Houston Mayor John Whitmire said he plans on tackling Houston’s challenges with a team of experts during his first State of the City address since taking office in January.
Whitmire’s aim is to share his administration’s priorities during his term.
“We have a great city, great people, but we have challenges just like all major cities do. The difference is Houston fixes its problems,” said Whitmire, facing more than 1,500 people in attendance at the Hilton Americas. “We need to do something bold for Houston.”
Moderated by William F. McKeon, president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center, the address lasted about an hour. The first half was spent in a game where photos from Whitmire’s childhood were projected on a screen. He gave the audience snippets into his life— his early memories of Hillsboro, a traumatic encounter with an armed robber who mugged his family in 1992, and his interest in public service stemming from his father’s profession as a county clerk.
“It was a huge motivation for my advocacy for public safety,” he said during the address. “You get another alarm system, you get a guard dog, you get a gun, you do everything right, but you never are the same.”
Whitmire’s take on what criminal justice can look like in Houston
It was in 1993, following the robbery, that Whitmire was appointed by Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock as the Chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, where he was vested with the responsibility of overseeing reforms to the penal code and increased construction of prisons. “I’ve never been on criminal justice, I wasn’t a defense attorney, but we had a huge problem in the state prison system of having a revolving door for lack of capacity. Crack cocaine had been introduced to the streets of our cities in the early nineties, and we couldn’t keep up with that growth.”
He thought it was a mammoth task with 60,000 inmates sleeping on county jail floors. Whitmire said it took working with “smart people, team players, and experts” to take on the expansion, soon realizing “you can’t build your way out of this rock,” and came up with a plan — “You lock up people you’re afraid of, not those that you’re mad at. We can put more police on the street, which we’re going do, but the courthouse has to process it.”
His policy on criminal justice borders on similar sentiments today of putting “very dangerous people behind bars for long periods of time” but with an approach to treating drug and alcohol addiction and providing mental health services. He also said inmates in Harris County Jail should be reintegrated into society with healthcare, apartments and jobs.
“We are gonna address the homeless issue, and we’re gonna do it successfully”: Whitmire
Houston has made strides in addressing homelessness in the last few years with minimal assistance from the state, compared to other metros like Los Angeles and New York. Coverage from the New York Times and BBC attests to this feat.
The Houston Chronicle attributes the city’s success in reducing homelessness to collaborations between the city, county, and several nonprofit organizations that began under Mayor Annise Parker’s leadership in 2011. The project, called Way Homes, channeled federal funds to housing people in apartments instead of shelters. Natural disasters in Houston also brought in relief money that former mayor Sylvester Turner also utilized to address the issue.
This is working, at least according to the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County. The coalition says the Way Home project has housed over 32,000 people since 2012, and 90% of those housed do not return to homelessness within two years.
Despite feeling “anxious” to talk about homelessness, Mayor Whitmire says he will address it successfully. Acknowledging Houston’s reputation as a city with affordable housing and permanent housing for the homeless, he says the unhoused population still sleeps across the city.
In this regard, Whitmire aims to work alongside Mike Nichols, former president and CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, and the City of Houston’s newly appointed director of the Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) and Larry Satterwhite, a former Houston Police Department assistant chief and commander who took over as police chief following Troy Finner’s retirement, whom he appointed last month to be the next director of Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security. “We’re gonna be innovative. That’s part of helping with the homeless issue,” Whitmire said in his address.
His administration plans to introduce navigation centers around the city in the next few months, and people will be “encouraged to get off the streets.”
Strategies for collaboration between state, county, city
Whitmire said he would continue his work in Austin to undo the lack of communication between the county and state, stressing the collaboration among the city’s institutions, such as Houston First, the Greater Houston Partnership, the academic community, faith-based communities, the Texas Medical Center, Port Houston, and NASA, among others.
He lauded his team’s preparedness for the recent storms that hit the city, Hurricane Beryl and the derecho, despite what he “inherited” from the previous administration, but did not address any plans to raise taxes to offset damages following Hurricane Beryl.
“It became so personal between the elected officials of different parties, they wouldn’t talk, they wouldn’t collaborate,” he said. “Houston suffered. Harvey’s recovery money didn’t come to Houston because they called each other names. I’ll work with anyone if it’s improving people’s lives.”
He mentioned Commissioners Adrian Garcia, Lesley Briones, and Tom Ramsey being “full-time partners” in multiple projects, including a new multi-service center in Memorial Park and his work with Ramsey on debris cleanup.
“We’ll deal with the finances,” he added. “I’m working through the collaboration to deal with the finances.”
During a press conference, Whitmire reassured Houstonians he is not looking to raise property taxes until he has exhausted all means to eliminate “waste duplication” and corruption. While he did not give a concrete timeline for when he would release plans for the city’s finances, the deadline to make changes is Oct. 28.
He also expressed outrage against the $80 million emergency contracts related to the water department to questionable companies.
Moreover, Whitmire discussed his plans to recruit more police officers and firefighters. In August, nearly 5,000 firefighters received money from a settlement with the City of Houston to compensate them for eight years of pay the city owed to them. The result was a settlement agreement worth $650 million in back pay and a five-year agreement with the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association that would ensure raises, better work conditions, and understaffing problems.
While Whitmire considers it a feat to bring the settlement amount to $650 million compared to earlier discussions of a higher cost, he did not address plans for repaying the $1.5 billion fire settlement.
“You can’t recruit people if they don’t know their career plan. It was always gonna be expensive,” he explained. “You cannot have a great city if you don’t have sufficient police and fire and EMS, all the things that go into the quality of life.”
The private sector
Whitmire made an open invitation to the private sector to move their offices or corporate headquarters to Houston.
Minority and women-owned businesses and public transportation
Whitmire has observed that minority and women-owned businesses (MWBEs) face challenges while receiving their certification and wishes to address the issue. Last month, the City of Houston changed its supply purchasing process to include more MWBEs, claiming it currently purchases supplies worth between $5 and $8 million. MWBE business had to purchase supplies from a prime vendor or wholesaler and sell them back to the business at a markup when they wanted to sell to the city, after which the city would purchase the goods from the prime vendor.
His agenda included items on storm recovery, public safety, water supply, and infrastructure, which is a big one.
While Whitmire said he does not agree with METRO’s decision to shelve the 25-mile University Corridor bus rapid transit (BRT) from Gulfton and Sharpstown to Northeast Houston, which would connect several universities, he echoed similar sentiments behind the reasons not to proceed with the plan.
Whitmire-appointed METRO Board Chair Elizabeth Gonzalez Brock cited financial and ridership issues as the reasons to pause the $2.28 billion project.
“The ridership won’t support it. We want to build things that people use. By the time you built the university line, it would be outdated. And nobody’s riding metro partly because of public safety,” Whitmire told the Defender during the press conference, expressing concerns about public safety and cleanliness when it comes to public transportation.
During the address, Whitmire stressed his love for work, challenges, and collaboration and promised to work hard for the city, especially for his grandchildren.
“I look forward to going to work. I’ve never worked harder in my life,” he said. “If we work together, and I’m prepared to give you eight years, some of the best years left in my life.”
