GIVE THE GUY A BREAK!!

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then you must find a dance of your own

(All letters and e-mail correspondence become the property of HOUSNITCH and housnitch.com. Unless otherwise expressly requested, we are entitled to publish all such correspondence. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity, and for content that might get us sued, or to withhold their publication. Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of our editors or sponsors.)

Texas Room at Ideson Building – Downtown Public Library

Rolando Romo took over as the head of the Texas Room and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center. They are two separate research collections.

The HMRC is solely an archives collection of original papers belonging to prominent Houstonians, former mayors, etc. The Texas Room collection is made up of books, microfilm, newspapers, etc.

Mr. Romo has no training or experience as an archivist, is not a historian or genealogists, and is mainly a library bureaucrat.

Anna Horn was in the position before and she personally told us the goal of the library was to close and dismantle the Texas Room and HMRC collections and do-away with the Ideson Building.

Remember, We were the ones who alerted you to the provisions in the Library’s Master Plan that called for the Ideson building to be abandoned by the library and city council stepped in to make sure that didn’t happen. The library was supposed to amend its Master Library Plan to remove those provisions but We’ve never seen them; but that’s another fight.

Recently, the Texas Room decided to stop being a Regional Repository Library for the Texas State Library & Archives. The State Library has regional libraries throughout Texas, so residents can use the material at their local library instead of them having to travel to Austin to use the resources can use material.

One of the biggest programs of this process was that the Texas Room was the designated Regional library for state owned microfilm related to Harris and Galveston counties.

For a list of these microfilm, visit:

Harris Co. - http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/local/harris.html

Galveston Co. - http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/local/galveston.html

These microfilm are now gone! If you want to look at old deeds, wills, estate, civil or criminal records, tax records (generally pre-1900) you have to now go to the Harris Co. or Galveston Co. courthouses or request the film via inter-library loan. The process for getting microfilm via ILL takes from 4 to 6 weeks to get the requested film when before, it would take abt. 1-minute to get it from the microfilm cabinet!

It is odd that Mr. Romo doesn’t understand that when you go to the local history library, like the Texas Room or the HMRC, one of the expected things to find are local records. Now that these microfilm are no longer there, for them to be replaced, the Houston Public Library would have to purchase them at a cost of approx. $5,000 per county, for a total of $10,000 to replace the lost microfilm for Harris Co. and Galveston Co. Remember, we had FREE copies from the State Library that Mr. Romo sent back, or as we were told by a HPL employee, the State Library was told the stuff was on the loading docks to come get it or it was going into the dumpster!

However, one saving grace is that Clayton Library was able to salvage the duplicate copies of the Galveston Co. microfilm before it was tossed! However, there was no duplicate copy for Harris Co. microfilm and to replace the FREE state owned microfilm, would cost HPL approx. $5,000!

Over the last few years, as historians, genealogists, and volunteers, We have watched HPL do everything possible to destroy the Texas Room & HMRC collections!

Get this; Mr. Romo is the only person who now has a key to the special collection areas. He only works Monday through Friday. So, if you go to the Texas Room, which is open on Saturday, you cannot use any of those materials because no one else on the library staff has a key or access to those books, materials, manuscripts, and etc. that have been regularly available to researchers for years before Mr. Romo’s control issues came into play!

Also, Mr. Romo has run-off volunteers, stopped or ended on-going volunteer research projects because he didn’t know why they were needed. One of those important projects was the indexing of all pre-1900 Houston newspapers for names, historical events, deaths, marriages, births, and etc. when there were no death/birth certificates! He couldn’t grasp why those types of indexes would be needed by researchers to be able to find historical events easily with an index!

What an idiot!

One of Mr. Romo’s new tricks is that he could only sign the parking tickets to allow volunteers to park free in the underground library parking lot. Well, if Mr. Romo was off, at lunch, out sick, at a meeting, couldn’t be found, or if it was a weekend, the volunteer was out of luck and had to pay for his/her own parking, approx. $10 per time. Why? Again, Mr. Romo and his control issues mandated he was the only person authorized to sign the parking tickets. One volunteer waited 1.5 hours for him to return from lunch to sign his ticket so he could leave. That volunteer, a senior citizen on a limited income, gave-up and paid the $10 himself!

So, the question is: Does the library or the Texas Room really want volunteers? The simple answer is no, based on Mr. Romo’s hateful and nasty attitude towards volunteers and never being available to sign their parking tickets!

Getting rid of Barbara Gubbin is the head of the snake but the library is so entrenched with the ilk of Mr. Romo that there needs to be a greater emphasis placed on removing the underlings too.

One of the reasons to get rid of Barbara is because of her poor relationship with City Council. Guess which staff member carried that bucket for her? That was Carol Johnson, who was very recently placed in a protected position of head of Library Facilities Dept., which is sort of like the Building Services for the library. What experience does Carol have for maintaining, repairing, building new libraries? NONE!

Again, another classic example of the library insulating, taking care of the good ole boys/girls to protect them from slice & dice of a new administration!

Carol Johnson was the former head of the Texas Room and she is the individual who began the process of destroying / dismantling this research collection!

Why the library rewards and protects these type of enablers is beyond me? I guess it is because Carol, Rolando, etc. take on the nasty tasks and are taken care of in the long run to allow them to burrow in and wait out the culling process.

Let’s hope Bill White cleans house at the library too!

LET'S HOPE THE "FRIENDS OF THE TEXAS ROOM" CONTINUE TO READ HOUSNITCH...PLEASE...IF ANY OF YOU READERS CARE ABOUT OUR CITY AND THE TEXAS ARCHIVES, PASS THIS PART OF HOUSNITCH ALONG...LET'S RAISE A PROTEST TO MAYOR WHITE ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!

(We have heard that Mayor Bill, hasn't asked for any resignations yet...he's concentrating his efforts on Fire/Police Chiefs for the next few weeks....Perhaps Barbara Gubbin etal could be the exception????? IF he doesn't stop this...in a few weeks WE THE PEOPLE won't have a TEXAS ROOM left!!!!!)

WRITE TO OR CALL THE MAYOR AT:
Mayor Bill White
City of Houston
P.O. Box 1562
Houston, TX 77251

PHONE: 713.247.2200

We had over 200 letters concerning some of the rumors surrounding Bill White's appointments ... we'll only give you a sample of them .... PLEASE .... GIVE THE GUY A CHANCE BEFORE YOU WRITE HIM OFF

Hey Brenda, you know who we are from the e-mail name. We all thought you should know, that we don't hold you responsible for helping White win. But, damn, if you read all the stuff that's being written about who he is placing in his administration, you have to admit he lied to us all.

Carol Alvarado as Mayor Pro-Tem?????!!!!!!! Anthony Hall as Chief Administrative officer? Maybe even a new position as Deputy Mayor. We bet you Frumencio Reyes is named City attorney. (Lawyers running the city?????)

THEN this city goes from un-organized crime under Lee. P. to ORGANIZED crime under those three.

You should have entered that other Bill White. We could have stopped the other two. They weren't smart enough to NOT leave prints

HEY!!!! give the guy a chance....all that stuff about Reyes etal is just speculation....Bill White said he'd clean up, GIVE THE GUY A BREAK. I did the right thing by not entering that other Bill White. IS THAT HOW YA'LL WANTED TO WIN?

Subj:	Bill White
Date:	1/1/04 7:32:55 AM Central Standard Time
From:
To:	housnitch1@aol.com

Mr. White seems to have turned his back on his long time friends and advisors. Carol Alvarado as Mayor Pro-Tem? You should have known when Janie Reyes came with Mr. White to your home that Frumencio Reyes was going be our next Mayor.

DARLIN...WE DON'T DO ANYTHING QUIETLY! WHERE DOES THIS FRUMENCIO STUFF COME FROM? WE READ ROLAND GARCIA WAS BEING CONSIDERED, WE HEARD JOE ROACH , WHERE DOES FRUMY FIT IN THIS? CAROL ALVARADO WAS A GIVEN. SHE AND MAYOR WHITE HAVE WORKED TOGETHER IN DEMOCRATIC POLITICS FOR MANY YEARS. CAROL BEING DNC AND HE AT THE HELM ON STATE LEVEL.

Subj:	Mayor's of Houston ...
Date:	1/3/04 4:55:48 PM Central Standard Time
From:
To:	housnitch1@aol.com

Darlin, as you know, we tried for over a year to get Brown to bring our forefathers up from the basement tunnel to the rotunda where they belong and hung for almost 40 years ...but he didn't care enough about them ...perhaps the new administration will.

Ms.Canales

Houston , TX. 77056

Mr. Bill White

Mayor of Houston, Texas

1/4/04

Dear Mayor White:

I am writing to request that inspectors, again, be sent out to review and request a work order to repair an area of a recently paved street at the 5400 block of *&^%$#@. This area detains a pool of water and is not only a nuisance but is also a health hazard. I filed a complaint with 311 today; the confirmation for my complaint is # 1456.

I recently purchased my home at *&^%$# and inquired with the neighbors about what the homeowners association is doing about the standing water problem. They informed me that they and the homeowners association have been imploring the City of Houston to fix the problem for quite a while. As I understand it, the contractor that constructed the street has said that there was not enough money in some sort of fund to compensate him to correct this standing water problem. If this is the case, I am amazed because I would think that contractors should be held responsible for “defects in their workmanship”.

There seems to have been an attempt to repair the problem. The process used was to drill holes in the street and to compress concrete under the existing pavement in an attempt to raise the street. This process is called “slab jacking”. This process seems to have made the problem worse.

Before moving to the Galleria area, my parents lived in Spring, Texas. T hey had the same standing water problem in front of their home. The county sent out a contractor who shaved the high part of the curb with either a grinder or a saw which cut the high spot of the curb. This process removed the high spot at the curb, which was keeping the water from flowing to the rain sewer, and allowed the water to flow toward the rain sewer and immediately eliminated the problem. Can't the City of Houston utilize the same process? Wouldn't it behoove the City of Houston to try this process which is much less expensive than reconstructing that part of Navarro Street? The street is in good condition other than the high spot that detains the flow of water.

The use of the sprinkler systems as well as rain creates the pool of water. This pool of water particularly creates a problem for pedestrians walking down the sidewalk next to the pool of water. They are sprayed by passing cars because, at its high point, the pool of water covers the entire width of the street and therefore it is unavoidable by passing vehicles.

Thank you for your attention in this matter. I, as well as others in our neighborhood, would appreciate a speedy resolution to this problem.

Sincerely,

Erica Canales

Houston , Texas

Jan. 2, 2004, 10:43PM
ON TRACK

Start of light rail is a sign of good things to come

The official editorial perception of the Main Street tram, as stated in this editorial, seems to show that there is a clear, yet disturbing disconnect from the economic reality of the multitude of impacts which will eventually manifest from the METRO/City/various entities participating in the scheme. The piece is more pro-rail cheerleading.

First, a few days of free rides is no indication of any current or future likelihood of success. Rather, if these throngs of folks came with cash-in-hand to ride, I would be the first to commend METRO. That is not the case. Second, METRO lured the "lemmings" with free rides, many hoping to travel as fast as what was deceptively depicted on television prior to the referendum. Now, many have seen for themselves that they were duped to vote for and eventually be induced by the offer of a free ride to endure a truncated, cramped excursion on a glorified tram averaging 15 mph, slower than the rollerbladers cruising by.

As far as the future development, it is too early to tell what will succeed under the control of our bureaucratic central planners. METRO has already put at risk taxpayer's funds speculating on land, land where METRO's highly touted economic development/light rail project forced the owners into insolvency. It is fair to say that if it were not for the generous tax abatements and taxpayer funded incentives, these developers likely would locate in locations with less risk. We, the taxpayers will be forced to shoulder an ever-increasing tax burden so a few can reap obscene initial profits.

METRO has yet to receive any federal matching money for this project (since they used our tax money to fight all the way to the Texas Supreme Court to disenfranchise voters) or any of the grandiose extensions.

METRO has already come up short on sales tax revenue, and fare box revenue has steadily declined since DeLibero has run METRO. METRO has been forced to divert resources from the bus transit dependent, poor and minority riders. It can only get worse as the rail "alligator" devours an ever increasing share of transit dollars. There just is not enough tax money to satisfy the billions in future bond debt and operational subsidies necessary to sustain the METRO rail plans.

As a recent example of counting chickens before they hatch, the Houston-Harris County Sports Authority has been put on credit watch by the bond rating services. METRO has shown no spending restraint, and the commitment for building as much rail as possible before the access to bonds dries up is not a prudent policy.

METRO and the Brown Administration have closed Main Street to through traffic, and have managed to chase a lot of vehicles out of the CBD. This is ill-advised, and will doom the businesses surrounding the pedestrian mall as well as most of the likely new TOD's to be developed along Main Street. For all the rhetoric espoused by the pro-rail NUTS (New Urban Transit Supporters), once you chase the cars away, you chase the customers away. Nearly every pedestrian mall ever established in the US over the past 40+ years has "FAILED" insofar as the cities reversed the anti-car policy.

All METRO has accomplished so far is to squander several hundred million of precious taxpayer dollars which could have been better spent improving the bus and road system. They have, by the narrowest of margins, managed to dupe voters into approving a referendum to mortgage the lives of future generations to pay for a system they will likely never benefit from.

It's a little early to be serving crow.

"POLITICIANS and BUREAUCRATS are like diapers, they should both be changed frequently and for the same reason" ...anonymous

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."-Plato

713-722-9258
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Subj:	WHITE SNOWED US ALL..
Date:	12/29/03 7:57:47 AM Central Standard Time