Charles Blain - president, Urban Reform Joins Houston Morning News, July 19th, 2024

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Six, twenty three. So timehere in Houston's warning news. But it's
got a lot of art. Isgetting ready to spend twenty five million dollars
more on art because the city hasa civic Art ordinance that requires the one
point seventy five percent of the totalbudget it costs for capital improvement projects be
spent on acquiring or conserving art.Charles Blaine joins US president at Urban Reform.

(00:21):
So it's built in the city charterat this point, Charles, instead
of voting for twenty five million dollarsfor art, how about we vote to
repeal the ordinances. Let's start withthat. Well, good morning, and
I completely agree with you. Imean, it's it's truly absurd to think
that there is an ordinance requiring thisamount to be spent on art. And
the way it works is that thisone point seventy five percent is required for

(00:45):
any capital improvement project budget. Sothink you know, a new fire station
or the redevelopment of a fire stationor something like that. They got to
take that total budget and one pointseventy five percent of that has to be
spent on civic art. It isabsolutely crazy. Yeah, instead of generators
exactly I mean, you know,we heard many times throughout the course of

(01:06):
not just Hurricane Barrel, but evenbefore that when there was the flooding up
in Kingwood about the need for generatorsfor fire stations and things like that,
and you know, it's frustrating tohear. I will say that there is
a little bit of hope. Sothere is not a conservative majority on council,
so we know the conservative council membershave a hard time there. But
they did fight this effort and theywere successfully able to reduce it from twenty

(01:27):
five million to fifteen million. Sowhile it's not the biggest the biggest drop,
council member Fred Flickinger, who representsthe king Wind and clear Lake area
put forth an amendment to get themto reduce it, and he was successful
in that effort. Uh, whatis it that city council doesn't understand about
what their job is at this point? Even the liberal members, I mean,

(01:48):
clearly they see we have problems thatwe are underfunded in many different areas,
and we have a city that's fallingapart, a city whose budget is
completely out of whack. Where dothey think the money comes from? You
know, I think a lot ofthem just forget that the money comes from
us. And it was interesting watchingthe hearing on this because the vice mayor,
she's a Democrat who was selected bythe mayor, she was kind of

(02:12):
being condescending to taxpayers who came upthere to complain about this. You had
a number of people saying, wehave all these needs across the city.
We have communities that are ignored.Police, don't spend this money on art,
spend it on other things. Andthe way that she would speak to
them saying that, you know,we there are other people who have needs
to and a lot of the artistshave needs and it's up to us to
help them. It's economic development.We got to lure people to the world.

(02:36):
We're in the business of supplementing starvingartists. Now, yes we are,
And who are those artists and howare they selected? You know,
this is just more of spending moneyto your buddies, delivering it to your
buddies who help you get elected.I mean it really is, because you
know, we're not selecting that,are you and I We're not on a
panel selecting that, and we don'treally even get to pick who is on

(02:58):
the panel selecting that. But wedo have to deal with what they select,
and we see it around the cityall the time, and so it
is really frustrating, and it isusually a gift to people's buddies. I'll
say though, that another upside thata minor upside that came out of this
is that because council members, becausethe conservative council members finally realized that this
was going on, there was anotherpush again from Fred Flickeninger and another council

(03:19):
member, Julian Ramirez, to actuallybring up this ordinance for a review because
it hasn't been reviewed since it waspassed, and so they're pushing to reconsider
if we're going to actually keep doingthis, and so they're gonna need some
help on that going forward, becauseyou know, obviously they're outnumbered at council.
But I'm excited that this conversation isat least starting because it's absolutely ridiculous.
We let's keep the pressure on.Thank you, sir, appreciate it.
Charles Blaine, President at Urban Reform