Much of the focus of next month’s election has been, naturally, on candidates for major offices in Houston and across Texas, including a local race for District Attorney, and statewide elections for Governor and Lieutenant Governor.
There’s also a proposition to voters on the ballot. HJR 1, if approved, would allocate half of the general revenue currently going to the state’s Rainy Day Fund for road projects in the state. Technically, the money would be transferred to the State Highway Fund, also known as Fund 6, and then the Texas Legislature would create a procedure that would allow more than half of the money to be transferred. The funds could only be used to build and maintain non-toll roads in Texas.
We hear the arguments in favor of and against this proposal on this edition of Houston Matters. Then we talk with News 88.7 transportation reporter Gail Delaughter about what led to this proposition and to what road projects, as far as we can tell, the funds would go. We welcome your thoughts too — do roadways in need of repair constitute a “rainy day?”
Also this hour: we revisit a plan to restore a portion of Buffalo Bayou. The Memorial Park Demonstration Project is a controversial plan to eliminate vegetation and trees along the banks of a 1.5-mile stretch of Buffalo Bayou, running from the southeast corner of Memorial Park to the eastern edge of River Oaks Country Club. We examined this project back in June. Today, News 88.7’s Dave Fehling will join us to walk through what makes the plan controversial, then we talk with Steve Hupp, Water Quality Director for the Bayou Preservation Association, which supports the plan, and Susan Chadwick from Save Buffalo Bayou, which opposes it.