Morath cited as a third reason for replacing HISD’s board.

For what it’s worth, the “affirm” opinion came from a Democratic justice (Triana) and a Republican justice (Rose), while it was a Democratic justice (Baker) who voted to overturn the district court opinion. I don’t know when this might be resolved – the appeal to the Supreme Court is of the injunction, while the case itself was sent back to the district court – but until there is a final ruling that says the TEA can install its Board of Managers, I’m going to operate on the assumption that there will be HISD Trustee elections this year. I guess there would be regardless, but at least for now those elections mean a bit more, since the Board of Trustees is still running things. The Press has more.

Please shut up, CM Travis

Dec 31st, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
23 comments

And delete your Facebook account while you’re at it.

CM Greg Travis

The mayor, city activists and some of District G Councilmember Greg Travis’ colleagues are denouncing offensive comments he made online about former first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

On Facebook, Travis posted a meme that shows a photo of Obama, speaking demonstratively while sitting down, next to a photo of current First Lady Melania Trump, who has her legs crossed. Travis wrote, “Yep. Just saying,” on the post. In comments, he said affirmative action, the program that gives minorities preference in university admissions, was the reason Obama was admitted to Harvard Law School.

“It’s called Affirmative Action. Doesn’t take much—she was born with her qualification,” Travis wrote. “She isn’t the brightest bulb in the lot.”

Travis also wrote that Harris’ career was owed to a former romantic partner. Without him, Travis said, “she’d be working in an office cubicle.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “would be nothing without Bill,” he wrote.

Ashton Woods, a founder and leader of Houston’s chapter of Black Lives Matter, said on Twitter the comments are evidence Travis “hates black women” and wrote: “DEMAND HIS RESIGNATION,” with a call for people to sign up to speak at the next city council meeting on Jan. 5.

“It’s enough. We don’t need to talk representation at city council, because if he says things like this what other ideologies is he taking with him to work… with the most women ever elected to Houston city council,” Woods said. “It says to me that he has a problem with well-educated Black women.”

Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office said he asked Travis to take down the post and comments, which it described as “offensive.”

“The mayor is disappointed by the post and has no other comment at this time,” Mary Benton, Turner’s communications director, said.

Travis is unapologetic. He said the post was a meme that has circulated for years, and the comments represented his opinion. He only deleted them because the mayor asked him to do so “as a friend.”

The Press has screenshots, if you missed seeing the posts in question. No question that CM Travis is an idiot and a waste of space on Council, but there’s literally nothing anyone can say or do that will get him to resign, and he’s in his second term so he won’t face the voters again. CM Tiffany Thomas called for Travis to be censured, citing the precedent of then-CM Jim Westmoreland, who was censured in 1989 for his egregiously racist statements about the late Congressman Mickey Leland. I’m fine with that, but we should recognize that things like censure only work on people who are capable of feeling shame and remorse. Maybe the Council members who are justifiably angry about this can find a way to shun CM Travis until he expresses some regret for his actions. I’m not exactly sure how that would work, but it’s a thought.

A new high in hospitalizations

Dec 30th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
9 comments

This is fine.

The Texas Department of State Health Services reported Monday a pandemic high 11,351 hospitalizations from COVID-19.

This surpasses the previous all-time high of 10,893, which occurred on July 22.

The record comes in the midst of a holiday season public health experts worry could exacerbate the already rapidly spreading virus and following an increase in cases weeks after Thanksgiving.

This hospital data does not account for people who are hospitalized but have not gotten a positive test, and DSHS says some hospitals may be missing from the daily counts. As of Monday, the state is also reporting 49 deaths from COVID-19, a lagging indicator of the extent of transmission rates, and more than 12,800 new confirmed COVID-19 cases. Reported cases may have appeared lower the last few days because some local health departments did not report data to the state over the holiday week.

Earlier this month, Texas’ ICU capacity was already the lowest since the start of the pandemic, leaving health care experts worried hospitals could be pushed to the brink as coronavirus cases continue to climb. Across the state, COVID-19 patients occupy 17.8% of the state’s hospital beds, and only 745 staffed ICU beds are still available.

At a press conference Monday, Mark Escott, Austin’s interim medical director and health authority, said that this week alone, “ICU utilization” is up 62% in Travis County and that hospital beds could become scarce in a matter of weeks.

“Our projections forward into the new year continue to look worse and worse day after day,” Escott said. “I think right now it appears we’re going to enter 2021 in a state of emergency.”

This is fine:

This is fine:

Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said he anticipated a major fall surge amid a wave of new infections in West Texas and the Panhandle.

Those areas are among the hardest hit in the country, he said.

“Up in Midland and places like that, it’s still a really tough area,” he said, adding, “In terms of surges, I’m maybe a little less worried about the Texas Medical Center. But in other parts of the state, it’s going to be a real concern.”

There are 745 ICU beds available across the state, according to data from the Department of State Health Services, the lowest number available since the pandemic’s surge during the summer. Among 63,679 staffed hospital beds, 13,416 are available statewide.

Further, 15 of the state’s Trauma Service Areas are reporting that more than 15 percent of their total hospital capacity is taken up by COVID-19 patients, crossing the threshold for what the state considers “high hospitalizations.”

At the Texas Medical Center, the weekly average of new COVID patients has more than doubled since early November, from 104 to 248. Medical center data from Sunday shows 1,594 total COVID patients and another 404 in the ICU. There are 1,298 total occupied ICU beds with hundreds more available, the data shows.

“The medical center has gotten a lot of heft, in terms of being able to accommodate COVID patients,” Hotez said.

[…]

The sporadic use of masks has contributed to the surge, said Hotez, adding that he doesn’t anticipate the number of statewide hospitalizations decreasing anytime soon. He noted that the number of beds is less of a concern than the number of trained staff available.

Hotez said he did not know how much Christmas gatherings would impact the number of infections. But he warned people that New Year’s celebrations would be the “best party the COVID virus can hope to have.”

“I would just say any kind of New Year’s celebration is fraught with risk ,” he said. “Because when you have this high level of transmission going on in the state, anytime you bring four or five people together, there’s a good likelihood they’re going to have COVID.”

I’m really scared for what the next few weeks may bring. Wear your mask, practice social distancing, avoid indoor gatherings, and try to survive until you can get vaccinated.

Next in line for the vaccine

Dec 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Attention will shift to more vulnerable populations.

Texans who are 65 years old and older, and those who are at least 16 with certain chronic medical conditions will be next in line for the COVID-19 vaccine, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced Monday.

“The focus on people who are age 65 and older or who have comorbidities will protect the most vulnerable populations,” said Imelda Garcia, chair of the state Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel and DSHS associate commissioner for laboratory and infectious diseases. “This approach ensures that Texans at the most severe risk from COVID-19 can be protected across races and ethnicities and regardless of where they work.”

The vaccine, which arrived in Texas on Dec. 14, has been available so far only to front-line health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. There are nearly 1.9 million Texans in that group, so it will likely take a few weeks before the state transitions to the next phase, state health officials said.

The state expects to receive 1.4 million vaccine doses by the end of the month. Eligible facilities under the current phase include hospitals, pharmacies, nursing homes and Texas Department of Criminal Justices facilities.

The city of Houston will also receive 6,000 doses that are ticketed for firefighters and health care workers, so that’s good. A list of comorbidities that would get you onto the eligible list for the vaccine is in the article, so click over and check it out if you think this may apply to you or someone you know. But do keep in mind that bit about it taking a few weeks to transition into that next phase, because it will take awhile to get through the first phase. We need to continue to practice prevention so as not to sicken and kill many more people needlessly.

Indeed, for those of us in Houston, the next few weeks are looking rough.

The spread of COVID-19, steadily increasing in Houston and Texas since the beginning of November, is expected to accelerate in coming weeks, according to the latest modeling, a trajectory that could make the city and state one of the nation’s next hot spots.

The models project COVID-19 numbers — cases, hospitalizations, deaths — to continue rising in Houston and many other parts of Texas before likely peaking sometime in January. Parts of the state at crisis levels the past month have peaked.

“There’s a lot of concern about the Houston area as we enter the Christmas season,” said David Rubin, a pediatrician and director of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab, which produces one of the models. “If I were to say what areas in the country still have the potential to surge, the Houston area definitely would be one of them.”

Rubin and others urged everyone to hunker down over the coming holiday period in an attempt to limit the damage from the coronavirus’ seeming last onslought before gradually deployed vaccines can begin to shut down the pandemic. He noted widespread deployment won’t be in time to affect Houston’s winter peak.

[…]

“What’s concerning is that so many regions of Texas look to be hit about the same time,” said Spencer Fox, associate director of the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. “It’s a sad trend at a time when the vaccines are almost within reach.”

The Houston-area trends are worrisome in two of the models. Fox’s group projects 2,121 COVID-19 hospitalizations in the area on Jan. 15, for instance, an increase of 36 percent over the 1,561 such admissions for Dec. 17.

In addition, the CHOP PolicyLab modeling shows the number of Harris County COVID-19 cases should nearly double by the end of the first week of January. The model projects 2,919 cases on Jan. 7, up from 1,478 on Dec. 14.

A third forecast, by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), projects the number of deaths in Texas will peak Jan. 5 at 292. The model, the only one of the three that projects more than a few weeks out, says daily deaths would total 280 on that date assuming universal mask wearing but reach 345 by late January if mandates are eased.

Thanks partly to the vaccines, the IHME model projects the number of daily Texas deaths will decrease dramatically after the Jan. 5 peak — 138 on Feb. 1, 55 on March 1 and 17 on April 1. The vaccine’s most immediate effect is expected to be more of reducing severe illness and deaths than cases.

The IHME model does not project past April.

In all, 28,134 COVID-19 Texas deaths are expected as of Dec. 31, according to the IHME model. All but 2,700 of those came after June 30.

“That’s a devastating loss of lives in just a six-month period,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine infectious disease specialist and vaccine scientist. “Has Texas ever lost so many lives in such a short time?”

The CHOP PolicyLab foresaw the June/July spike, though they were more alarmist than the situation turned out to be. But between the holidays and the colder weather that makes outdoor dining less feasible, the conditions are certainly there for an uptick. We all know what to do about this, it’s just on us to actually do it.

Are you ready to attend a basketball game?

Dec 24th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

I’m not, at least not yet. Ask me again after I’ve been vaccinated.

The Rockets on Thursday made official their plans to have limited numbers of fans in attendance at home games under a variety of health and safety protocols during the spike in cases in the coronavirus pandemic.

There will be a reduced capacity of spectators at Toyota Center of approximately 16-20 percent (3,000 to 3,660) for Rockets games and other events, beginning with the Rockets regular-season season opener next Wednesday. Thursday’s preseason game against the Spurs is to be played with staff, friends and family in attendance as a final test of the health and safety requirements and sanitation steps planned.

Fans will be required to answer health questions prior to entering Toyota Center with additional league-mandated testing protocols required of fans closer to the court.

Face masks are required for all those in the building 2-years-old and older, other than players, unless eating or drinking. Gaiters, bandanas or vented coverings will be not considered acceptable face coverings.

The NBA did a great job with the bubble for their 2020 playoffs, but that’s not practical for the regular season, which will be slightly shorter than usual but still pretty close to normal. College basketball is happening now, though I don’t know what the fan attendance policies are. I’m not ready for this, and I don’t think it’s a great idea. I wish I knew what the city of Houston and/or Harris County think about this, but that topic was not explored in the story. I hope this doesn’t cause any large-scale breakouts, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

(By the way, the scheduled season opener for the Rockets yesterday was postponed because of COVID concerns on the team. Womp womp.)

A closer look at the Aguirre/Hotze debacle

Dec 22nd, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

This WaPo story was pointed out in the comments here, and it’s worth your time to read. I should note that while the Houston Chronicle has not (at least so far) identified the air conditioning repairman that Aguirre attacked, this story did identify and talk to him. For now, I’m going to stick to the Chron’s style guide, so where the WaPo story includes his name, I’m going to put “[the ACRM]” in my excerpt, to stand for “the air conditioning repairman”.

The episode illustrates the extreme and sometimes dangerous tactics that a set of conservative groups have employed in an effort to substantiate President Trump’s unproven allegations of widespread voting fraud in the election. Theories about truckloads of missing mail-in ballots, manipulated voting machines and illegal mail-in ballot collections have abounded in far-right circles, despite a lack of credible evidence, leading to threats of violence against election workers and officials.

Many of the fraud allegations have come in the form of lawsuits that have been rejected by state and federal judges across the country.

The overall effort in Houston stands out because it relied on an expensive, around-the-clock surveillance operation that, for reasons so far unknown publicly, targeted a civilian — authorities called him “an innocent and ordinary air conditioner repairman” — with no apparent role in government or election administration. The operation was also financed by a newly formed nonprofit group run by a well-known GOP donor in Texas and prominent former party officials in Harris County, the state’s most populous county, corporation records show.

The nonprofit group, the Liberty Center for God and Country, paid 20 private investigators close to $300,000 to conduct a six-week probe of alleged illegal ballot retrievals in Houston leading up to the election, the group has said. None of its allegations of fraud have been substantiated.

The group’s president, Steven F. Hotze, did not respond to an interview request.

Aguirre declined to say why the operation focused on [the ACRM].

“I’m not trying my case in the paper,” Aguirre, who was released on $30,000 bail, told The Post in a brief phone interview on Dec. 16. “I don’t care about public opinion. I’m trying my case against these corrupt sons of [expletives].”

The origins of Aguirre’s election fraud investigation date to the formation of the Liberty Center for God and Country in late August.

[…]

Hotze’s nonprofit group was created “for the purpose of ensuring election integrity primarily,” said Jared Woodfill, Hotze’s personal lawyer and the former executive director of the Harris County Republican Party, the county that includes Houston. Woodfill is listed on state incorporation records as a director of the nonprofit group, along with Jeffrey Yates, the former longtime chairman of the county’s Republican Party. Yates did not respond to phone messages.

“The socialist Democrat leadership in Harris County has developed a massive ballot by mail vote harvesting scheme to steal the general election,” a now-deleted fundraising page for the group alleged. “We are working with a group of private investigators who have uncovered this massive election fraud scheme.”

The group raised nearly $70,000 through a GoFundMe page from Oct. 10 through last week. Hotze has said publicly that he donated $75,000 to the probe and that an unnamed individual had donated another $125,000.

Hotze turned to Aguirre to assemble a team of 20 private investigators, according to Aguirre’s attorney, Terry Yates, who is not related to Jeffrey Yates.

“Mark would say he’s the guy who was in charge,” Terry Yates told The Post.

I’m not going to try to guess what might be going on in Steven Hotze’s whack-a-mole brain, but I do want to understand why these jokers came to focus on this one poor guy. There had to be some reason for it, however irrational and ultimately wrong-headed. If nothing else, the attorney that eventually files a massive lawsuit against Hotze for the pain and suffering our ACRM endured will want to know the full story.

In September, Aguirre wrote an affidavit for a lawsuit brought by Hotze and the Harris County GOP before the Texas Supreme Court seeking to curtail early and mail-in voting. The affidavit alleged Democrats had devised a scheme to submit as many as 700,000 fraudulent ballots in Harris County. The Texas Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit on Oct. 7.

Nevertheless, law enforcement officials in Harris County began looking into the claims in the affidavit. The affidavit did not mention [the ACRM], but described what it contended was a broader ballot-harvesting effort directed by local Democratic officials.

Four investigators from the Harris County Precinct 1 Constable’s Office, which is responsible for investigating voter integrity issues, were assigned to the investigation, an official said.

“We looked into the allegations,” said Constable Alan Rosen, who said investigators conducted interviews with various people but got no cooperation from Aguirre and other private investigators. “We wanted to investigate their side of the story and they wouldn’t talk to us.”

“No proof was ever substantiated,” according to Rosen.

As the Nov. 3 Election Day neared, Aguirre and other unidentified private investigators began to monitor [the ACRM] more closely, court records show. By mid-October, they had devised a plan to carry out extensive monitoring that kept eyes on the air conditioning repairman day and night, court records show.

Beginning around Oct. 15, the investigators started “24 hour surveillance” on [the ACRM]’s mobile home, a police affidavit states. They set up a “command post” nearby, renting two hotel rooms for four days in a Marriott hotel, according to the affidavit. As they watched [the ACRM], Aguirre unsuccessfully tried to convince law enforcement authorities at the state level that he was on to something big, according to several law enforcement agencies and court records.

On Oct. 16, Aguirre called a member of the state attorney general’s election task force, Lt. Wayne Rubio, to request that Rubio order a traffic stop of [the ACRM]’s vehicle, court records show. Rubio declined. Aguirre “seemed upset that the Department of Public Safety could not stop and detain an individual based solely on [Aguirre]’s uncorroborated accusations,” Rubio later told police, according to the affidavit.

Aguirre told Rubio that he would make the traffic stop and execute a “citizen’s arrest,” the affidavit states. Rubio did not respond to interview requests, and the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment.

Aguirre also contacted Jason Taylor, a regional director at a separate statewide law enforcement agency — the Texas Department of Public Safety — the agency said in a statement to The Post. That contact came a day before Aguirre is accused of ramming [the ACRM].

“Mr. Aguirre brought up the allegations of election fraud during a phone call on Oct. 18, 2020, with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Regional Director,” a spokesman wrote. “Based on that call, the matter was then discussed with the (DPS) Texas Ranger Division. The decision was then made to refer Mr. Aguirre to the Office of the Texas Attorney General.”

Aguirre later told police he was frustrated that he had “not received any help” from law enforcement agencies, according to the police affidavit.

So many questions here. What evidence did Aguirre present to DPS and the AG task force? Clearly, it was pitiful, because had there been anything at all to the juicy allegation of Democrats engaging in massive fraud, these guys would have been all over it, but that’s not the whole picture. The bigger question is, should Aguirre’s delusions have given these guys cause to worry about his actions and the potential danger to the ACRM? Did they take his threat of a “citizen’s arrest” seriously, and if not why not? Imagine for a minute if our ACRM had had a concealed carry license, and had made the determination when he saw Aguirre approach him that his life was in danger (which, as it happens, it was) and he needed to defend himself. Or instead imagine if Aguirre had gotten jumpy and made the same decision for himself. This “citizen’s arrest” could very well have had a body count, which is why I ask, should the law enforcement officers that Aguirre complained were unwilling to help him have taken action against him instead? It’s more grist for our ACRM’s future attorney, I suppose.

Police later reviewed grand jury subpoena records from Aguirre’s bank, the police affidavit states, and saw wire transfers of nearly $270,000 to his account from the Liberty Center for God and Country with payments of $25,000 each wired on Sept. 22 and Oct. 9, and $211,400 deposited the day after the alleged assault.

Houston police declined an interview request and said they would not answer specific questions about the case because the department’s investigation is ongoing.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which charged Aguirre after a grand jury indictment, also declined to answer questions. “This is an active, ongoing investigation,” spokesman Michael Kolenc wrote in an email.

As I said before, I really hope that this ongoing investigation includes Hotze and the malevolent organization he spawned to finance this travesty. I sure won’t be surprised to learn that they were not scrupulous in following the law prior to Aguirre’s attack on the ACRM. Don’t be afraid to go where the evidence leads.

Precinct analysis: Other jurisdictions

Dec 21st, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial

You may be wondering “Hey, how come you haven’t reported on data from SBOE and State Senate districts?” Well, I’ll tell you, since the SBOE and Senate serve four-year terms with only half of the races up for election outside of redistricting years, the results in the districts that aren’t on the ballot are not discernable to me. But! I was eventually able to get a spreadsheet that defined all of the relevant districts for each individual precinct, and that allowed me to go back and fill in the empty values. And now here I present them to you. Oh, and as a special bonus, I merged the data from the 2012 city of Houston bond elections into this year’s totals and pulled out the numbers for the city of Houston for the top races. So here you have it:


Dist     Trump    Biden    Lib    Grn  Trump%  Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
===================================================================
SBOE4  110,192  350,258  3,530  1,787  23.66%  75.20%  0.76%  0.38%
SBOE6  371,101  391,911  8,796  2,157  47.95%  50.64%  1.14%  0.28%
SBOE8  219,337  176,022  4,493  1,185  54.69%  43.89%  1.12%  0.30%
								
SD04    55,426   25,561    936    145  67.54%  31.15%  1.14%  0.18%
SD06    61,089  123,708  1,577    770  32.64%  66.10%  0.84%  0.41%
SD07   232,201  188,150  4,746  1,216  54.47%  44.13%  1.11%  0.29%
SD11    77,325   51,561  1,605    389  59.08%  39.40%  1.23%  0.30%
SD13    38,198  166,939  1,474    753  18.42%  80.51%  0.71%  0.36%
SD15   110,485  208,552  3,444  1,045  34.15%  64.46%  1.06%  0.32%
SD17   110,788  140,986  2,706    720  43.41%  55.25%  1.06%  0.28%
SD18    15,118   12,735	   331     91  53.47%  45.04%  1.17%  0.32%

Hou    285,379  535,713  8,222  2,704  34.30%  64.39%  0.99%  0.32%
Harris 415,251  382,480  8,597  2,425  51.34%  47.29%  1.06%  0.30%


Dist    Cornyn    Hegar    Lib    Grn Cornyn%  Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
===================================================================
SBOE4  110,002  330,420  8,479  5,155  23.62%  70.94%  1.82%  1.11%
SBOE6  387,726  359,196 13,130  4,964  50.68%  46.95%  1.72%  0.65%
SBOE8  220,500  164,540  7,608  2,770  55.76%  41.61%  1.92%  0.70%
								
SD04    56,085   23,380  1,405    393  69.02%  28.77%  1.73%  0.48%
SD06    59,310  115,620  3,609  2,257  32.80%  63.95%  2.00%  1.25%
SD07   237,216  173,948  7,682  2,796  55.64%  40.80%  1.80%  0.66%
SD11    77,887   47,787  2,508    854  60.36%  37.03%  1.94%  0.66%
SD13    39,386  157,671  3,502  2,149  19.43%  77.78%  1.73%  1.06%
SD15   114,616  195,264  6,065  2,657  35.43%  60.35%  1.87%  0.82%
SD17   118,460  128,628  3,892  1,603  46.42%  50.40%  1.53%  0.63%
SD18    15,268   11,859    554    180  54.80%  42.56%  1.99%  0.65%

Hou    297,735  498,078 14,537  7,021  36.43%  60.94%  1.78%  0.86%
Harris 420,493  356,080 14,680  5,868  52.75%  44.67%  1.84%  0.74%


Dist    Wright    Casta    Lib    Grn Wright%  Casta%   Lib%   Grn%
===================================================================
SBOE4  102,521  332,324  8,247  7,160  22.01%  71.35%  1.77%  1.54%
SBOE6  379,555  347,938 16,311  9,217  50.40%  46.21%  2.17%  1.22%
SBOE8  214,771  163,095  8,573  4,631  54.92%  41.70%  2.19%  1.18%
								
SD04    54,997   22,915  1,715    685  68.48%  28.53%  2.14%  0.85%
SD06    54,732  118,635  3,389  2,751  30.49%  66.09%  1.89%  1.53%
SD07   232,729  169,832  9,084  4,902  54.59%  39.84%  2.13%  1.15%
SD11    75,580   47,284  2,906  1,454  59.41%  37.17%  2.28%  1.14%
SD13    37,009  156,577  3,653  3,306  18.45%  78.08%  1.82%  1.65%
SD15   111,109  192,351  6,833  4,347  34.34%  59.45%  2.11%  1.34%
SD17   115,654  124,174  4,931  3,219  45.32%  48.66%  1.93%  1.26%
SD18    15,037   11,590    620    344  54.50%  42.01%  2.25%  1.25%

Hou    286,759  491,191 16,625 11,553  34.47%  59.04%  2.00%  1.39%
Harris 410,088  352,168 16,506  9,455  50.71%  43.54%  2.04%  1.17%

Dist     Hecht  Meachum    Lib  Hecht% Meachum%  Lib%
=====================================================
SBOE4  104,675  334,600 10,745  23.26%  74.35%  2.39%
SBOE6  387,841  349,776 17,294  51.38%  46.33%  2.29%
SBOE8  217,760  164,210  9,466  55.63%  41.95%  2.42%
						
SD04    55,773   22,920  1,721  69.36%  28.50%  2.14%
SD06    56,313  117,884  4,832  31.45%  65.85%  2.70%
SD07   235,317  172,232  9,800  56.38%  41.27%  2.35%
SD11    77,081   47,122  3,169  60.52%  37.00%  2.49%
SD13    37,495  158,731  4,500  18.68%  79.08%  2.24%
SD15   113,248  194,232  7,612  35.94%  61.64%  2.42%
SD17   119,941  123,630  5,196  48.21%  49.70%  2.09%
SD18    15,108   11,836    675  54.70%  42.85%  2.44%

Dist      Boyd   Will's    Lib   Boyd% Will's%   Lib%
=====================================================
SBOE4  104,397  336,102  8,832  23.23%  74.80%  1.97%
SBOE6  380,861  354,806 15,618  50.69%  47.23%  2.08%
SBOE8  217,360  164,288  8,525  55.71%  42.11%  2.18%
						
SD04    55,481   22,982  1,621  69.28%  28.70%  2.02%
SD06    56,932  117,444  4,132  31.89%  65.79%  2.31%
SD07   234,080  173,025  8,683  56.30%  41.61%  2.09%
SD11    76,633   47,377  2,834  60.42%  37.35%  2.23%
SD13    36,755  160,184  3,557  18.33%  79.89%  1.77%
SD15   111,564  195,699  6,798  35.52%  62.31%  2.16%
SD17   116,011  126,731  4,723  46.88%  51.21%  1.91%
SD18    15,162   11,755    627  55.05%  42.68%  2.28%


Dist     Busby   Triana    Lib  Busby% Triana%   Lib%
=====================================================
SBOE4  104,071  335,587  9,074  23.19%  74.79%  2.02%
SBOE6  389,317  343,673 17,392  51.88%  45.80%  2.32%
SBOE8  218,278  162,376  9,125  56.00%  41.66%  2.34%
						
SD04    55,864   22,402  1,739  69.83%  28.00%  2.17%
SD06    55,719  118,801  4,006  31.21%  66.55%  2.24%
SD07   235,948  169,843  9,532  56.81%  40.89%  2.30%
SD11    77,324   46,265  3,101  61.03%  36.52%  2.45%
SD13    37,498  158,536  3,962  18.75%  79.27%  1.98%
SD15   113,780  192,651  7,220  36.28%  61.42%  2.30%
SD17   120,435  121,393  5,349  48.72%  49.11%  2.16%
SD18    15,098   11,746    682  54.85%  42.67%  2.48%


Dist    Bland    Cheng  Bland%   Cheng%
=======================================
SBOE4  112,465  336,620  25.04%  74.96%
SBOE6  401,946  350,154  53.44%  46.56%
SBOE8  225,783  164,516  57.85%  42.15%
				
SD04    57,378   22,793  71.57%  28.43%
SD06    60,243  118,418  33.72%  66.28%
SD07   243,089  172,941  58.43%  41.57%
SD11    79,757   47,134  62.85%  37.15%
SD13    40,242  160,069  20.09%  79.91%
SD15   119,474  194,619  38.04%  61.96%
SD17   124,299  123,453  50.17%  49.83%
SD18    15,712   11,864  56.98%  43.02%


Dist     BertR  Frizell  BertR% Frizell%
=======================================
SBOE4  107,445  340,670  23.98%  76.02%
SBOE6  392,514  355,217  52.49%  47.51%
SBOE8  221,860  166,900  57.07%  42.93%
				
SD04    56,609   23,176  70.95%  29.05%
SD06    57,800  120,402  32.44%  67.56%
SD07   239,113  175,071  57.73%  42.27%
SD11    78,483   47,818  62.14%  37.86%
SD13    38,419  161,433  19.22%  80.78%
SD15   115,389  197,276  36.90%  63.10%
SD17   120,576  125,566  48.99%  51.01%
SD18    15,430   12,046  56.16%  43.84%


Dist     Yeary  Clinton  Yeary%Clinton%
=======================================
SBOE4  107,727  339,999  24.06%  75.94%
SBOE6  387,309  359,489  51.86%  48.14%
SBOE8  221,725  166,780  57.07%  42.93%
				
SD04    56,405   23,323  70.75%  29.25%
SD06    58,285  119,666  32.75%  67.25%
SD07   238,608  175,225  57.66%  42.34%
SD11    78,085   48,109  61.88%  38.12%
SD13    38,214  161,577  19.13%  80.87%
SD15   114,407  197,949  36.63%  63.37%
SD17   117,277  128,438  47.73%  52.27%
SD18    15,480   11,982  56.37%  43.63%


Dist    Newell    Birm  Newell%   Birm%
=======================================
SBOE4  110,449  336,329  24.72%  75.28%
SBOE6  392,944  352,514  52.71%  47.29%
SBOE8  223,453  164,440  57.61%  42.39%
				
SD04    56,669   22,936  71.19%  28.81%
SD06    59,575  117,944  33.56%  66.44%
SD07   240,463  172,769  58.19%  41.81%
SD11    78,816   47,161  62.56%  37.44%
SD13    39,166  160,126  19.65%  80.35%
SD15   116,700  195,074  37.43%  62.57%
SD17   119,849  125,464  48.86%  51.14%
SD18    15,608   11,810  56.93%  43.07%

To be clear, “Harris” refers to everything that is not the city of Houston. It includes the other cities, like Pasadena and Deer Park and so forth, as well as unincorporated Harris County. There are some municipal results in the 2020 canvass, and maybe I’ll take a closer look at them later – I generally haven’t done that for non-Houston cities in the past, but this year, we’ll see. Please note also that there are some precincts that include a piece of Houston but are not entirely Houston – the boundaries don’t coincide. Basically, I skipped precincts that had ten or fewer votes in them for the highest-turnout 2012 referendum, and added up the rest. So those values are approximate, but close enough for these purposes. I don’t have city of Houston results for most elections, but I do have them for a few. In 2008, Barack Obama got 61.0% in Houston and 39.5% in non-Houston Harris County. In 20122018, Beto reached a new height with 65.4% in Houston; that calculation was done by a reader, and unfortunately he didn’t do the corresponding total for Harris County. Joe Biden’s 64.39% fits in just ahead of Adrian Garcia in 2012, and about a point behind Beto. Not too bad.

SBOE4 is a mostly Black district primarily in Harris County with a piece in Fort Bend as well; Lawrence Allen, son of State Rep. Alma Allen and an unsuccessful candidate for HD26 in the Dem primary this year, is its incumbent. SBOE8 is a heavily Republican district with about half of its voters in Harris County and about a third in Montgomery County. It was won this year by Audrey Young over a Libertarian opponent, succeeding Barbara Cargill. Cargill was unopposed in 2016 and beat a Dem candidate in 2012 by a 71-29 margin, getting about 66% of the vote in Harris County. Like just about everywhere else, that part of the county is a lot less red than it used to be. SBOE6 was of course the focus of attention after Beto carried it in 2018. Biden fell a tad short of Beto’s mark, though Trump also fell short of Ted Cruz. No other Dem managed to win the vote there, with the range being about four to seven points for the Republicans, which does represent an improvement over 2018. Michelle Palmer lost by two points here, getting 47.38% of the vote (there was a Libertarian candidate as well; the victorious Republican got 49.76%), as the Dems won one of the three targeted, Beto-carried seats, in SBOE5. I presume the Republicans will have a plan to make the SBOE a 10-5 split in their favor again, but for now the one gain Dems made in a districted office was there.

I don’t think I’ve ever done a full accounting of State Senate districts in previous precinct analyses. Only three of the eight districts that include a piece of Harris County are entirely within Harris (SDs 06, 07, and 15; 13 extends into Fort Bend), and only SD17 is competitive. Beto and a couple of others carried SD17 in 2018 – I don’t have the full numbers for it now, but Rita Lucido won the Harris County portion of SD17 by a 49.4-48.8 margin in 2018, and every Dem except Kathy Cheng won SD17 this year, with everyone else except Gisela Triana exceeding Lucido’s total or margin or both. An awful lot of HD134 is in SD17, so this is just another illustration of HD134’s Democratic shift.

The other interesting district here is SD07, which Dan Patrick won by a 68.4-31.6 margin in 2012, and Paul Bettencourt won by a 57.8-40.3 margin in 2018. Every Dem had a smaller gap than that this year, with most of them bettering David Romero’s percentage from 2018, and Biden losing by just over ten points. It would be really interesting to see how this district trended over the next decade if we just kept the same lines as we have now, but we will get new lines, so the question becomes “do the Republicans try to shore up SD07”, and if so how? SD17 is clearly the higher priority, and while you could probably leave SD07 close to what it is now, with just a population adjustment, it doesn’t have much spare capacity. If there’s a lesson for Republicans from the 2011 redistricting experience, it’s that they have to think in ten-year terms, and that’s a very hard thing to do. We’ll see how they approach it.

Aguirre’s arraignment

Dec 21st, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

The latest update on the Aguirre/Hotze fever-dream “vote fraud” case.

An ex-Houston police officer on Friday swore he is “done” with private investigations after being arrested and charged with assaulting an air conditioning repairman he claimed was involved in a massive ballot fraud scheme.

Mark Aguirre, a former Houston Police Department captain who is now a licensed private investigator, called in to state District Judge Greg Glass’ courtroom for his first court appearance in the case. His setting originally was scheduled for Thursday but was postponed because he has COVID-19, his attorney said.

As conditions of his release on bond, Aguirre is barred from contacting the repairman, possessing firearms, or continuing to work with the Liberty Center for God and Country, which hired him to investigate voter fraud leading up to the Nov. 3 general election.

When prosecutors requested Aguirre no longer work with the right-wing group, he volunteered not to do any more investigations, period.

“No. I’m done,” he said.

Aguirre frequently works with law firms around Houston, defense attorney Terry Yates said.

Glass denied prosecutors’ requests that Aguirre be monitored by a GPS tracking device. He has one firearm that he said he would turn over to his attorney.

Aguirre was charged Tuesday with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony, and was released after posting bond on a $30,000 bail.

[…]

Yates gave a different account of what happened in an interview Friday, alleging that the incident took place after Aguirre and the repairman were involved in a “fender bender.” Yates said the repairman got out of his truck and rushed at Aguirre, prompting the confrontation.

“(The police) came out and investigated, and after they took quite a bit of time out there interviewing everybody, they gave (Aguirre) his gun back and told everybody to go their separate ways,” Yates said.

See here and here for the background. My first thought is that I’m going to need to come up with a pithy name for this saga, because the description I used in the opening of this post just won’t do. My second thought is that if Aguirre goes and does something stupid before his trial, at least he met the criteria of being able to pay a bail bondsman for his ability to be out on the street. My third thought is that defense attorney Terry Yates, and by extension Hotze, is going long on the defense here by claiming a completely alternative reality, one in which the victim in the alleged crime is actually the instigator and the defendant is the real victim. I presume there will be a heaping helping of conspiracy as part of this defense, since there was a few weeks between the event in question and the arrest of Aguirre. I wonder if Yates will have any evidence to present to back his claims about the van driver, or if he’s just going to spray a lot of countercharges and hope to confuse the jury. I have previously speculated that there may be further investigation into the payments that Hotze made to Aguirre, and so I wonder if we will see further charges down the line. Or maybe this is all there is and it will fizzle out, perhaps into a misdemeanor plea. It’s something to look forward to in 2021, at least.

Another poll about the COVID vaccine

Dec 20th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

A little better.

Texans now appear a little more likely to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus than a few months ago, according to a new survey.

The survey, conducted by the Episcopal Health Foundation, found 63 percent of people in the state say they’re likely to get the vaccine when it becomes available. The percentage was 59 in a survey the foundation released in October.

The percentage is up significantly from a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll conducted in October. It found only 42 percent of Texans said they’d get the vaccine.

The phrasing of the two surveys was different. The UT/TT survey asked if respondents would get a low-cost coronavirus vaccine if it were available; the Episcopal foundation survey asked if respondents were “very likely/unlikely” or “somewhat likely/unlikely” to get the vaccine.

Thirty-seven percent said they were “very likely” to get the vaccine in both the new poll and the one released in October. The number “somewhat likely” grew from 22 to 26 percent.

The number “very unlikely” to get the vaccine dropped from 28 to 20 percent.

See here for more on that UT/Texas Tribune poll, here for the Episcopal Health press release, and here for the poll data. I believe the number of people who want to get vaccinated will continue to rise, though there’s certainly a ceiling on it. Some of that is partisan – there’s a distinct split in this poll – and some of it is the usual anti-vaxxer BS. Overall, though, I think a combination of the desire to return to normalcy and general societal acceptance of the vaccine will get us to a decent level. There will still be the need to do outreach, and to meet people where they are on this. We can’t afford to take any chances with this.

Give Pancho Claus a hand

Dec 20th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Tis the season.

He doesn’t come the night before Christmas in a miniature sleigh with reindeer like St. Nick, but instead parades along city streets with an equally number of low-riders, often surrounded by a festive jazz band.

“To the top of the roof, the lowriders flew, with a bag full of toys, and Pancho Claus too,” Richard Reyes likes to recite when he introduces the Christmas character he brought to the Bayou City almost 40 years ago.

A Houstonian Santa unlike any other, dressed in a bright red and black zoot suit with a fedora, Pancho Claus has helped thousands of disadvantaged children to feel the joy of Christmas, bringing gifts and throwing colorful seasonal parties that their low-income parents could not afford.

Now, after decades of giving, this Latino “Papá Noel” lost financial sponsors and the support of the institution of which he was one of the founders, Talento Bilingüe de Houston, sparking a community effort to save Pancho Claus. An online fundraiser via GoFundMe.com has been established, as well as an effort to create an independent nonprofit to keep the holiday tradition alive, and other programs with children that he carries out throughout the year.

“We lost our sponsors, but we don’t blame them because the (coronavirus) pandemic is affecting everybody,” said Reyes. “I’ve always said that we have our community, and this year, our community will be our sponsor.”

[…]

Pancho Claus is now operating at the Latino Learning Center, another nonprofit east of downtown that agreed to provide temporary space to store materials and prepare gift boxes. No shows or city events are planned because of the pandemic, and instead Pancho Claus will distribute gifts in a drive-thru format. More information will be posted at www.panchoclaus.com.

See here for my last Pancho Claus update, and here for the GoFundMe link. If you’re looking for a good place to give a few bucks this holiday season, you’d do well to help Pancho Claus out.

Hotze spews some BS

Dec 18th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

That could be a perennial headline, like a pinned tweet, but here it’s for a specific purpose.

Conservative activist Steven Hotze said Wednesday he does not know if the former Houston police captain he hired to investigate voter fraud really did detain an air conditioning repairman at gunpoint and direct his associates to search the man’s truck for stolen ballots, as prosecutors alleged a day earlier.

He did not witness the predawn Oct. 19 confrontation with his own eyes, so he chalked up the felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against Mark A. Aguirre as “one man’s word against another man’s word.” The repairman’s truck contained only parts and tools, authorities said.

Hotze did not, however, apply that same skepticism in urging the public to take seriously his claims of a large-scale ballot harvesting operation perpetrated by powerful Houston Democrats that he said Aguirre and around 20 other investigators in his employ had uncovered and then foiled leading up to the Nov. 3 general election.

During a bizarre news conference that began with Hotze accusing Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg of a politically motivated prosecution and concluded with him recommending an unproven drug to ward off COVID-19, the activist alleged that Democrats had attempted to forge hundreds of thousands of mail ballots without providing evidence to support his claims.

Hotze confirmed that he paid Aguirre $266,400 to investigate voter fraud allegations through his group, Liberty Center for God and Country, including more than $211,000 the day after the Oct. 19 incident. And he called the assault charge “bogus,” questioning why Aguirre was not arrested earlier.

“Two months later? Really? … Something smells,” Hotze said.

Hotze said he would not condone Aguirre’s actions if they were proven true, but he called the inquiry from a reporter a “hypothetical.” And he said he was not worried about being legally implicated as the one funding Aguirre’s investigative work.

See here for the background, and here for an update on defendant Mark Aguirre. Challenge accepted, I hope. Nothing would please me more than to see someone slap handcuffs on Steven Hotze. An acceptable consolation prize would be for one of Houston’s fine trial attorneys to sue the bejeezus out of him on behalf of the air conditioning repairman who was threatened and terrorized by Aguirre and whatever other thugs were involved. A multi-million dollar judgment, along the lines of the cases that the SPLC won against various domestic terrorists in the past, would be a fine coda to this story.

Bike lanes for the Red Line

Dec 18th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

I approve.

The belief that Northside Houston residents will bike to buses and trains if it is safer to do so is bringing more curb work to Cavalcade, paid for out the same pot of federal money that brought the neighborhood trains.

Metropolitan Transit Authority on Nov. 19 approved the use of nearly $1.3 million left over from building the Red Line light rail extension — which opened nearly seven years ago — to add protected bike lanes to Cavalcade from Irvington to Elysian.

The upcoming work will extend bike lanes along Cavalcade from Airline to Irvington, adding about a half mile of protected lanes. Tikon Group won the contract with Metro, which includes altering the road where needed and striping for bike lanes in each direction, installing rubberized bumps — often called armadillos — to separate cyclists and motorists, and building new curbs at major bus stops.

The curbs and intentional curves force bicyclists to slow at spots where people will be standing for the bus, while making sure biking through “will not have a conflict with the buses,” said Bridgette Towns, vice president of project management and engineering at Metro.

The extension will connect bike lanes already in use along Cavalcade between Irvington and Airline to bike lanes along Hardy and Elysian that act as a major spine for cycling through Northside.

I’m a longtime proponent of combining bike capacity with transit capacity, so this makes a lot of sense to me. Fixing sidewalks is also a good way to make transit more attractive, as well as just being a general boon to the area. This work is being funded by some leftover money from the original Red Line expansion – it’s a bit of a story, read the article for the details. As we know, there’s more work coming from the 2019 bond referendum, but for obvious reasons things are taking their time getting started. There’s still other stuff in the meantime.

The real danger of unhinged conspiracy theories

Dec 17th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

Because sometimes malevolent people act them out, with potentially deadly consequences for others.

An air conditioning repairman was driving in south Houston around 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 19 when a black SUV rammed the back of his truck. When he pulled over in the darkness and got out to check if the other driver was OK, the man in the SUV drew a pistol and ordered him to the ground.

He complied. As the other driver drove a knee into his back, the repairman saw two other vehicles pull up, and feared he would be killed in what he believed was a predawn carjacking.

Instead, according to an indictment announced Tuesday by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, the incident was a brazen attempt by a former Houston police captain to secure evidence to support a far-fetched claim that prominent local Democrats had orchestrated a scheme to harvest more than 700,000 ballots leading up to the Nov. 3 election. The ex-lawman, Mark A. Aguirre, 63, faces a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon stemming from the Oct. 19 confrontation.

“He crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed,” District Attorney Kim Ogg said. “His alleged investigation was backward from the start — first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened.”

Aguirre told police they would find hundreds of thousands of ballots in the repairman’s truck. Instead they found only air conditioner parts and tools.

The Chronicle is not identifying the repairman.

Court records chronicling Aguirre’s arrest also reveal new details of an extensive investigation of alleged voter fraud funded through an organization run by conservative activist Steven Hotze and former Harris County Republican Party Chairman Jared Woodfill. Affidavits by Aguirre and others were used as evidence in several lawsuits the Republicans filed this fall challenging Texas and Harris County’s election plans.

The charging documents reveal that beyond pushing a conspiracy theory that Democrats had collected hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots, the “citizens investigation” by Aguirre and others put at least one resident in danger.

The repairman said as the man later identified as Aguirre held him at gunpoint, additional vehicles arrived at the scene. Aguirre ordered a second person to search the victim’s truck, court documents state. Other people then drove the truck to a different location.

A Houston police officer happened upon the scene, stopped and ordered Aguirre to release the repairman. After police confiscated two handguns Aguirre was carrying, he told Detective John Varela that he and others were part of a group called the Liberty Center, an affidavit by Varela states.

According to the affidavit, Aguirre said his team had been surveilling the repairman for four days, convinced he was involved in a ballot harvesting conspiracy at his mobile home. The repairman, Aguirre alleged, had about 750,000 fraudulent mail ballots which he was “using Hispanic children to sign” because the youths’ fingerprints would not appear in databases.

Varela said the victim let police search his home and truck, where Aguirre said the ballots were stored. Officers found the home was “appropriately furnished” and the truck had air conditioning tools and equipment, but neither contained any evidence of a ballot harvesting operation.

[…]

Affidavits by Aguirre and former FBI employee Charles Marler were part of a lawsuit filed this fall by conservative Houston activist Steven Hotze, who sought to prohibit voters from dropping off mail ballots in person before Election Day.

Aguirre and Marler provided sworn statements included in the lawsuit alleging that powerful Democrats in Harris County had devised a scheme to submit as many as 700,000 fraudulent mail ballots, representing nearly a third of the entire voter roll.

Citing secondhand sources and videotaped interviews, the pair alleged that several African-American businessmen and elected officials were involved, including Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, State Sen. Borris Miles and Biden campaign Texas political director Dallas Jones.

All three denied the claims. Aguirre in October hung up on a reporter seeking evidence of the allegations. Aguirre and Marler did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

There’s more, so keep reading. If the name Mark Aguirre is familiar, it’s because he was a captain with HPD who was fired for his role in the infamous bust of dozens of teenagers for alleged street racing – see here for a brief highlight of Aguirre’s role in that debacle. According to the story, Aguirre was paid over a quarter million bucks from the Hotze and Woodfill-run outfit Liberty Center for God and Country, most of which came right after the alleged assault. Hotze is of course out there in front of the media lying his ass off, because that’s who he is and what he does. I can’t help but feel the financial aspect of this, and the “I’m so shocked such a man might be accused of such things” reaction that Woodfill gave in the Chron story, means there will be more to this as the case progresses. We saw all of the lawsuits that Hotze filed against voting this election, there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t go farther than that in pursuit of his electoral fantasies. You can be sure I’ll be keeping an eye on this. TPM, the Trib, the Texas Signal, Daily Kos, and Juanita have more.

More people in Houston than you think have had COVID

Dec 17th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

About one in seven, which is an awful lot.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Nearly 1 in 7 Houstonians have been infected with the coronavirus, city officials announced Monday, the infection’s true prevalence according to a study of antibodies in blood samples taken from people at their homes.

The study, conducted by Baylor College of Medicine and the city health department, found 13.5 percent of people tested had antibodies to the virus in their blood in mid-September, about four times the number revealed through diagnostic testing at the time.

“Thank God a vaccine is on the way because without one, given these numbers, we would need five to six times the number of infections to achieve herd immunity,” said Dr. Paul Klotman, president of Baylor. “It would also mean five to six times the number of deaths.”

[…]

Dr. David Persse, the city’s health authority, said he wasn’t sure if the Houston antibody percentage “is good news or bad news.” He said “the takeaway is that the virus is more active in the community than we can otherwise tell.”

Klotman and some others said the percent of Houstonians infected was less than they had expected. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last summer said the number of people who’ve been infected is likely 10 times higher than the number of confirmed cases, and one study found New York City was about 20 percent in late April.

The Houston finding suggests about 250,000 Houstonians had been infected as of Sept. 19, the last day blood samples were collected. Only 57,000 infections had been identified by traditional viral testing at that time.

Persse said it is nearly impossible to predict what the percentage will be in January, but Klotman said he believes it has grown appreciably in the past nearly three months.

The test identifies those who previously have been infected with the virus by the presence of antibodies, proteins the immune system makes to fight infections. It is not a diagnostic test that identifies people with active disease, COVID-19.

The study was done by city health employees calling households in randomly selected Census blocks and asking for volunteers to give a blood sample for testing. Harris County launched a similar effort next month, and the city of Houston will do another round in early 2021. I’ll be very interested to see how the three compare. So far, the antibodies people get for having and recovering from COVID-19 are known to last a few months, and beyond that it’s not fully clear how susceptible such a person is. This also shows the dire need for masking and social distancing, because there have been – and are, and will be – a lot of people walking around who don’t know they’re sick. They themselves may be fine, but they could wind up infecting others who won’t be. The vaccines will be a huge help, but we’re still a long way away from that blessed day. So yeah, please keep wearing your mask and avoiding indoor gatherings. The Press has more.

Here comes the vaccine

Dec 15th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Houston’s first doses have arrived.

Months of waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine to arrive in Houston are almost — but not quite — over, as hospitals prepare to move the first doses from sealed subzero shipments and into the arms of thousands of front-line health care workers this week.

About 19,500 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine will arrive Monday at four medical centers in Texas: MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Methodist Dallas Medical Center, Wellness 360 at UT Health San Antonio and UT Health Austin’s Dell Medical School, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, which is overseeing deliveries of the first vaccine approved and shipped in the United States.

Another 75,075 doses will arrive at 19 additional sites on Tuesday, including seven in the Houston area. By midweek, 27 hospitals in the Houston region, most of them Texas Medical Center hospital system flagships or suburban campuses, will have received doses.

Officials on Sunday at some Houston hospitals compared it to waiting on an Amazon delivery: The package is confirmed, but the email with the tracking number and details hasn’t arrived. The first inoculations in Houston could happen in days, depending on when those shipments appear, said Dr. Marc Boom, president of Houston Methodist.

“If it arrives tomorrow, we will have a full day of vaccinations on Tuesday,” Boom said Sunday. “If it’s Tuesday, depending on what time, we could have some people come in. … I have people scheduled literally in five-minute slots.”

[…]

Under a tiered plan developed by public health leaders, the first vaccine doses will be given to front-line hospital workers. Later shipments will allow hospitals to administer doses to patients at high risk of contracting COVID-19 and developing serious complications, likely in January.

And after that it gets trickier. And it could get even trickier still.

Here are some basic outlines of what’s happening. As we learned last week the Trump White House skimped on actually buying enough doses of vaccine from Pfizer. But the federal government will cover the actual purchase of vaccines. The White House says the military is in charge of and has a plan to actual get the supplies to the states. And though we don’t know all the details let’s assume they have that covered. But that only appears to be getting the crates of supplies to a central staging point in each state. That’s not a negligible job. But it’s only a relatively small part of actually getting the country vaccinated. You need public health campaigns. You need staging areas and distribution from wherever the military drops it off to actual health centers and vaccination centers around each state. And finally you need a small army of medical professionals to actually administer the doses. It’s a big job and the Trump administration hasn’t funded any of that or devised any national plan.

In the absence of any federal plan or budget the CDC and HHS have cannibalized existing budgets to get some money to states for planning. But the sums are by most estimates an order of magnitude less than the amount needed.

State governments would be hard pressed to fund an operation like that during the best of times. But states and local governments around the country are already pushing massive cuts because of the dislocations caused by the pandemic. Through much of the latter part of 2020 the assumption was that this would be dealt with in a follow-up stimulus plan. But of course that never happened.

What the White House has arranged funding for is a critical but relatively small part of the vaccination effort: vaccinations for people in assisted living facilities and health care workers. Those are the two most critical populations. They should go first, and the plan is to get those people vaccinated in December and January. But that leaves the great bulk of the population unvaccinated. The plan is for that phase to end around Feb 1. Meanwhile CARES Act funding, which states can use for various purposes, has to be spent by Dec. 31.

That’s all that’s funded. It’s like a trap door set up for Biden to fall through. So as you can see, today’s excitement and anticipation over the vaccine is cued up to turn sharply to disappointment in February when people start asking where their shots are and blame the train wreck on President Biden. No plan. And no funding to implement a plan. Of course that is potentially catastrophic in human terms. But a lag in vaccination means not only more suffering and death but more delay in allowing the economy to get back on its feet, since people aren’t going to go to restaurants and participate in public life until case numbers drop dramatically.

That…would be bad. I suppose as long as there are still talks for another COVID relief bill, or if Dems win both Georgia Senate runoffs, we still have hope. But yeah, that could be a problem.

Also a problem:

The White House Coronavirus Task Force is increasingly suggesting that states including Texas begin shutting down again, saying in reports sent to state leaders this month that they aren’t doing enough to slow the worst surge in COVID cases that the country has seen.

“This surge is the most rapid increase in cases; the widest spread of intense transmission, with more than 2,000 counties in COVID red zones; and the longest duration of rapid increase, now entering its 8th week, that we have experienced,” say the reports, sent to Texas and other states on Dec. 6. “Despite the severity of this surge and the threat to hospital systems, many state and local governments are not implementing the same mitigation policies that stemmed the tide of the summer surge; that must happen now.”

Texas, the report says, “must increase mitigation to prevent ongoing community spread,” including “significant reduction in capacity or closure of public and private indoor spaces, including restaurants and bars.”

The task force’s reports over the last several weeks, meanwhile, have consistently pointed to the success of European countries — many of which have shuttered restaurants, bars and other businesses — in stemming the outbreak.

“The majority of the United States is not mitigating similarly,” Dec. 6 state report says.

You know how I feel about this. Do your best to take care of yourself, because Greg Abbott isn’t going to do anything to help you. The Trib has more.

Is Greg Abbott now an obstacle for Texas Central?

Dec 15th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
19 comments

This Texas Monthly story suggests that maybe the answer to that question is Yes.

Earlier this year, after six years of legal battles brought by property owners and local governments, the rail project finally looked to be chugging along. Texas Central, the company behind it, had purchased six hundred parcels, or 40 percent of the land needed to build the project. In May, a victory at the Corpus Christi Court of Appeals asserted the business’s status as a railroad company with the power to exercise eminent domain—meaning that it can require owners to sell portions of their land in return for a “reasonable” price—though that ruling may be appealed to the state Supreme Court. This fall, the project received approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration, and Governor Greg Abbott wrote a letter to the Japanese government, a key investor in the project, voicing his support. The potential benefits of the rail seemed manifold. It would offer travelers a ninety-minute alternative to the four-hour drive between Dallas and Houston and relieve highway congestion that’s projected to double by 2035. It would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it would create thousands of high-paying jobs at a time when Texas is suffering from both a pandemic-related recession and an oil-price bust.

“The Texas High-Speed Train will be the first truly high-speed train in Texas and the United States, connecting North Texas, Houston and the Brazos Valley in less than 90 minutes, using the safest, most accessible, most efficient and environmentally friendly mass transportation system in the world today,” Texas Central spokesperson Erin Ragsdale wrote in a statement.

Abbott’s letter, however, sparked a firestorm among some of his longtime supporters. Even before the governor expressed support for the rail project, Meier said, her circle of friends had become increasingly wary of him because they believed he was pandering to liberal interests by imposing restrictions on some businesses during the early days of the pandemic. “I was the only one I know of that was still basically supporting him,” Meier said. “If he continues to support the [train], he will not get my vote, and I will passionately spread the word.”

Four days after Abbott penned his letter, his staff walked back his support, telling the Dallas Morning News that the governor intended to reevaluate his position out of concern for Texans’ property rights and because he was provided with “incomplete” information about the project. (His initial letter had indicated the railway had already obtained all the necessary permits to proceed, but, in fact, it still needs to receive approval from the Surface Transportation Board, a federal regulatory agency.) Abbott’s office did not make clear whether staff, pro-rail lobbyists, or another party had provided the information that allegedly misled him, nor did it respond to multiple requests for an interview about why he wrote the letter and later walked it back. Texas Central also declined multiple requests for interview about Abbott’s reversal. With the loss of the governor’s support, the train’s future faces new hurdles. Texas Central now lacks a strong advocate to ward against pending anti-high-speed rail bills in the upcoming Legislative session, and the company has lost a prominent voice asking investors to keep money flowing.

See here for the background. It’s hard to know what Abbott is thinking, but what is clear is that the strongest opposition to TCR comes from rural Republicans, who are the base of the party. While I think that on a philosophical level this project likely appeals to Abbott – indeed, TCR was designed from the beginning to appeal to Republicans, with its private-enterprise, no-government-funding ethos, and with Republican stalwarts like Robert Eckels among its leadership – he is for sure aware of which way the wind is blowing, and after a summer of vitriol from the wingnut faction he’s probably wary of starting another fight. What that means in terms of the upcoming legislative session is unclear, but we already know that TCR was playing defense. They may be facing a more potent offense than originally expected.

Tarsha Jackson wins District B runoff

Dec 13th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

The long saga comes to an end.

CM-elect Jackson led early voting, and as of 9 PM was up by a 68-32 margin, about what the initial returns had. As of shortly after 9, Cynthia Bailey conceded the race. Here was a Chron story from yesterday morning that largely recapped The Story So Far, and another story that followed Bailey’s concession.

Thirteen months after the first round of voting, Houstonians in District B on Saturday finally picked their city councilperson.

Tarsha Jackson beat out Cynthia Bailey, whose 2007 felony conviction became cause for a lawsuit that stalled the runoff.

Saturday’s decision ended the long period of limbo, both for the candidates and residents of the district.

Bailey congratulated Jackson in a statement.

“I look forward to continuing to fight to solve neighborhood issues together,” Bailey said. “District B will benefit from her leadership. It’s time to get to work.”

Congratulations, Council Member-elect Tarsha Jackson. It was a long road to this point, but you have arrived.

We’re not #1, at least for now!

Dec 13th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

For the time being, probably not for very long, the most congested stretch of highway in Texas is not in Houston.

Traffic on the West Loop has always been a mess and now it has a ranking from Texas transportation experts to match: No. 2.

Loop 610 through Uptown has lost its top spot among the state’s most congested freeway segments to Interstate 35 in downtown Austin, falling to second place according to an updated list of the 100-most clogged roadways released Tuesday by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and Texas Department of Transportation.

It ends a four-year streak of the Loop between Interstate 10 and Interstate 69 being considered the worst in the state — a distinction the segment easily could reclaim as construction of the Loop 610 and I-69 interchange continues and slows traffic.

“Somebody has to win and somebody finishes second,” said David Schrank, senior research scientist at TTI one of the list’s authors. “It’s just math.”

This year, Schrank said, the math was razor-thin by TTI’s standards, using hours of delay per mile annually as the measurement. I-35 and Loop 610 were separated by fewer than 20,000 hours of delay, each topping 1.6 million total hours stuck behind the wheel.

[…]

Schrank and others have said COVID gives them a rare glimpse into what happens when commutes are curtailed and the effects that can have on traffic. In the Houston area, while some segments of highways are back to their pre-pandemic levels, others remain about 10 percent of the typical traffic volume compared to 2019.

The effect has been segments that came to a standstill for six or seven hours a day — three hours in the morning and evening — are at their worst instead for three or four hours. Traffic experts who look at telework and flexible times to travel to offices say that demonstrates their potential.

“We can potentially take those peak periods and whittle the shoulders off them,” Schrank said.

Still, in many cases congestion is always evolving, Schrank said. A few decades ago most trips into the office in Houston meant a trip from a suburban spot to a parking garage in the central business district. Now, tens of thousands of office jobs are in Uptown along Loop 610, at I-10 west of Houston in the Energy Corridor and sprouting up along the Grand Parkway and Sam Houston Tollway ringing the city.

“They might not have the truck traffic delays you see in the top 15, but those core commute routes are still on the list,” he said. “One can go up and one can go down, but they stay there.”

Yeah, don’t worry, Houston still dominates the list, even if the #1 spot is not ours, at least for now. I will just add that working from home and not contributing to any part of this problem for most of the year is something I will greatly miss when we go back to our office.

HISD Board selects a successor for Wanda Adams

Dec 11th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Meet Myrna Guidry.

Myrna Guidry

Houston ISD trustees unanimously voted Tuesday to appoint lawyer Myrna Guidry to the board seat vacated last month by Wanda Adams, who represented parts of south Houston.

Trustees considered eight applicants over two days before landing on Guidry, who has operated a private practice focusing on family and probate law for the past two decades. Guidry will fill the final 12 months of the term won by Adams, who resigned from the District IX position following her election as a justice of the peace.

In an interview following the vote, Guidry said the board’s decision left her “ecstatic and over-the-moon.” Guidry is the parent of a high school senior who grew up in HISD, and she has served as a guardian ad litem and family law mediator. She has not been involved in education advocacy prior to her appointment.

“I’m a God-fearing mother of an amazing child, with a wonderful husband, who is trying to do what I can to help the children not only in District IX, but in all of HISD,” Guidry said.

I had forgotten about this. Wanda Adams won the Democratic primary for Justice of the Peace in Precinct 7, and was unopposed in November. (You won’t find her in the election results page for November 2020 on HarrisVotes.com because of this – state law allows for unopposed candidates for county office to be declared the winner prior to November, and thus not need to be on the ballot.) Her term as HISD Trustee is up at the end of 2021, so Guidry will have to run for a full term this November, if HISD is allowed to have trustee elections. As the story notes, it is not clear what the TEA will do about that as part of the takeover, which for now is stalled in court. As for new trustee Guidry, I didn’t find a Facebook page for her, but her LinkedIn profile is here. Welcome to the Board, and I wish you all the best for as long as the Board is allowed to operate.

Rodeo makes plans for May

Dec 10th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
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I hope they’ll be able to follow through.

RodeoHouston is making big changes for 2021.

Next year’s competitions, concerts, entertainment and carnival are moving to May 4-23, pending the COVID-19 situation, to provide “a better opportunity to host the events.” The original dates were March 2 – 21.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner spoke with Rodeo officials and Dr. David Persse, the city’s chief medical officer, to finalize the move.

“Houston and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo are synonymous. It is hard to imagine one without the other,” Turner said in a statement.

The Junior Livestock and Horse Show competitions will still be held in March.

[…]

Also moving to May are the Downtown Rodeo Parade, Rodeo Run, trail ride activities, Rodeo Uncorked! Roundup & Best Bites Competition and the World’s Championship Bar-B-Que Contest.

More details will be shared by early March, along with health and safety guidelines.

That’s from the early edition story; there was a companion piece in which County Judge Lina Hidalgo expressed guarded optimism in a statement, but wouldn’t commit to anything beyond the sincere hope that this was doable. Later, everything was combined into this story, which had some more info, as well as some more skepticism that May is sufficiently far out to be a good bet.

Not so fast, said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston. She said she thinks May “might be pushing it” to ensure a safe event.

“To achieve herd immunity, the point at which the virus begins dying out, most estimates say we’ll need to have 60 percent of the population vaccinated,” Troisi said. That’s assuming most people are willing to take the vaccine.

“It’s almost impossible for everyone to be fully protected in May,” she said.

[…]

According to a Houston Chronicle investigation, local public health officials learned of the region’s first COVID-19 case on March 4, the day after performances began at RodeoHouston. But the virus was eventually traced to the BBQ cook-off, which happens the week before RodeoHouston.

If next year’s event does happen in May, expect to still see masks and to practice social distancing, said Marilyn Felkner, a public health professor at the University of Texas at Austin and retired infectious disease epidemiologist. She also anticipates a limit on ticket sales.

“The world will not be COVID-free by May of 2021,” Felkner said. “The vaccines will reduce the levels that we’re seeing, but they won’t eliminate it completely.”

She thinks food tents, where people would remove masks, will be particularly dangerous. And there’s also the carnival which, despite being outdoors, isn’t known for cleanliness.

RodeoHouston also has new leadership. [Chris] Boleman, who earned his doctorate at Texas A&M, was announced in May as the organization’s new president and CEO. He replaced Joel Cowley.

Boleman said more details will be shared by early March, along with health and safety guidelines.

As I’m sure we all remember, the Rodeo shutting down last year less than halfway through after a case of community-spread COVID was discovered was a real “oh, shit” moment from that time. Obviously, the hope here is that enough people will have been vaccinated to make this tolerably safe, though as noted still with mandatory mask-wearing. I hope so, too, but I’m not ready to think about either the food tents or the rides at this point, for all the reasons cited by Professor Felkner. I’m hopeful, but also realistic. The Mayor’s statement is here, and the Press has more.

Schools are doing a good job not spreading COVID

Dec 9th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Of great interest to me, as my kids have now returned to in person school.

As COVID-19 cases have risen dramatically in Texas and across the country, there is one place where the coronavirus seems to spread less than others: the classroom.

While Texas public school districts report about 41,000 students and 24,600 staff members testing positive since the start of the school year — equal to slightly less than 2 percent of those on campuses, according to state estimates — health experts said only a small share of those cases stem from in-classroom transmission.

In interviews this week, health officials from across the state described seeing “minimal,” “low” and “very, very little” spread in classrooms where students and staff are following safety recommendations. They attributed cases primarily to transmission occurring outside of schools, as well as during extracurricular activities, though it is difficult to pin down exactly where the virus is transmitted.

“In some of the schools we’ve observed where the kids can reliably stay six feet apart, can reliably wear masks, then the transmission rates appear to be very low,” said Maria Rivera, the co-leader of Harris County Public Health’s school advisory group. “Where we have seen in-classroom transmission become a problem is when the classrooms become crowded and it’s hard or impossible to keep the kids six feet apart, and when the masking may not be enforced.”

Let me note up front that not everyone cares for this description of the issue. Right now, a bit less than half of students are attending in person class. That can vary a lot by school district. Some risk factors that have been identified include extracurriculars, with sports being high on that list. Locker rooms and gymnasiums are risky places. There’s concern about kids coming back after Thanksgiving, especially if they traveled or celebrated with extended family – we ought to have a pretty good picture of that effect soon. On the flip side, the vaccine is coming, and teachers are hoping to be near the front of the line for it. My guess is we’re not back to in person learning as the norm till next school year, but maybe we’ll be able to do better than that. For now, as long as we can keep the kids and teachers and staff safe, that’s what matters.

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