Update on the IH-45 construction in Clear Lake

I retweeted this, but because the link is not active in the original tweet due to a formatting issue, I thought I'd repost it here as well.  Houston Matters interviews a TxDOT spokesperson on the progress being made with respect to the IH-45 reconstruction through Clear Lake.

Clear Lake in my rear view mirror.  Of course the reason why I'm able to fool around and take artsy photos like this is that, like everyone else, I'm sitting stock still in gridlocked traffic for extended periods of time.  And with 158,000 vehicle transits per day and only three lanes in each direction, it's no wonder.  

New construction at West Walker and League City Parkway

You may have noticed this just south of the SH 96 - West Walker intersection:

Somebody is breaking ground on something.  "SWPPP" stands for (construction) storm water pollution prevention plan.  

I haven't peered intently at the SWPPP notice in order to identify the contractor and/or the owner, but I believe that this might be the beginning of the new 368-unit Watermark apartment complex that was referenced six months ago by Houston Chronicle (paywalled), reported more recently by Galveston County Daily News (paywalled), and referenced two days ago by Houston Business Journal.

I don't have more information than that speculation, in part because Galveston CAD has been plagued with technical issues for as long as I've ever used it (i.e., years).  I'll have to report more when the info becomes available.

Even when it does get updated with current real estate transactions, a lot of it doesn't run properly.  

There are a variety of errors that tend to stymie any given property research effort.  

These issues are no secret to anyone, including the CAD itself.  How many billions of dollars worth of appraised property do we have in Galveston County, and yet we can't even get a simple GIS system to run properly??  I've never seen this kind of shenanigans occur with HCAD, which is a Sherman tank of a robust website.  

The north Clear Lake wetlands

Last August when I was researching for this post which describes the HEB (originally postulated as a Central Market) to be built in north Clear Lake, I noticed something mighty peculiar.

August 2013 screengrab from Googlemaps, which I retained because I knew I'd need it one day:  Someone had drawn a very large line in the not-so-sandy sand:  Six wetland areas defined on Googlemaps.  Named.  Designated.  And with obvious intelligence, foresight, and purpose - someone knew what they were doing here.  

Googlemaps is participatory - anyone can upload any tagging information that they want, and unless it is inappropriate or challenged by others, it seems to persist.  But that fact alone doesn't necessarily make it easy to track the backstory or the instigators in a case like this, so I just left this issue alone figuring that the makers would make themselves apparent sooner or later.

I figured it might be someone connected to the existing developments, because additional wetland set-asides are evident within the older neighborhoods just south of the undeveloped area shown above.

Screengrabbed from Googlemaps.  

June 6 2014 screengrab from Googlemaps:  Hmmmm, isn't that curious??  Compare with the first screengrab shown above, the one I retained from August 2013.  Someone appears to have gone into Google and deleted the labels for the Northfork Wetlands, Clear Lake City Wetlands, and Middlebrook Wetlands.  

And so it has come to pass that the group with particular focus in this area has manifested.   Galveston County Daily News (paywalled) reports that the local special interest group Galveston Baykeeper has sued Trendmaker Homes in federal court to challenge wetlands designations in the area, with the apparent goal of restricting development (or perhaps compelling mitigation... I haven't read the full GCDN article yet because my subscription discontinued due to an online glitch).

You'll notice that they use the phrase "significant nexus" in that last line.  Ordinarily that might mean pretty much everything from a regulatory standpoint, but we are not currently living in strictly ordinary times as the following Wikipedia grab suggests.

Screengrabbed from the Galveston Baykeeper website.  

A discussion of the particulars is way, waaay beyond the scope of this blog (some would argue that it's so complicated that it's beyond the scope of any blog).  Suffice it to say that both the regulatory and the biological issues are not clear and not necessarily as settled as some might claim or hope.

Screengrabbed from Wikipedia.  

It turns out that FOX Houston had covered the beginnings of this story back in January of this year, but I don't read every single news outlet every day, and so it's easy to miss stuff like that.  As I have complained bitterly before, the League City - Friendswood - Clear Lake area with its combined population of about a quarter of a million people doesn't have its own newspaper.  At this point, we don't even have a viable blogosphere.  Mostly what we've got is a hodge-podge of about a half dozen unrelated regional commercial news outlets, none of which are particularly invested in Clear Lake (or if they are, they're not well-funded), and which may or may not cover any given issue in a systematic or predictable manner.  For crying out loud, murders happen in Clear Lake and don't even get reported because of the abysmal news coverage that characterizes our area.  

I'm digressing obviously, but the current bottom line on this court case is that it will be interesting to watch what happens here.  I myself wouldn't count any given outcome as a done deal just yet.

In this September 2013 post, I joked about owning a piece of "the original" Space Center Blvd. extension above CLC Blvd.  A $2 million grade-related construction mistake forced the developers to rip out a large section of the original paving because it was built at too low an elevation.  Many of us who lived in north Clear Lake at the time took full recreational advantage of the fact that the right of way lay abandoned for months and months, making it wonderful for biking, hiking, sports, etc.  I remember quite clearly the construction area being peppered with wetland delineation signs on either side of the faulty right-of-way.  Those signs suggested that at least some of the wetlands in that area are, in fact, jurisdictional, but I don't have any information on the extent of it.

DISCLAIMER:  As usual, this blog presents personal observations and editorializing only.  I have no personal or professional connections to either of the parties named in the litigation referenced above.  Neither am I a wetlands expert - and I wouldn't want to be, because that area of regulatory administration is too complicated, too mercurial, and too intensely politicized for my taste.  I just know from casual reading that it is unsettled and constantly evolving. 

Suburban homesteading on a subdivision scale

If I were the only one with an interest in suburban agriculture, I wouldn't blog about it so frequently.  But the fact is, it's pretty popular around here, as these aerial photo grabs indicate.

Raised vegetable beds. 

More raised vegetable beds. 

Vegetables and herbs growing thickly in the strip behind the garage, and the trees in the main back yard all produce edible fruits.  It's a small space but surprisingly productive. 

Personal orchard. 

More personal orchard flanking a fenceline. 

About half of what's growing in this yard corner is destined for the dinner table. 

Yet another personal orchard in early developmental stage. 

A cultivated side yard. 

A large raised side yard vegetable bed, fallow in this photo because the house was in the process of being sold.  The new owner plans to restore this garden. 

You may wonder how in the heck I'm able to ID all of that blurry business as actually constituting suburban ag as opposed to, say, begonias and rose bushes.  Easy - those examples are all located within the confines of Centerpointe Section 9!  And those are just the ones I know about.  There are plenty of residents whose growth habits I haven't had a chance to explore yet.  Plus there are two additional families just on our cul-de-sac who have serious plans to add backyard gardens.

So with that kind of demonstrated concentration in mind, I thought you might find this NPR story interesting and relevant to our own suburban situation:

 

Subdivision developers have begun master-planning with farm acreage built right into the design.  Think it's too specialized an idea for the average neighborhood?  Contemplate this (quoted from that story, emphasis mine): 

"The marketing of these new neighborhoods appears to be working — at least at Bucking Horse, where the developer says 200 single-family lots were snatched up within days of going on the market. Values of existing homes have jumped 25 percent since construction began on the agricultural amenities."

It doesn't surprise me.  Think about it:  If you're a subdivision developer, you could plop yet another live oak into your landscape plan, a live oak of which we already have an infinite boring number (they look nice but they add almost no incremental value).  Or you could set aside an area where the POA could put some lemons, grapefruit, figs, and other local favorites.  Which do you reckon residents would value more highly?  Even if residents are not into gardening themselves, they tend to respond positively to initiatives that are just plain interesting and different. 

I had to pull the Meyer lemons off our tree last night before the worst of the cold front hit.  I'm not sure what I'll do with them yet, but this article titled "100 things to do with a Meyer lemon" might give me some ideas. 

There are plenty of folks who are not the slightest bit interested in gardening, but there are enough of them to form a critical mass of interest.  And so we see this new trend developing. 

And in case you think that it would be too costly for a homeowner's association to maintain agricultural amenities, here's some news for you.  We have ten kids just on our one cul-de-sac who would jump for joy at the chance to participate in something like a common area garden.  They are outside playing every day, constantly looking for new things to do.

Because when you think of it, there's only so much a roving band of children can accomplish in the limited concrete environment of a cul-de-sac like this. 

I have children knocking on my door routinely asking me if I have any gardening work that they could do that day.  There's a lot of latent capacity all the way around, both in our suburban land which is not currently put to any productive or interesting use, and in our residents. 

The NPR article talks about new subdivisions being designed around these amenities, but the potential also exists for retrofit within existing subdivisions.

I've had my eye on this green wedge adjacent to our sewage lift station for years now.  Centerpointe was not built with this kind of strategy in mind and we have only a limited number of areas that would be potentially suitable for agricultural value enhancement, but this is one of them.  Right now it's just wasted space. 

Anyway, it's an idea whose time has not yet come, but that doesn't mean that it won't in the future.  It'll be interesting to see how the new ag-incorporating subdivisions continue to evolve.  

Beacon beckons

An interesting case of community action is unfolding as a special interest group called Families for the Responsible Development of Beacon Island (FRDBI) wrangles with a developer's plans to install high-density residential assets on League City's long-undeveloped "lighthouse" island. 

How it is, and how it might be: 
Googlemaps screengrab compared with the developer's concept.  You might be able to access the plans here if the paywall doesn't kick in. 

This is the kind of thing that doesn't impact Centerpointers directly, but I like watching these cases evolve because it basically "shows us how it's done".  I don't know that we'll ever need to petition regarding any development that may be proposed for our subdivision's vacant adjacent tracts, but it's nice to have a template, and it's instructive to follow the logic of what works or doesn't work in terms of dealing with the City.

FRDBI's chief concern is with the relatively high density of proposed development.  As I commented on a report in this morning's Galveston Daily News (paywalled), my immediate concern was the potential future impacts of Biggert-Waters, aka the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012.  Here we are moaning and wailing about how Biggert-Waters will catastrophically destroy real estate values in vulnerable areas, and yet at the same time, League City is entertaining a development proposal that, at first glance, puts a lot of real assets on or near grade in what appears to be a vulnerable area.  One of the most comprehensive local news reports (paywalled?) concerned the financial impacts of Biggert-Waters on the City of Nassau Bay.  Well, you could practically hit Nassau Bay with a rock from Beacon Island.  Would a lot of Beacon Island's improvements as proposed still be insurable four years from now after we get done with the delays and political obscurations surrounding Biggert-Waters?  The answer to that remains to be seen, but it's an important consideration for the viability of the development. 

Sooner or later, waterfront homeowners are going to have to pay the federal piper, and they're going to be paying a lot. 

Cute graphic screengrabbed from this site. 

More construction on West Walker

This time I don't think it's going to be anything like the gas stations and commercial warehouses we've seen closer to the intersection of League City Parkway...

It's this tract, R440733, which GalvestonCAD still has in the name of the apparent investor LC Partners LP.

Screengrabbed from GalvestonCAD.   

There appeared to be construction along the southern fenceline yesterday, and it didn't seem to be connected to the pipeline installation that is still underway in the adjacent Interurban easement.

There was an excavator...

...and a number of underground appurtenances. 

I didn't get a good look at what they were doing, but at one point it almost seemed as if they might have been installing some components for a lift station.  The work appeared to be on the vacant land side of the apartment complex fence, but again, I didn't get a good look earlier in the day when most of the action was transpiring (these two pics were taken yesterday evening).

There have been rumors circulating about a potential buyer for this property for a couple of months now.  I didn't publish any of that stuff for lack of substantiation.  If indeed this tract is now about to be developed, I guess we'll know soon enough what will be flanking Centerpointe Section 9. 

The immigrant effect

The kind of analysis I've done below either fascinates the hell out of people, or scares the hell out of them, or offends the hell out of them, depending on their personal world views.  But having watched the situation reflected by the analysis unfold in real time and in person, I fall squarely into the first category, but first let me first explain why I made these charts presented below in the first place. 

I was vetting a local contractor who has done work for someone else in this subdivision, but that contractor was not authorized to share his Centerpointe client's identity with me (I wanted to cruise by and evaluate the exterior work the contractor did on their house). 

Thinking this was relatively harmless, the contractor did mention that client's first name to me, and it was a less-common first name.  No problem with me taking it from there - I simply went to GalvestonCAD, pulled every property tax record for Centerpointe, spreadsheeted them and did an "edit,find" for that name.  I literally had the address inside of 5 minutes.  Welcome to the Information Age. 

But having gone to that trouble, I then decided to parse those CAD records semi-quantitatively to illustrate something that I already knew from direct experience: that there is a subtle but visible difference in the ethnic make-up of Section 9 relative to all the other sections of Centerpointe. 


I made these homeowner ethnicity estimates purely by evaluating the most likely derivations of each owner name, and there's no doubt a healthy degree of error in these results, which of course are not guaranteed to represent reality - these are just very quick estimates based on CAD data.   The uncertainties would derive from issues such as mixed-race households, ambiguous names, etc.

We have a higher proportion of immigrants, especially first-generation Asian immigrants, in Section 9.  The reason for this is not difficult to understand:  you had to be God to qualify for a mortgage during the time period represented by the Section 9 development.  It was insane.  The American mortgage crisis and resulting world-wide recession arguably began around September 13, 2008 - the same day as Hurricane Ike came ashore.  We pre-qualified for our mortgage less than one year later in July or August 2009.  Nobody was getting mortgages at that time unless they were utterly stainless. 

We were one of the initial dirt-sale contracts in Section 9, so I get to claim some measure of "we were here first" empirical wisdom.  I tried to go around talking with each new homeowner as their individual builds (or buys) cropped up.  It was a fascinating people-watching experience, because each and every one of them (regardless of ethnicity) had some story to tell of iron-willed personal financial discipline.  I've lived in many subdivisions over the past 20-odd years, but these new Section 9-ers were the most focused and driven group of suburbanites I've ever seen assembled in one place at one time.  The mortgage crisis was an incredibly efficient sorting mechanism for post-crisis suburban developments such as ours. 

My personal theory is that the Asian immigrant work ethic and thrift-related values gave them a slight edge in the brutal mortgage qualification process, resulting in today's higher percentage in Section 9.  Some folks will no doubt take offense to a statement like that, and I don't intend any offense.  But there is some truth to the Asian stereotype I'm referencing.  As the linked article above notes, "Reports on census data are one of the few times it is permissible to discuss immigration and race without risking accusations of prejudice. After all, the census data do not lie."  I don't have Census data on the fine scale of this subdivision, but I have what is perhaps the next best thing:  CAD data.  And they do not lie. 

For what it's worth in fascination or other impact.  This is an impact of American history still resonating and reverberating like a giant reality bell having been rung, right here on our streets.  Have a great day.    

The Centerpointe Drive - West Walker construction

As I was sitting at my desk working yesterday, my goose-neck lamp was doing a subtle version of The Hamster Dance, with the bulb fixture jiggling and jumping at the end of its flexible arm. 

No, it wasn't a random swarm of 1.0 events on the Richter Scale - it was actually this:

They were laying down a short section of board road and unloading an excavator at the intersection of Centerpointe Drive and West Walker.  All that movement of heavy equipment was vibrating the ground and making a lot of noise. 

You might first guess that this has something to do with the nearby Public Safety Building construction which is now in full swing (webcam here, if you are interested), but I don't think it does.  I think it actually has to do with the new pipeline that's being installed in the Interurban easement. 

Recall this post from (coincidentally) one year ago today.  That talked about a new pipeline that was going into the "Centerpoint" (i.e., the Interurban) easement which was initially confused by some with the "Centerpointe" easement.  They appear to be just now getting around to laying that pipe, if you'll excuse the expression.  And our right-of-way intersection at Centerpointe Drive appears as if it is being developed as one of their access points.  There are fresh markers delineating some existing lines in the easement, which suggests that this project is now proceeding.

Anyway, I'll post more info as it becomes available. 

In the meantime, enjoy those hamsters.
 

Peripheral development update

There's a troubling situation brewing down the road near our neighbors Victory Lakes, because League City allegedly approved a nearby construction project the nature of which it refuses to reveal to the public. 

Microsoft clip art, cat and mouse concept modified by yours truly. 

The rate at which League City is p*ssing people off appears to be accelerating.  GCDN reports that it has already filed a FOIA/TORA/TPIA request to obtain further information about this project. 

This is absurd.  At the very least, it reflects an abysmal public relations failure on the part of League City.  Even if there is a valid reason why they agreed to withhold the nature of that development, they need to declare their justification in the type of generalized terms which acknowledge that they are answerable to the public.  I don't know what might be considered "a valid reason", but there are a number of business contingency, strategy, and permitting scenarios that come to mind as possibly being in play here. 

But what's even more interesting about this situation is a comment logged in that GCDN article by a user who self-identifies as Texas2539, a resident of Victory Lakes, who stated that the League City Planning Department removed its zoning variance request list from the internet.

 Initially, I replied in the GCDN forum that I also could no longer find that link, but when I subsequently went back to this blog post of mine from two years ago, I actually did find a variance request list link.  I'm not sure if it's the same site that Texas2539 had been accessing, but here's what's curious about it:

There haven't been any entries in almost one year.  Given the velocity at which previous variance requests had been logged through 2011 and early 2012, is it likely that they came to a screeching halt?  Or has this list simply not been updated in the past year or so?

Screengrab from http://www.leaguecity.com/index.aspx?NID=1201 as accessed 20130315 10:55 a.m.

Texas2539's GCDN comments elude to the possibility that the extra-VL mystery development might have incorporated a zoning variance request.  No proof of that, but as homeowners in close proximity, we need to be able to confirm or deny these types of things.  Victory Lakes and Centerpointe are neighboring subdivisions which share a similar predicament: we are both surrounded by prime sale tracts in a north county area where the pace of development is now accelerating. 

Google grab from a previous post, Centerpointe in red polygon, Victory Lakes at lower right, arrows roughly pointing to tracts as yet undeveloped (that was actually a post about wildlife, so the arrows also point to stormwater retention features). 

It's in our own interests to know exactly what's going to happen to those areas, and to know in advance what kind of a "say" we might be able to have in that process, as potentially-impacted landowners.

Anyway, at this point, I guess we'll await further comment from League City, further sleuthing from GCDN, and yes, I will be passing this info on to both our POA and VL's POA. 

Get ready for some noise...

...especially if you live on the south side of Centerpointe Section 9.  They've loaded heavy equipment onto our adjacent tract, so it looks like work there will commence in earnest.  Just in time for the holidays - hah!

The scene on West Walker Street yesterday around mid-day, Harvard Pointe homes in the background. 

Galveston County population distribution

It occurred to me this morning that I'm really quite ignorant about how Galveston County's population is distributed among its various areas.  Even if I had been educated locally, which I was not, things have changed so much in the past decade or so that everything I might have learned in school would be way beyond obsolete by now.  I'm always searching for the 30,000-foot view on any given issue, such as why commercial news coverage in this area seems to be less comprehensive than it rightfully ought to be, but if I don't have a foundation of basic facts, my resulting perspectives are liable to end up partly standing on unecessarily-shaky ground.

Enter two of the most powerful ignorance-dispelling mechanisms ever invented by mankind: 

1. The computer spreadsheet.
2. The world-wide web.

And in the course of using those two power e-tools, I resolved a question that has resided as an infinitely-low priority in the back of my mind for years now: Why does the Galveston County Daily News online edition have exactly sixteen places listed under it's "Communities" tab?  (Note that there's a format change scheduled and this organizational feature may not persist into the future). 

Answer: Because those sixteen really do appear to represent about 95% of the county's entire population.  This wasn't obvious to me.  I think of Galveston County and I visualize all this open land, and I intuitively conclude that there must be a fair number of folks diffused all over the place in rural areas, old homesteads, farms, ranchettes, etc. that are geographically independent and outside of defined communities.  But that's actually not so much the case. 

Anyway, for future reference, here's what I derived using the aforementioned powerful ignorance-dispelling mechanisms.

But we must also have the picture that tells the proverbial thousand words:

Same sixteen communities listed by Galveston County Daily News, but arranged clockwise in order of descending population per the referenced data sources.  GCDN arranges them alphabetically instead (at least they did as of November 2012).  This pie chart exhibits a few rounding differences but is based on the table presented above. 

So there's my morning tea exercise for today, to stand on its own merits for future reference. 

Autobody language

Decades ago when I was just a small child, my father taught me to interpret the subtlest of signals that are emanated from the many different drivers on our public road systems.  I would marvel at how perceptive he was, and how he could almost magically anticipate what was going to happen next. 

My Dad would have seen the likes of this coming a mile away.
Photo attribution: Damnsoft 09 at en.wikipedia

I started the same training procedure with my own child when she was very young, referring to the interpretable phenomenon as "autobody language".  "You have to learn to read their autobody language," I would tell her, but she was decidedly more skeptical than I had been at her age.  "There is no such thing as 'autobody language'," she would retort, and from there, we would proceed into the inevitable "my mother is a nerd" conversation.

I would tell her that a car is just a mechanical extension of a person's body and that, just as their body reflects their underlying mood and intentions, so, too, does their car.  The effect is a bit muted by those thousands of pounds of painted steel surrounding them, but it can still be detected. 

And to drive home my point (pun intended), I would give her live examples.  "Watch what happens here next," I would say from my driver's seat.  "That guy in the red car is going to cut off the other guy in the truck."  Sure enough, it would happen.  But all she would reply was, "There is no such thing as autobody language."

Until that one precious day when I heard her muttering to herself under her breath, "Oh my God, I don't believe this... I knew exactly what that guy in the blue car was going to do, because I read his autobody language..."

Occasionally I will read someone's autobody language, but I'm not sure if the driver's implicit assessment of his own skills is commensurate with actual reality. 

Such was the case about a month ago at one of my favorite local intersections - the corner of West Walker and League City Parkway.

Do you notice how I'm hanging waaay back from that fuel truck?  In contrast to the car on the left, which is creeping up on his tail?  I was hanging back because he was driving pretty assertively - while probably carrying enough fuel to blow up a small skyscraper. 

What else do you notice about this scene?  He has straddled both lanes.  Why?  Because he needed to turn right.  But why in particular did he swing so wide in this case?

Once he executed his turn, I realized that he did, in fact, know what he was doing - his autobody confidence fit his actual skill level. 

Did you spot the special hazard here?  It's not the fuel truck - it's the utility pole that is inexplicably planted within about fourteen inches of the southbound right lane.  This trucker wanted to make especially sure that he did not clip it, because a load of combustible fuel plus electrical utility pole equals potential worst-case scenario.  Which is why I was hanging waaaay back until he finished executing his turn. 

I think the driver to the left also figured this whole thing out, albeit a few seconds after I did, because look - he didn't proceed down his lane, even though space opened up.  Best to leave the friggin' fuel truck alone!!

That particular truck driver proved to be smart and situationally-aware.  However, here is my prediction regarding this intersection:  that utility pole is eventually going to come down.  If it's left in its current position, which is impossibly close to the lane of travel, it's only a matter of time before somebody's wheels jump the curb and take it out.  There's a small electrical transformer at the top of it, but it appears to serve only the Gas Dude.  Nevertheless, when it comes down, it's going to make an unholy mess for a while, at this very busy intersection. 

If we get lucky, someone will merely damage it, without bringing it down catastrophically.  Then its owner will realize, "Oh, heck, that's in a bad place" and they will move it back from the lane. 

One of the reasons why I noticed this situation is that I used to live in north Clear Lake, where the light poles are set in crazy proximity to the travel lanes.

Clear Lake City Blvd. eastbound past Highway 3, screengrabbed from Googlemaps ground view.

WHY would any right-of-way designer put the light poles in these positions??  In this scenario, all you need is one car tire jumping the curb even slightly, and it's Game Over.  I spent seven years watching drivers knock these things over like bowling pins. 

Anyway, there's today's anecdote FWIW.  If one day you're approaching this intersection and you see a lot of flashing lights and commotion, remember - you heard it here first.
:-)

Barrier street marker down

I uttered a few expletives yesterday upon seeing this:

Centerpointe Drive at West Walker.

It's supposed to look like this: the large red and white striped barrier marker to remind drivers that Centerpointe Drive terminates here.

It could be that this came down on accident, but it's curious that it fell toward the street.  If a car had bumped it, one would think that it would have tipped over backwards.  It's also possible that Earthworks (the Centerpointe landscape maintenance contractor) knocked it over as they were mowing the retention ponds the other day. 

Or it could be that it was intentionally knocked down in preparation for more development because contractors will need to access the adjacent tract of land through this dead-end street segment.  I haven't seen any "sold" signs on this West Walker tract, but that tract is not listed in HAR's Commgate to start with, so who knows?  All I know is that development is starting to happen so fast around here that I can't keep up with it. 

The newsletter discontinuance issue

I'm not sure how many of you noticed this, but there was an announcement in the last subdivision newsletter that the newsletter is going to be discontinued within a few months. 



Excerpt screengrabbed from the POA website section that posts up newsletters.  Note that it directs readers to the new POA website in lieu of future newsletters. 

This is noteworthy because the newsletter has been the primary means by which subdivision cohesion has been achieved over the past six years. 

The significant limitations I see with the proposed website-as-information-alternative are as follows:

1. The website is a vehicle of the POA and the POA is a legal entity.  The POA is the first layer of our comprehensive American system of governance (and those of you who have tried to gain permission for various property modifications are probably painfully aware of their authority).   For this reason, there are many relevant neighborhood issues into which the POA may simply not want to insert itself simply because it's neither the POA's legal mandate nor is it necessarily in anybody's best interest for the POA to try to play that role. 
2. Frankly, I don't find this new POA website to be very useful at all.  It's just another largely-static compilation of information much like any other generic POA website out there (and arguably, that is how it should be).  The POA website contains no visible means of networking residents.  I can see no obvious method by which it could effectively share information and feedback quickly in real time.  If you have any issues to raise, the only route to inquiry is through the property management company.  This is simply subdivision boilerplate, as it arguably should be.

The whole business of the newsletter's existence gets a little dicey because it was started as a purely-social connectivity mechanism by a resident who only later became an elected member of the POA.  I've been asked in the past if I plan to run for the POA and I've said no, definitely not, because I cannot - it would be a conflict of interest.  I'm running a blog in which I'm intentionally raising questions and stating positions that might not be consistent with what the POA endorses.  Therefore there's too much potential for residents to get confused between what originates with the POA and what originates on the blog.  It would not be proper to confound things via my participation on the POA. 

Anyway, the bottom line regarding the newsletter is that I offered to take over the distribution of it.  In doing that, my idea was to alter the distribution of it in a way that clarified the following:

1. Things that were clearly POA matters could be efficiently routed to the POA (for example, residents complaining about violations of deed restrictions).
2. Things that were not-so-clearly POA matters could instead be efficiently routed to the blog and hashed out here (for example, concerns about people coming through the neighborhood driving either their own personal junk-collection jalopies or maybe even ice cream trucks). 

My offer to take over management of these two communication vectors was declined because the newsletter publisher previously promised all of the Centerpointe residents that she would not share their emails with any third parties, and I represent a third party.  The newsletter is therefore scheduled to be discontinued with no alternative networking device to pick up the connectivity slack (other than this blog which many Centerpointe residents aren't yet aware of).

I'm not sure what should be done in light of this, but if any of you have suggestions, I'd like to hear them.

This discontinuance is coming at a bad time.  It's coming right at the time when development pressures are increasing substantially in our area and so I worry about how information is going to make its way to residents in a timely manner - timely enough for us to collaborate and weigh in on it, if such an action proves to be appropriate.  Nobody can stop the coming development on our remaining adjacent private property parcels, but sometimes design modifications can be negotiated that minimize impacts on Centerpointe homeowners.  Additionally, sometimes private property development plans are approved at the municipal level with errors in them that can then impact surrounding properties.  Residents of the following streets are potentially at quality-of-life risk because they are located near to undeveloped tracts that are currently for sale:

• Arlington Pointe
• Harvard Pointe
• Walnut Pointe (the most vulnerable, as I see it)
• southern portions of Azalea Pointe
• southern portions of Elm Pointe

We need to know quickly and in real time when real estate transactions transpire, and we need to be able to spread that information among residents in order to gauge whether anyone has legitimate concerns.  I'm not sure of the best way to do that. 

The POA didn't seem to pay any attention whatsoever to the fact that the new "public safety building"  (note that this term is nothing but a polite euphemism - it's a police station and jail, just like it says on its design documents) got approved to be built right next to us.  Here they were worrying about pickers when in fact we're due to have what appears to be substantially more incarceration-related traffic on our flanking arterial, which is West Walker Street.  Does that strike anyone besides me as a little bit odd in terms of priorities??  Who is more likely to be scoping Centerpointe out for nefarious purposes?  Random junk collectors or people who have proven themselves as criminals, plus the associates of such people who will be driving through our area during the process of bailing those people out? 

Maybe upon comprehending the police station / jail issue thoroughly, maybe we would have decided that we are not opposed to it.  But the fact is, we never got the chance to get that information and to have that conversation amongst ourselves.  The "public safety building" doesn't seem to be as jail-intensive as originally planned, but I still haven't found any documentation that reveals HOW MANY jail cells are due to be included in this new building.  I don't even know what the project entails (other than an obvious lack of sidewalk) and it's already underway.  This is not the way things should be.

And while we're asking such questions, what about that other tract that is not included with this facility now under construction?  What, for instance, if League City with or without the participation of Galveston County, decided to expand the jail facilities in the future to include the other tract?

The "public safety building" will only occupy approximately the left-most half of the total available land.  What will be built on the other half?  When will Centerpointers find out about that, and by what method?  Will there be time and opportunity for us to evaluate the impacts on us?

I think that we ought to be able to communicate efficiently with Oaks of Clear Creek as well as our other surrounding neighborhoods (Wilshire Place and Patton) on some of these issues as well.  Does Oaks of Clear Creek realize that they're scheduled to have a large blinking radio tower built just off the north side of their subdivision?  I sent them a feeler, but only to their POA, and I don't know if they have a resident networking mechanism of any kind in place.

Your comments are always welcome.  Even if I don't manage to respond right away, I'm always reading them and taking them into consideration, whether they are private emails or blog comments.  Thanks for your input. 

More on the public safety building

Following up on this morning's post, I surfed through the League City website today to see what additional information I could find about the new public safety building.  I find that details in general are difficult to extract from this site - in fact, I did not find the plat map for this development until I started Googling to see if I could find a community contact person within the Patton subdivision which is north of the existing municipal complex (in other words, until I was looking for something that had nothing directly to do with League City itself). 

Anyway, here is the way the tract is defined in this document:

Note that north is toward the upper right-hand corner, not straight up as it usually is with the maps that I sketch out. 

And this is what it's supposed to look like:

I screengrabbed it from this document rather than simply referring to it because PDFs can sometimes have very short lives on the internet.  Note the existing police station for scale. 

One of the first things I noticed about this design?  No sidewalk.  How is it that LC is exempt from including sidewalks where any other development would be required to include them?  If I had all kinds of time on my hands, I'd look up the answer to that.  They can spend $33 million taxpayer dollars on this thing but they can't afford a bloody sidewalk in front of it??  Apparently the great Centerpointe Bridge to Nowhere is destined to remain just that.   

This document does not state how many cells the jail will include.  It does mention that the design includes 286 parking spots.

Something else noteworthy from this document - the statement "2011 Master Mobility Plan recommends that West Walker Street be expanded from a 2 to a 4-lane roadway sometime after 2015".  This table accompanies that statement:

Excerpted from the same document.

That one is a head-scratcher to me.  Why have all the flanking improvements been designed as they are if this right-of-way is scheduled to gobble up forty extra feet (presumably 20 more feet on each side) within about three more years?

As is often the case, I have more questions than answers at this point.