{"id":459623,"date":"2025-12-20T08:17:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T08:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/459623\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T08:17:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T08:17:27","slug":"houston-city-council-delays-decision-on-30m-abandoned-building-demolition-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/459623\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston City Council delays decision on $30M abandoned building demolition project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOn Dec. 17, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstontx.gov\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Houston City Council<\/a> opted to postpone a decision on whether to use $30 million of the city\u2019s Storm Water Fund to demolish dilapidated buildings throughout the city.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The overview<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The $30 million <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicworks.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Houston Public Works<\/a> projects would impact \u201cdangerous buildings throughout the city,\u201d and include assessing buildings, getting rid of asbestos, removing hazardous materials and demolishing structures, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/houstontx.primegov.com\/Portal\/Meeting?meetingTemplateId=515\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dec. 17 meeting documents<\/a>. City Council considered three contracts with firms for the projects before pushing the decision to a future meeting.<\/p>\n<p>According to a document sent to Community Impact by City Secretary Mary Benton on Dec. 17, each Houston City Council district has at least one building included in the work recommended by Houston Public Works. However, 86% of the buildings are located in districts B, D, I and H with the totals being:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>112 buildings in District B<\/li>\n<li>86 buildings in District D<\/li>\n<li>50 buildings in District I<\/li>\n<li>48 buildings in District H<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/houstontx.new.swagit.com\/videos\/364821\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">During the meeting<\/a>, multiple Houston City Council members expressed concern about whether Storm Water Funds could be used to demolish buildings. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstontx.gov\/controller\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">city\u2019s controller<\/a> also advised city council not to use those funds for the project, council member Edward Pollard said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know that the Storm Water Fund has very specific purposes for what it can be used for: primarily maintaining our drainage system,\u201d Pollard said. \u201cSo the question becomes &#8230; \u2018Why are we using $30 million from the Storm Water Fund for the demolition of [buildings]?\u2019 I think that this sets bad precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Illegal dumping at the selected buildings is clogging up the city\u2019s storm and drainage systems, and therefore should be funded by Storm Water Fund dollars, Houston Public Works Director Randy Macchi said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you go throughout the districts, you find that most of that trash somehow ends up in our open ditches and then later on in the storm systems themselves. &#8230; What we intend to do here is ensure that when we are using this particular contract, that there is a direct nexus into our storm water system,\u201d Macchi said.<\/p>\n<p>City Attorney Arturo G. Michel said he believed using the $30 million from the Storm Water Fund for the proposed projects would be legal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mapping it out<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A map of the identified buildings as part of the $30 million project was not available as of press time Dec. 19, Benton said via email.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Dec. 17, Houston City Council opted to postpone a decision on whether to use $30 million of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":459624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[209931,209935,209932,209930,203493,4345,51079,46180,209933,209934,209936,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-459623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-abandoned-buildings-houston","9":"tag-arturo-g-michel","10":"tag-building-demolition-houston","11":"tag-dilapidated-buildings-houston","12":"tag-edward-pollard","13":"tag-houston","14":"tag-houston-city-council","15":"tag-houston-public-works","16":"tag-houston-public-works-project","17":"tag-houston-storm-water-fund","18":"tag-randy-macchi","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115750911671001091","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}