Sidewalk to Somewhere

What do you see? I see a sidewalk which wants to go somewhere.

This sidewalk was built for an affordable housing complex where people were promised safe access to transit. The Mayor is working hard to change the city’s rules so fewer sidewalks are built.

“The department hosted a series of community meetings in October and planned to present a proposal to the city council in December — but that never happened.”

When the city’s first try failed, after strong opposition from Houstonians, the Mayor simply issued a memo to the Planning Department to do it anyway. {Sound familiar? Houston has a strong mayor form of government - this sure seems like an executive order.)

The Mayor who famously claims to listen to the community doesn’t actually listen to the community. So he’s going to try again. Vonn Tran, the current director of the Planning Department:

"We have so many balls in the air, and so I am hoping that I can get this back up moving, and we’re looking at maybe by summer, the first week of August," department director Vonn Tran said in June. "We just got through budget and all of the reorganization — just lots of moving pieces. A part of it was we wanted to give it time. And so we’re about to circle back to it."

Worth noting that Vonn Tran has no planning expertise or credentials - she is a commercial real estate executive.

In the meantime, the Mayor’s executive order, oops memo, is working as intended: “About 100 projects paid a fee instead of constructing a sidewalk. An additional 234 received waivers "due to infeasibility or lack of nearby connectivity."“

Before the Mayor’s directive, the city published waivers granted and the reason. Houston Public Media had to file public records requests in order to get this information. The Mayor talks a lot about transparency but doesn’t practice what he preaches.

Houstonians made clear we want more sidewalks, not less. When we aren’t looking, the Mayor will “circle back” to try again to take away our sidewalks

Houston Waived More Than 230 Sidewalk Construction Requirements Since Rule Chance in September