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Saturday, September 12, 2015 • Vol. 60 • No. 45
Public safety, infrastructure hot topics in City Council District C race By Jonathan Garris jgarris@theleadernews.com
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Roads and safety appear to be focal points in this year’s race for the District C seat on Houston City Council. Incumbent Ellen Cohen will be facing competition in an already crowded field of candidates for various positions in this year’s elections, running against candidates Carl Jarvis and Michael McDonald. McDonald, an Iraq War veteran and precinct chair in Precinct 663, believes Cohen’s current approach towards crime and other issues facing the north side of the district around The Leader area, in particular communities and businesses around Antoine Drive, appears to be “out of touch.” One of
Cohen
McDonald
McDonald’s focuses will be vying for better funding and tools for local law enforcement. “I was talking with some of our area detectives and apparently there is a growing trend of harassment,” McDonald said. “Harassment is a small
Jarvis
step away from becoming an assault and battery or worse, and the problem is we really don’t have a department to handle that. It gets assigned to detectives in homicide but with the way crime is in the city, it’s easy to guess which cases they’ll handle with the
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By Betsy Denson betsy@theleadernews.com Thomas Val lives close to Stevens Elementary and has noticed a change in the afternoon pickup atmosphere over the past two to three years as the car lines have gotten longer and the patience of those who want to bypass the school zone have gotten shorter. “I’ve seen people driving on the wrong side of the road and even driving down the sidewalk,” said Val, who notes that the pick-up line often extends back to 43rd Street which is technically out of the school zone. “I saw a brand new Mercedes doing it. It really got me. Males and females both, it doesn’t matter. Everybody’s doing it.” And then there are the less dangerous, but still prohibited behaviors, like blocking driveways and streets perpendicular to Rosslyn so that buses can’t go in or go out. “The first week I saw a lot of arguments,” said Val, who called HPD about the unsafe driving behaviors he witnessed. “They came an hour after everything died down so there was nothing to do. It has gotten a little better since [the first week].”
The Scarborough Spartans had much to celebrate last weekend as the high school’s varsity football program finally broke its winless drought with a victory over KIPP Sunnyside, Sept. 4, by a score of 18-14. The win ends the football program’s losing streak since 2009.
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ALTERATIONS: Reasonable. Pick up and delivery. Charlotte, 713-694-0003.
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Hitting the right notes with Learn Local Learn Local helped raise $10,000 worth of new instruments and repairs for Hogg Middle School’s Razorback Band.
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The INDEX. Church
6A
Classifieds
4B
Coupons
5A
Food/Drink/Art Obituaries
7A 4A
Opinion
3A
Public Information Puzzles Sports
2A 4A 7B
See Election, P. 4A
School zone safety at local schools has many parents on alert
Scarborough breaks its streak
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most necessity.” McDonald also said that the area’s infrastructure is “falling apart,” and although there is much work being done around areas like Holcombe Boulevard and Westheimer, the northern side of the district isn’t receiving the same attention. He would like to take an approach which he argues would be better balanced for all areas of the city, inside and outside of the district. “The ReBuild Houston program has been pretty good but the problem is a lot of money is being spent on the west side of the city versus the east side,” McDonald said. “It’s not in our district but we should still care as we need equally good infrastructure to be able
See School Zones, P. 8A Photos by Betsy Denson Anne Letzerich and her dog Grits investigate the hole in her yard. Residents have been left looking for answers on their own after work on the Oak Forest Stormwater Drainage Project came to a screeching halt in recent weeks, leaving open holes, blocked fire hydrants and other issues Oak Forest residents say create safety issues for their community.
Safety concerns arise as drainage project comes to a halt
Residents don blue to support law enforcement
By Betsy Denson betsy@theleadernews.com
By Jonathan Garris jgarris@theleadernews.com
Carol Obenhaus has been a student of the ReBuild Houston Oak Forest Storm Water Drainage Improvement project from the beginning. Now, she as well as other area residents are just waiting out the end – despite the fact that they say specific details of just when that will be have been hard to come by from the city. As The Leader reported earlier this summer, the project consists of the removal and replacement of inlets from West 43rd Street to Bethlehem Street and from Rosslyn Road to Oak Forest Drive. According to a statement from the Public Works and Engineering Department, the contractor for this project is P2MG, LLC. An August date was given for completion. However, residents say the work has now stopped and the holes that had been dug were covered with metal plates, boards or marked off with barrels and caution tape. Concrete pipes were left on the side of the road near the intersection of Bethlehem and Rosslyn. Area residents say calls to 3-1-1 didn’t yield satisfactory answers about exactly why the work had stopped or when it would begin again. “I have talked to many neighbors who are upset by this and want to see the project completed,” said Obenhaus. “They are frustrated that we have not gotten results going through the usual channels.” Resident Anne Letzerich said that the crew was very friendly but that they “just disappeared” about a month ago. Obenhaus remembers that the bulldozers first showed up the Friday before the Memorial Day floods and ripped out the old drains at the end of Viking and Rosslyn. “The crews showed up for a while and appeared to have put in the new drainage pipes but about a month ago all work stopped,” she said. “We are left with deep gaping holes on both sides of Rosslyn at Viking and the concrete work that was done is incomplete so that we now have an apparently permanent and unintentional speed bump at several streets along Rosslyn between 43rd and Bethlehem.”
To further add to the confusion, Obenhaus and her neighbors got a door flyer about the project stating that sidewalks were going to be added to her street in the near future. “I contacted all the people on the flyer and was finally assured, the flyers had been delivered to the wrong neighborhood and the project was the drainage improvements along Rosslyn from 43rd to Bethlehem,” Obenhaus said. Besides safety concerns about the holes, Obenhaus notes that several fire hydrants are not accessible and where the existing sidewalk was replaced – at Latexo and Rosslyn – it doesn’t appear to meet ADA standards. And as for the project providing better drainage, she is hoping for the best. “If the dip between the concrete and asphalt at the end of Latexo is fixed, I don’t know if there will be enough clearance for the water to drain,” she said. While one of Obenhaus’ neighbors said he was told the project would be wrapped up by Sept. 15, a project foreman now tells The Leader that it will be about three months be-
There is a mixture of mourning and appreciation among the blue ribbons that line homes, light poles, trees and other parts of neighborhoods across The Leader area. Like many other Houston communities, local residents have been displaying blue ribbons in their yards as part of the Blue Lives Matter movement, following the shooting of Harris County Sheriff Deputy Darren Goforth last week. Residents driving down Wakefield Drive may have noticed several blocks in particular where trees and light poles promintently feature the blue ribbons, Rosen courtesy of Evelyn Yurgensen and Elizabeth Villarreal along with many neighbors who were willing to hang the ribbons on their property. The move represents a large movement across The Leader area, in conjunction with other movements across the nation, to acknowledge their support for local law enforcement. Harris County Precinct One Constable Alan Rosen said officers are on alert as investigators still haven’t determined exactly what led Shannon
See Drainage, P. 8A
See Blue, P. 2A
It’s been a month since workers were on Rosslyn but the project foreman says the work will resume next week, weather permitting.
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