After Beryl, residents tell Houston City Council to spend on 'life saving infrastructure,' not luxuries
HOUSTON - Angered by Houston's continuing vulnerability to life-threatening storms, residents spoke out at City Hall against spending on non-essential "luxuries", like the $25 million currently earmarked for new art.
"Basics first. No more spending on arts until everybody has trash pickup and sewage hookups that is a resident of Houston," said Tracy Shannon.
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Shannon and others relayed their grievances at Tuesday's public session.
"Beryl highlighted that the City’s infrastructure is currently not resilient. We don’t know what’s coming down the pike. This item 16 (art funding) is the epitome of fiddling while Rome is burning. The number one job of the City is to keep residents safe. Do your job. Protect the people. Invest in life-saving infrastructure," said Barbara Denson.
Meantime, eight days after Beryl made landfall, Centerpoint is still under fire for the massive power outage that followed.
FOX 26 Contributor Bill King says the multibillion-dollar power company must explain why it didn’t do more to keep trees out of the wires.
"This is largely caused by trees falling onto lines. This is not the infrastructure going down in terms of poles falling down. That’s a very small, discrete set, of the problem. I think what we have to take a look at is how well did Centerpoint do in improving vegetation management since 2008," said King, a fellow with the Baker Institute.
2008 was when Hurricane Ike hit and the chronic problem of trees hitting power lines was clearly identified in a study authored by Paul Hobby.