After the media heavily publicized the pool closures, the mayor decided to take personal charge of the snafu and began looking into what he termed "a scheduling problem" with the rehab work. He also appointed agenda director Dan Jones as his "pools point man" and spent an afternoon getting up to speed on the closures.
His research, the mayor explained, revealed that the scheduling problem was really a maintenance problem created by the decades-long neglect of the city's older swimming pools. In fact, opined Lanier, the city for the most part had stopped building new pools in the 1950s, perhaps because integration had made them less desirable from the city fathers' and mothers' point of view.
That was a point nobody else in the room cared to expand upon.
After digressing to describe his own problems with an aging swimming pool at his former residence in River Oaks, Lanier told the parks minions they had "pools operating at a level that would be shut down at an apartment complex -- or like the one in my back yard."
Lanier then turned to Bill Surber, the appropriately sun-and-chlorine-bleached director of city pools. Surber seemed somewhat dazed to find his small corner of the municipal world suddenly under the microscope of Lanier's temporary focus. He fervently agreed with Lanier that the closed pools desperately needed renovation. The mayor asked Surber whether pool hours could be expanded, and when Surber observed that such a move would cost more money for salaries, Lanier waved the concern away with assurances that he could find the cash.
"We got a big capital investment in these pools," Lanier lectured the assemblage. "It's like a store -- you gotta keep a store open to sell enough merchandise to get a good return."
The mayor then proclaimed his intention to get Council approval of a Pools to Standard program before he leaves office at the end of the year. Like his proposals to have his Neighborhoods to Standard program written into the city charter and to guarantee the Metro funds transfer for the next decade, it was another sign that Lanier is determined to have the city on automatic pilot before he leaves office. Maybe we won't even need a mayor or Council after that.
As the group filed out with its marching orders, Lanier was positively beaming. "Now this is fun," he enthused.
So much fun you wonder what he's going to do with himself when it all comes to a end on January 2.
Racetrack Change
Last week's item ["Free Money at the Track"] concerning the potential collection of an additional city admission fee from the Sam Houston Race Park was a bit behind the curve. After securing both a Houston City Council resolution and similar declarations by 24 of 37 Harris County municipalities as mandated by state law, city finance and administration director Richard Lewis wrote county officials on June 18 asking them to begin collecting a 15 cents per customer assessment from Sam Houston Race Park, which would be divvied up among the county's municipalities. The county already collects a similar fee for itself.
According to county budget officer Dick Raycraft, the authorization for the city fee is currently being processed by the county auditor's office and will likely be voted on by Commissioners Court in several weeks. No opposition is expected, so the city will soon be getting an estimated $44,000 annually from the track as its share of the haul. That's after missing out on three years of income it could have enjoyed had the action been taken earlier. But hey, what would we have done with $132,000, anyway?
Call The Insider at 624-1483 or 624-1496 (fax), or e-mail him at Insider@houston-press.com.
