Category: Galveston

Remember the Supreme Court Decision of “Kelo vs New London“?

Washington, D.C.— Today, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow to home and small business owners throughout the country by allowing the government to use eminent domain to take homes so that businesses can make more money off that land and possibly pay more taxes as a result.

New London Claimed that condemning the property was part of a larger scaled project called the Fort Trumble Project would serve the common good because the development project would bring lots of money to the community and into the city coffers. Things didn’t quite work out as claimed.

Meanwhile, in New London, the Fort Trumbull project has been a dismal failure.  After spending close to 80 million in taxpayer money, there has been no new construction whatsoever and the neighborhood is now a barren field.  In 2009, Pfizer, the lynchpin of the disastrous economic development plan,announced that it was leaving New London for good, just as its tax breaks are set to expire.

$80 Million later the weed infested lots have been put to use:

As regular readers of this blog know, the redevelopment project that gave rise to the wretched U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London, never came about. In spite of the city’s boasting about the quality of its plans, nothing was ever built on the Fort Trumbull site from which the city displaced an entire unoffending, well maintained lower middle-class neighborhood. Though the formal taking took place in 2000 and the U.S. Supreme Court gave its approval to it in 2005, the city’s project has been a failure, with 91 acres of waterfront property sitting there empty and overgrown by weeds.

Now, we learn from the local newspaper, The Day, that following the hurricane Irene, the city has designated the Fort Trumbull redevelopment site as a place to dump vegetation debris. For a video of locals dumping that stuff on the site, click here.

Closer to there was a similar case in Bayport, Texas with similar results. Where a hyphenated Judge screwed a landowner.  They invested millions of  taxpayer dollars into a never used cruise terminally  yet we continue to pay security and maintenance fees for a facility that will likely never be used.   At least Fort Trumble is serving some purpose today, The Cruise terminal just sits there.

Galveston is caught in a juncture of rebuilding and building for the future. City Council  fired the popular City administrator Steve LeBlanc over his supposedly lack of vision. While the voters thought that vision was what  the mayor and city council were supposed to provide and that the city administrator was to impliment.  Maybe it is because the vision isn’t all that great?   Apparently the beloved leaders think we need growth:

Hurricane Ike bit into the island city’s population in 2008, knocking it from 57,000 to about 48,000.

“Our population is going to recover from a bottomed-out low point,” Mayor Joe Jaworski said. He wants to restore the population to 50,000 in one to two years. “My sweet spot is to get it up to 75,000,” he said.

I think they need to explain to us why growth is in the voters interest.  Is more traffic, and drains strains on  our small islands sewage and water resources going to benefit the voter taxpayer and home owner.   Personally, I find Galveston more livable after the Ike than it was before. Its cleaner with less traffic, with seemingly less crimes and fewer panhandlers. Its becoming apparent that the city wants to represent the people who are not here yet rather than the voters who already exist.

The idea, echoed by others in the community, is to capitalize on the layout of the historic neighborhoods, historic downtown and seashore by making the city greener and pedestrian- and bike-friendly.

Jaworski says people are leaving the island for three reasons: a misperception that the schools are poor, the shortage of affordable, attractive housing, and a sense that the city lacks cleanliness and safety.

No Joe, you have it all wrong! They are leaving because of the threat of hurricanes and the extremely high cost of wind and flood insurance.  While any efforts to improve the quality of lifestyle for us existing residents is much appreciated, Any efforts by the city should be done improve things for those who live here, but not to encourage growth.  If we do certain things to improve the lifestyles, growth will likely happen. An unfortunate side effect of an otherwise good thing. Population growth just for the sake of population growth is against the residents best interest. If we wanted to live in a big bigger city  Houston would be most accommodating .  We aren’t League City or Clear Lake City and we don’t want to be.

There is currently a recall petition to get rid of Joe Jaworski and some of his coherts in the City Council, Probably not a good idea.

By contrast, the people who are organizing the drive to recall Jaworski do not seem to have a vision for Galveston’s future — at least not one that most islanders can rally to.

Bill Quiroga, who is heading the drive, has offered himself as a candidate for office before. When he ran for mayor in 2010, outlining his vision for Galveston, he received 2 percent of the vote.

We as a city voted for Joe, and really want him to succeed in leading us into the future, but he needs to understand what is best for the voter and residents isn’t always what is best for developers and real estate agencies



Craig Eiland is fighting tort reform, and is doing a bang up job representing trial lawyers, not so sure how well he is doing representing Galveston and Chambers County.

There has been a lot of talk about gambling in Texas, and some folks think that because of the budget crunch and the state Legislators stubbornness on not increasing taxes that legalized gambling would be a source of income that would make every one happy.  `tain’t so.  While the house committee forwarded a bill.

A Texas House committee surprised the casino lobby Friday night when it voted out legislation that would allow video lottery terminals — slot machines — at state racetracks and Indian reservations. The casinos were left behind.

Casino interests wanted any legislation approved by the House Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee to also allow destination casinos in major cities and on the state’s barrier islands.

They want to allow gambling at the horse tracks, but not allow real resort type casinos to be built in the big cities and barrier islands. The bills have split their support, between the the track owners and the casino developers. and have far to go before the Memorial day deadline.

While some folks have pined their hopes on gambling being an answer to this budgets crunch. Money wouldn’t come into the state coffers at least until 2013.  The legislators would have a hard time seeing that far into the future.