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Posted
6 minutes ago, safe sex said:

Whoa whoa whoa, not so fast, my friend. What is this, Soviet Russia?

 

Communist subterfuge disguised as pragmatism.

tenor.gif

 

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Posted

I say that knowing that it’s not a voting monolith there.  It’s just a struggle when they embrace the conservative, low tax low benefit model for their local governance but want or at least accept the socialistic model when they need help.  Although they did turn down the socialist help also, previously, when it was offered by the wrong kind of people. 

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Posted
17 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I say that knowing that it’s not a voting monolith there.  It’s just a struggle when they embrace the conservative, low tax low benefit model for their local governance but want or at least accept the socialistic model when they need help.  Although they did turn down the socialist help also, previously, when it was offered by the wrong kind of people. 

I get it, and it's frustrating as shit. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Bullshit. You shove a hose down his neck and make him, in this instance. It's a regional public safety matter, and the State should take the lead. As it stands now, the patchwork quilt of flooding mitigation has too many holes in it.

Some local governments have stepped up, but Kerr County made a conscious decision not to do so. Don't give them an option to be short-sighted and stingy fuckheads. None of the entities at any level (city, county, state) want any responsibility or accountability in this, which, ironically, makes them all fucking culpable.

State leaders have been warned about it, and planners have been requesting it from all levels of government. Likely, what will happen is that they patch up a couple of holes and call it a day until the next tragedy in 5-10 years, when another Hill Country town gets flooded.

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Posted
1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Penny wise, pound foolish. Also, the Guadalupe County guy knows things are fucked up, but like the typical DTer, he points his finger in the wrong direction.

This is pretty long, so I tried to snip it down to as bite-sized as I could. Link has full article.

Texas lawmakers largely ignored recommendations aimed at helping rural areas like Kerr County prepare for flooding

[A] ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of legislative proposals, along with interviews with lawmakers and flood experts, found that the Legislature has repeatedly failed to enact key measures that would help communities prepare for frequent flooding.

Such inaction often hits rural and economically disadvantaged communities hardest because they lack the tax base to fund major flood prevention projects and often cannot afford to produce the data they need to qualify for state and federal grants, environmental experts and lawmakers said.

Over the years, legislators have declined to pass at least three bills that would create siren or alert systems, tools experts say can be especially helpful in rural communities that lack reliable internet and cell service. A 2019 state-commissioned report estimated flood prevention needs at over $30 billion. Since then, lawmakers have allocated just $1.4 billion. And they ignored the key recommendations from the state’s 2024 flood plan that are meant to help rural areas like Kerr County, which is dubbed “Flash Flood Alley” due to its geography.

Spokespeople for Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, did not answer questions about why the plan’s recommendations were overlooked but defended the Legislature’s investment in flood mitigation as significant. They pointed to millions more spent on other prevention efforts, including flood control dam construction and maintenance, regional flood projects, and increased floodplain disclosures and drainage requirements for border counties. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick did not respond to questions.

This week, the Legislature will convene for a special session that Abbott called to address a range of priorities, including flood warning systems, natural disaster preparation and relief funding. Patrick promised that the state would purchase warning sirens for counties in flash flood zones. Similar efforts, however, have previously been rejected by the Legislature. Alongside Burrows, Patrick also announced the formation of committees on disaster preparedness and flooding and called the move “just the beginning of the Legislature looking at every aspect of this tragic event.” Burrows said the House is “ready to better fortify our state against future disasters.”

But Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, a Democrat from Richardson, near Dallas, said state lawmakers have brushed off dire flood prevention needs for decades.

“The manual was there, and we ignored it, and we've continued to ignore these recommendations,” said Rodríguez Ramos, who has served on the House Natural Resources Committee overseeing water issues for three sessions. “It’s performative to say we’re trying to do something knowing well we’re not doing enough.”

One recommendation from the 2024 flood plan would have cost the state nothing to enact. It called for granting counties the authority to levy drainage fees, including in unincorporated areas, that could fund local flood projects. Only about 150 of 1,450 Texas cities and counties have dedicated drainage fees, according to a study cited in the state assessment.

Kerr, a conservative county of 53,000 people, has struggled to gain support for projects that would raise taxes. About a week after the flooding, some residents protested when county commissioners discussed a property tax increase to help cover the costs of recovery efforts.

The inability to raise such fees is one of the biggest impediments for local governments seeking to fund flood mitigation projects, said Robert R. Puente, a Democrat and former state representative who once chaired the state committee responsible for water issues. Lawmakers’ resistance to such efforts is rooted in fiscal conservatism, said Puente, who now heads the San Antonio Water System.

“It’s mostly because of a philosophy that the leadership in Austin has right now, that under no circumstances are we going to raise taxes, and under most circumstances we’re not even going to allow local governments to have control over how they raise taxes or implement fees,” he said.

Another one of the flood plan’s recommendations called for lawmakers to allocate money for a technical assistance program to help underresourced and rural governments better manage flood prone areas, which requires implementing a slew of standards to ensure safe development in those hazardous zones. Doing this work requires local officials to collect accurate mapping that shows the risk of flooding. Passing this measure could have helped counties like Kerr with that kind of data collection, which the plan recognized is especially challenging for rural and economically disadvantaged communities.

Insufficient information impacts Texas’s ability to fully understand flood risks statewide. The water board’s plan, for example, includes roughly 600 infrastructure projects across Texas in need of completion. But its report acknowledged that antiquated or missing data meant another 3,100 assessments would be required to know whether additional projects are needed.

In the Guadalupe River region, which includes Kerr County, 65% of areas lacked adequate flood mapping. Kerrville, the county seat, was listed among the areas identified as having the “greatest known flood risks and mitigation needs.” Yet of the 19 flood needs specific to the city and county, only three were included in the state plan’s list of 600. They included requests to install backup generators in critical facilities and repair low-water crossings, which are shallow points in streets where rainwater can pool to dangerous levels.

At least 16 other priorities, including the county’s desire for an early warning flood system and potential dam or drainage system repairs, required a follow-up evaluation, according to the state plan. County officials tried to obtain grants for the early warning systems for years, to no avail.

Gonzales County, an agriculture-rich area of 20,000 people along the Guadalupe River, is among the rural communities struggling to obtain funding, said emergency management director Jimmy Harless, who is also the county’s fire marshal. The county is in desperate need of a siren system and additional gauges to measure the river’s potentially dangerous flood levels, Harless said, but doesn’t have the resources, personnel or expertise to apply for the “burdensome” state grant process.

“It is extremely frustrating for me to know that there’s money there and there’s people that care, but our state agency has become so bureaucratic that it’s just not feasible for us,” Harless said. “Our folks’ lives are more important than what some bureaucrat wants us to do.”

For years, Texas leaders have focused more on cleaning up after disasters than on preparing for them, said Jim Blackburn, a professor at Rice University specializing in environmental law and flooding issues.

“It’s no secret that the Guadalupe is prone to flash flooding. That’s been known for decades,” Blackburn said. “The state has been very negligent about kind of preparing us for, frankly, the worst storms of the future that we are seeing today because of climate change, and what’s changing is that the risks are just greater today and will be even greater tomorrow, because our storms are getting worse and worse.”

At a news conference this month, Abbott said state committees would investigate “ways to address this,” though he declined to offer specifics. When pressed by a reporter about where the blame for the lack of preparedness should fall, Abbott responded that it was “the word choice of losers.”

Let me succinctly summarize the policy analysis here, and for every single thing the Legislature does.  "Cui bono?" Who benefits?

If the answer is "billionaires, hard-right reactionaries, or evangelical religious fundamentalists," then the legislation will PASS.

If the answer is "the people at large, human beings, including ordinary, non-wealthy people," then the legislation will FAIL.

There's no real profit to be made here, other than awarding a few contracts that aren't even that large to a few big campaign donors.  No profit, then it's bad policy.  That's the Texas way.  Government is only for private enrichment, not for public good.

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Posted

Kerr co commissioners obeyed the calls from their constituents refusing to raise prop tax rates to help with the recovery costs. 

Approaching the point of fuck em out right, top to bottom, yall figure it out without MY tax money. 

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Posted
Kerr co commissioners obeyed the calls from their constituents refusing to raise prop tax rates to help with the recovery costs. 

Approaching the point of fuck em out right, top to bottom, yall figure it out without MY tax money. 

They won’t raise taxes to fix their own community.

But they expect a shitload of donations from the rest of us, and for piles of state and federal taxes (paid by the rest of us) to help.

They are approaching point “fuck ‘em” at breakneck speed.
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Posted

So they coulda had an early warning system for about $1M, right? I've been seeing/hearing several heavy military helos every day for a couple of weeks going to and from Ingram, etc. They fly right past my house. 

I wonder how much that has cost so far.

Posted
20 minutes ago, bluto said:

Kerr co commissioners obeyed the calls from their constituents refusing to raise prop tax rates to help with the recovery costs. 

Approaching the point of fuck em out right, top to bottom, yall figure it out without MY tax money. 

 

7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


They won’t raise taxes to fix their own community.

But they expect a shitload of donations from the rest of us, and for piles of state and federal taxes (paid by the rest of us) to help.

They are approaching point “fuck ‘em” at breakneck speed.

 

6 minutes ago, wood said:

So they coulda had an early warning system for about $1M, right? I've been seeing/hearing several heavy military helos every day for a couple of weeks going to and from Ingram, etc. They fly right past my house. 

I wonder how much that has cost so far.

Here’s the shitty thing about living in a fucking society: the insanity of others affects us and/or others, one way or another. In this particular case, Comfort apparently has a flood warning system to protect it, and New Braunfels has the dam at Canyon Lake. Yes, lucky them.

But fucked up shit happening -- due to negligence, slothfulness, spite, or idiocy -- tends to have downstream effects on innocent parties, regardless of whether we’re citizens, taxpayers, or just visiting places with the worst gotdam leadership in the state.

Greater good, social contract, and all that. 

Believe me. I’d prefer to let Kerr County molder at this point, but chickens come home to roost to peck all our eyes out and bingo-shit all over the place. I don’t know what else we do unless we want to just live in a Mad Max world with walls and shit around the sanctuary cities, which wouldn’t be great for commerce, going to away games, or going hiking.

"On the Road Again" would be a very different song.



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