Controller Hollins says no. Mayor Whitmire seems likely to go ahead anyway. Houston Controller Chris Hollins has warned Mayor John Whitmire’s administration about potential financial challenges the city could face if it were to appeal a state appellate court ruling requiring the city to put hundreds of millions more dollars toward street and drainage projects. The yearslong lawsuit started after engineers who helped create a charter amendment affecting how Houston funded street and drainage projects sued the city, arguing that the way officials were calculating funding projects under the amen ..read more

Hoping for the best. Beryl is on the cusp of regaining hurricane status this evening as it lumbers its way north northwest through the western Gulf of Mexico. At this point, it’s mostly a waiting game as the outer bands of the core are almost ashore near Matagorda. Beryl has thrown many curve balls at us during its life cycle, and the one curve tonight is whether or not its inner core has completely shed the dry air it took in yesterday off Mexico. Satellite imagery suggests it has not shed this dry air, and that may be what has kept Beryl from looking like it’s ready to take off today. The ..read more

HISD is presumably going to spend some amount of money to get its bond passed. It has already spent some money putting the bond package together. Houston ISD has spent at least $700,000 developing and promoting its $4.4 school bond proposal that it plans to put on the ballot in November, according to district records. HISD said in a statement that it has paid at least three different firms between February and April to “research, explore and engage the community on the need for a potential bond,” which includes conducting a facilities assessment, holding focus groups and meetings, developing ..read more

“Gotta bring back the bootleg DVD man. This shit ain’t right.” “If that sounds like the narcissism of small differences exemplified in the classic Emo Phillips joke — “I said ‘Die heretic!’ and I pushed him off the bridge!” — that’s because that’s exactly what it is and exactly how it still functions today.” “If you are opposed to abortion, you should be opposed to the practice of IVF.” HBO >> MAX. I know, I’m as shocked as you are. RIP, Orlando Cepeda, MLB Hall of Fame outfielder mostly for the Giants and Cardinals. I only saw this after last week’s roundup was published or it would hav ..read more

From Space City Weather: In brief: Although we cannot be certain at this time, it increasingly looks as though Tropical Storm Beryl is on track to make landfall somewhere between Corpus Christi and Matagorda Bay on Monday. For the greater Houston area this will result in higher winds, some storm surge, and heavy rainfall, with the greatest impacts likely on Monday. This post goes into what to tentatively expect, and when. There is understandably a lot of consternation about the forecast for Beryl, which shifted considerably northward during the last day or two toward Houston. However, overni ..read more

Don’t we all. Houston ISD should provide more communication and transparency around its $4.4 billion school bond proposal, including plans for pre-K expansion and co-locations of several campuses, before a potential vote in November, according to a recent advisory committee report. After conducting community meetings and surveys in June, the district’s 28-member Community Advisory Committee shared a report with the appointed Board of Managers last week outlining more than 20 recommendations that address “challenges, opportunities, and questions” with the largest proposed bond in Texas histor ..read more

This actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. With thousands of hours of body camera footage and non-emergency calls and not enough staff to tackle it all, Harris County Sheriff’s officials are thinking of turning to artificial intelligence to handle some of the load. Officials with the office named finding ways they might use AI as one of their chief goals for 2024, becoming one of the agencies on the forefront of the technology in law enforcement. But while some agencies are turning to technology like facial recognition software, administrators at the sheriff’s office said they see the big ..read more

I sure hope the opposition to this gets all the support it needs. Amarillo residents will vote on a so-called abortion travel ban in November, one of the few times Texas voters will have a say on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Supporters of the measure, who gathered 6,300 verified signatures to petition for approval of the ordinance, submitted their request to city officials to have it placed on the Nov. 5 ballot after the Amarillo City Council rejected it last month, per local rules. Amarillo Mayor Cole Stanley confirmed reports about the committee requesting to add the ..read more

Okay. A misdemeanor assault case that led to the suspension of a Harris County felony judge was dismissed Wednesday by Galveston County prosecutors, court records show. Prosecutors contend probable cause exists against 228th District Court Judge Frank Aguilar, who was accused of assaulting his girlfriend at his Galveston property, but there was “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” according to their motion to dismiss. A judge signed off on the dismissal. Aguilar’s defense attorney, Mark Diaz, declined to comment on the dismissal. Aguilar could not be reached for commen ..read more

This doesn’t really add much to what we had before, but I figured a little low-stakes story about something good was a thing we could use. 11th Street in the Houston Heights area became safer for everyone, including drivers, after traffic-calming measures and protected bike lanes were installed, according to a Houston Public Works (HPW) study published by Axios. “I’d say it’s not surprising,” said Nicholas Ferenchak, an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at the University of New Mexico. “We did a study of bus rapid transit system in Albuquerque … and we’r ..read more