The North Central repaving project looked good, at least on paper. Part of Mayor Bob Lanier's widely acclaimed Neighborhoods to Standard program, the job called for the overlay of tons of asphalt on more than 200 blocks of the barrios due north of downtown, at a cost of more than $2 million. With the newly renovated Moody Park as a backdrop, the North Central area would become the kind of spiffy showcase Lanier loves to create.
But when the plans filtered down to Moh'd Warrad in September 1994, he balked. A quality control engineer who's been with the city's Public Works and Engineering Department for six years, Warrad ran a computer check of the neighborhood that showed most streets in the area were not suitable candidates for the proposed roadwork. To confirm the computer analysis, he drove North Central's narrow, quiet lanes for a firsthand survey of conditions. "With the exception of a few section blocks," Warrad wrote in a report to his boss, "the rest of the streets exhibited good to excellent riding quality, with a few slightly distressed areas."
Moreover, Warrad wrote, "the majority of the streets have been overlaid recently (most likely in the past two years)."
"It is my opinion and my professional experience," he concluded, "that the [city] may invest [its] money more wisely by selecting another neighborhood."
To Warrad's superiors in the public works department's Street and Bridge Division, that wasn't enough to kill the project. Instead, they ordered that the pavement testing in the North Central area scheduled for later that week proceed as planned. The tests would be conducted by an engineering consulting firm, Terra-Mar, which would drill and analyze core samples. A decision on the overlays would depend on Terra-Mar's findings. "Should the results of this coring effort validate Mr. Warrad's opinion," wrote assistant public works director Philip Barnard, "we will not proceed with reconditioning those streets."
Three days later, Terra-Mar had the answer. "Most streets appeared in good condition, with some apparently having been overlaid within the last several years," wrote Terra-Mar's Kurt Leus. "These streets may be more suited to isolated repair and maintenance rather than rehabilitation and overlay at this time."
But the opinions of the experts obviously conflicted with other priorities. Three months after Terra-Mar's report should have closed the book on North Central, the steamrollers were busy. The city went ahead with the project; the contractor laid the final few blocks of asphalt last month.
Since Lanier assumed office, the public works department under director Jimmie Schindewolf has spent more than $4 billion to improve Houston's infrastructure: some $60 million to build sidewalks; at least $700 million for water system improvements; more than a billion dollars on the greater Houston Wastewater Program; and hundreds of millions more to repair streets, construct storm sewers, fix bridges and otherwise tighten the nuts and bolts that keep the city running. And Lanier wants to ensure that his legacy of public works continues after he leaves office in January: Next week, voters will be asked to approve a new $545-million bond issue, $350 million of which is targeted for additional public works projects.
Lanier's commitment to infrastructure sets him apart from other municipal officials around the country, who traditionally defer such costly programs in favor of quicker fixes or more glamorous fare. He's been recognized nationally for his efforts: Last June, President Clinton appointed Lanier chairman of the Rebuild America Coalition, a group of organizations working to reverse the steady decline in the country's infrastructure. And since the sizzling local economy has allowed Lanier to spend freely while raising taxes only once during his tenure, the public has embraced the improvements.
Indeed, Lanier's attention to the city's neighborhoods is generally considered the foundation of his tremendous popularity. Fixing streets and building sidewalks, after all, is what government should be doing.
But as with so many of Lanier's pets, the public works department has sacrificed sound management practices at the altar of speed. The department's chief priority -- to get all the proposed construction finished and the money spent on schedule, with a minimum of inconvenience to the contractor -- has overridden other concerns, including the quality of the finished product.
"We've got deadlines to meet," says a department engineer, "and we've got to meet those deadlines no matter what, whether the project is good or not."
Assistant public works director John Hatch, who heads the department's Street and Bridge Division, defends the emphasis on deadlines. "If you have a budget, it's incumbent [upon you] to execute that budget in accordance with the schedule you've established," Hatch says. "Once you've established a schedule, you stick to it."
Hatch argues that nothing has been sacrificed by adhering to deadlines. "I don't think the process has contributed to additional costs to the city," he says.
But a three-month Houston Press investigation found more than a few additional costs in the Street and Bridge Division, which is responsible for most of the city's street, sidewalk and other pavement projects. Though pinpointing an exact figure would take years of digging through file boxes, the amount of money wasted in the pell-mell dash to the finish line can be measured in multiple millions:
