Now that Turner has had some time to hone his talking points, it is becoming increasingly clear why he wasn't willing to talk specifics on the campaign trail. While Turner spent most of the campaign speaking of loving one another and being the Mayor for all of Houston, what he was really planning for is a city of haves and have nots. His goal isn't to bring people together but to continue to divide them along socio-economic lines, and to do so by wielding the City's tax collection and expenditure sticks to punish those who aren't following the wishes of the ruling class, and awarding those who do.
Houston Mayor Turner to Texas DOT: Wider roads mean more traffic. Eric Jaffe, CityLab
Turner ran on a transportation platform that says all the right things about improving urban mobility via travel alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles. His position emphasizes road maintenance without any mention of expansion and favors new public transit options, the Houston-Dallas high-speed rail plan, and the reconstruction of Interstate 45—an elevated highway that cuts through the city.
Turner's full essay can be found here. In it, he proposes an overall decrease in highway spending in the Houston region, instead focusing on inner-city infrastructure projects, such as light-rail and street-cars, which do allow the relatively affluent to reach their play destinations more rapidly and add to the gentrification of neighborhoods, but do little to actually increase citywide mobility.
In fact, even the metrics that Turner uses in his attempt to denigrate the I-10 expansion are incomplete and basically worthless. If you focus solely on travel time, and fail to take into consideration population growth and the increase in the region of overall vehicle traffic, then you are willfully skewing toward the negative the true impact of the I-10 expansion.
If you assume, as Turner and the unproductive class at the former Gulf Coast Institute do, that growth minus the freeway expansion would not happen, then the supposed reasoning behind the increase in commute times make sense. However, knowing what we know about the economy, migration patterns and even the results in other cities (Austin, for example) it is pretty safe to say that the I-10 expansion didn't add to Houston's expansion-related traffic woes, it mitigated the worst effects of them. Without the expansion Houston would be looking at a Hellscape of a commute on the West side. Commute times of 2 1/2 to 3 hours would be the norm, rather than the exception.
Why then, would Turner WANT Houstonians to suffer?
To be honest, he probably doesn't really know the answer to that.
Drop in Property Values Gives City Bigger Fiscal Headache. Mike Morris, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
Turner at Wednesday's council meeting lashed out at what he said is an "inherently unfair" system that rewards commercial property owners who hire lawyers to argue their properties are worth less than county officials contend.
That hands a higher share of the tax burden to individual homeowners who lack the same means to fight, the mayor said.
"They're doing it each and every year. When they're not successful at the appraisal districts, they go to court for relief," Turner said. "The reality is, that $16 million is a real hit to the city's budget."
The hit is particularly harmful, Dowe said, because the city is operating under a cap on property tax collections that voters imposed a decade ago.
It's important to realize that groups such as the Former Gulf Coast Institute look around Houston currently and see way too many people that can get around way too easily to partake in activities of which they don't approve.
The long-term vision of the unproductive class is a much smaller Houston that has rid itself of the oil & gas industry (and other industries that aren't viewed as "cool") with a very high tax rate and very few services to the poor and infirm. Most spending will go to baubles and trinkets such as botanic gardens, expensive, taxpayer subsidized downtown retail and entertainment districts, sports stadiums, parklets, green spaces, polka-dotted bike lanes or anything else that is viewed as possessing the sheen of world classiness.
The poor? The ultimate vision is to shuttle them out to the suburbs where services are mainly reliant on the County and entrance into the city core is difficult at best. Roads in and out will be stripped of maintenance funding and public transit will not be designed to serve them. Of course, by the "poor" we don't mean ALL the poor. Starving artists and the like are welcome to stay. By "Poor" we really mean the working poor. People who work at McDonalds or Wal-Mart or retail. Proponents of New Urbanism are very keen on them being around so that they can sneer at them, they will even give lip-service to a "living wage" (which really isn't, if you understand economics and finance), but they don't want them living around them or too many of them riding in their trains. You already see things moving in that direction, except that the State is currently refusing to play along.
Another problem is business. Or, in reality, a lack of it. Already Houston is beginning to see large companies such as Exxon and Schlumberger announce or begin to execute plans to move offices outside of Houston City Limits. The City's move to increase taxes on businesses will only exacerbate this trend. It's telling that in order to induce grocery stores inside many parts of the City property tax exemptions need to be granted.
And why is this? Critics will suggest that so-called "food deserts" are created by residents in the area being poor. A more realistic analysis suggests that these grocery-free zones are more a hybrid creation of economic condition and anti-business municipal policy. With a apologies to Princess Leia: "The more you tighten your grip Mayor Turner the more businesses will slip through your fingers." Those businesses that are not deemed worthy of largesse are increasingly slipping out to the suburbs, municipalities that are more than happy to accept them, and their jobs and sales taxes, into the fold.
When you start to add up the total cost of all of the items above, and include a few more that haven't been revealed yet, what you start to see is a version of Houston 2.0 as Houston Diminished.
As taxes rise more and more people will look for refuge outside of the city limits and businesses will follow. Those who cannot, or will not, move or relocate will be stuck holding on to an ever-larger piece of an ever-expanding funding pie. Currently, Houston is tenuously holding on to the title of "Energy Capitol of the World" a title that it seems increasingly intent on abdicating. Should the oil and gas industry decide that Houston no longer wishes to entertain their business the New Urbanists at the New Gulf Coast Institute might finally get their wish.
The growing Houston, currently the 4th largest city in America but soon to be the 3rd, will be a thing of the past. In it's place will be a massive retraction. From vibrant to decaying is a shockingly short trip for a city, just ask Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago et al.
Now that he's been elected to his long-time dream job as Mayor, Sylvester Turner is finally free to let us know what he really wants.
Turner's vision for Houston is a hot, humid, congested, high-unemployment, high-tax city with a burdensome regulatory environment and a population of somewhere around a Million people that is not only more segregated than it currently is, but which has greater barriers of entry for the poor.
But hey, at least those that remain are going to LOVE each other right?
Good Night and Good Luck Houston. It's been a fun ride.
