What comes after phenomenal?

At last night’s candidate forum at Kroger’s, I spoke about the restrictor problem and said:

• According to County Commissioner Radack, the College St. drainage system is an inferior system and it was designed to handle a “two year” flood – not a five or ten year flood.
• Houston Council Member, Anne Clutterbuck’s office said that they are still waiting for an official written request from West U for access to mitigation acreage owned by Houston. We were told to submit that request last January and as of this week, we have not sent one.
• I challenged the statement made by both mayoral candidates that once the restrictor was removed, College St. could withstand an Allison type rain event. We have not had a major event in several years so only time will tell if that is true but we are a long way off from having the restrictor removed.
• Even though it was announced yesterday that one third of the restrictor will be removed because the county agreed to sell us one third of the acreage required, that will be of minimal help in the event of a large event.

Council member George Boehme took great exception to my remarks saying that it did no good to dwell on the past and we should look to the future because “phenomenal” progress was made when the county agreed to sell us land.

The question for George is – If that is phenomenal progress, what word will he use when “real” progress is made?

It is important that voters be told the truth. As I pointed out, engineering gives people the illusion of safety. Flood insurers are not fooled by illusions and neither should our voters be similarly fooled.

Common sense and good judgment matter. Good judgment involves telling voters the truth.