7/2/2025 – Part 2 of a 3-Part Series about the integrity of HCFCD’s information and its transparency. On 6/26/25, HCFCD’s director testified in Harris County Commissioners Court that the 2018 Flood Bond could have a $1.3 billion shortfall.
HCFCD Executive Director Dr. Tina Petersen testifying before Commissioners Court on Flood Bond shortfall on 6/26/25.
But two flood-bond updates (Year End 2024 and Q1 2025), strangely released after her testimony, make no mention of a shortfall and starkly contradict her testimony. The disconnect is stunning.
Bleak Testimony in Commissioners Court
Dr. Tina Petersen claimed a flood-bond funding shortfall of $1.3 billion – 25% of all bond and partner funds. Four Democratic commissioners used that to justify cutting 80% of all remaining projects in the bond.
They then reallocated all remaining money exclusively to projects with a high “equity” component. They also decided to fund those projects all the way through construction, even if the bond included only a preliminary engineering review. But…
Bond Updates Make No Mention of Shortfall, Just Sunshine Galore
In stark contrast to the bleak discussion in commissioners court, HCFCD released two Flood-Bond Updates hours after the meeting– one for Year End 2024 and the other for First Quarter 2025.
Petersen’s Year End 2024 report is full of sunshine. It never mentions a shortfall. Instead, it talks about “Achieving Funding Stability.” It brags about “closing the funding gap” and how the District can now “move forward with financial stability, ensuring we can deliver projects with confidence and certainty.”
Further, it says, “This report provided clarity and accountability across all 181 bond IDs, providing alignment between budgets, project scopes and goals of the program.”
That’s a pretty rosy picture compared to the dire report she had just delivered in Commissioners Court.
The Q1 ’25 update never mentioned an impending shortfall either.
And just this April, I captured the screen image below. At the time, HCFCD claimed no projects would be cancelled.
Voters I talked to felt blindsided by this whole mess.
Suspicious Timing
The timing of the release of the bond updates is suspicious. Affected voters had NO WARNING and NO CHANCE to protest the re-allocation of the tax dollars they approved for projects in their areas.
After listening to two hours of one-sided public comments from Rodney Ellis surrogates, Democratic commissioners voted 4:1 to reallocate all money remaining in the flood bond to projects that will benefit only communities with the highest equity scores, regardless of the volume of flood damage elsewhere. The motion they adopted will penalize 1.2 million Precinct 3 residents disproportionately.
Stay tuned for more on this topic as we head into another Harris County budgeting cycle.
I suspect the Democrats are getting ready to tell us they need another flood bond if we want to complete the previous flood bond. County Judge Lina Hidalgo has mentioned it already.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/2/25
2864 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Tina-Petersen.jpg?fit=1100%2C608&ssl=16081100adminadmin2025-07-02 14:02:182025-07-02 21:26:53HCFCD Bond Updates Make No Mention of Surprise $1.3 Billion Shortfall
7/1/25 – Caution: This post will make your head swim; but it’s better than drowning in the next flood. Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) data presented to the public differs radically from data presented to commissioners last week. One audience sees spending going up. The other sees spending going down.
Some areas will get little or no support from HCFCD while others that have already received hundreds of millions of dollars will get hundreds of millions more. My conclusion: flood-mitigation decisions have become purely political, not data driven under this commissioners court.
How Reliable is the Data?
So how reliable is the data? In this and upcoming posts, I’ll look at several different examples. Today, let’s look at two trend lines: one presented by HCFCD Director Dr. Tina Petersen last week to commissioners. The other comes from HCFCD’s public-facing website.
Here is a graph from the last page of Petersen’s presentation. It paints a pretty rosy picture. Work and spending going straight up for five years. If you’re a commissioner, you’re probably thinking, “Gee, I better get my project completed before the money runs out.”
But buried on HCFCD’s website several layers down is this graph. It paints a bleaker picture. If you’re a resident, you’re probably asking, “With billions of dollars in the bank and inflation eating up bond dollars, why is mitigation activity slowing down? Hurry up and finish my projects!”
Another portion of the page below shows that HCFCD has only spent $1.5 billion from the bond so far, but Petersen’s presentation shows they have $5.2 billion when you include partner funds.
This is a very concerning graph that raises questions about the efficiency of HCFCD and how much of the bond has been lost to inflation.
To show the differences between the two trends, I combined them in a third graph. It’s one thing to paint rosy projections for your bosses. And it’s another to overcome years of lost momentum. But there’s an even bigger problem. Look at the years where lines overlap in the middle. The data for past spending doesn’t agree. Oops!
Series1 represents reported spending data except for 2025, where I annualized first-quarter spending.
Series 2 takes reported and projected spending from Petersen’s bar graph.
Where the lines overlap, the graphs should match perfectly, but they don’t. So I called for an explanation.
HCFCD explains the difference by saying the dark line uses calendar-year data and the orange line uses fiscal-year data. They vary by three months and $23 million. But HCFCD says that otherwise the two sources “numerically align.” I asked what that meant and was told “They match.” Ooooookayyyyy….
But according to data obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests in previous years, HCFCD spent:
$217 million in FY2023, not the $175 million shown in Petersen’s bar graph.
$254 million in FY2024, not the $210 million shown in her bar graph.
Now my head is swimming. We have THREE values that vary by $42 million for 2023 and $69 million for 2024. See below.
You could build a major project with $69 million!
Unanswered Questions and Uncertainty
An old proverb says, “A man with two watches never knows what time it is.”
Harris County Flood Control District has a real problem. Their financial projections have all the certainty of a 5-year weather forecast. They can’t even agree on LAST year’s weather.
Yet they’re making policy decisions that affect people’s lives with this data. And in the process, they’re destroying trust in government.
There may be a logical explanation. But it’s not apparent or explained anywhere with the data people see.
Why are their numbers different in different places? Who is getting the truth and who is not?
More examples to follow. This is Part One of Three.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/1/25
2863 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Actual-and-Projected-Bond-Spending-e1751425476898.png?fit=1100%2C665&ssl=16651100adminadmin2025-07-01 22:16:392025-07-02 11:22:54HCFCD Data Shows Spending Going Up and Down Simultaneously
6/30/25 – The City of Houston Public Works Department wasted no time in starting to clean out a blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive. Once they found it.
The ditch, which parallels Valley Manor Drive west of Kingwood High School, had been neglected for so long that crews had a hard time finding it.
Distraught residents were ready to call in Indiana Jones. But City Council Member Fred Flickinger arrived first.
Still contractors are in for what qualifies as an “archeological dig.” Who knows what they’ll find in there? Residents found a mummified car wreck nearby, completely encased by a jungle of vines.
Photos of Work Beginning
Drainage Ditch Blockage West of High School in Kingwood Drive median. Before start of project.Looking S toward Lake Kingwood. Here’s what that same area looks like today after the start of cleanup.
It’s far from done. But at least you can see what you’re up against. Contractors are reportedly trying to get clearance from the Kingwood Country Club to remove the downstream blockage, too.
Looking N from Kingwood Country Club Lake Course toward Kings Forest.Still looking N at culverts under westbound Kingwood Drive, you can see they are literally half filled with silt.
All that silt reduces conveyance and backs water up in heavy rains. 110 homes upstream from this blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive flooded during Harvey.
Scope of Work
According to Council Member Flickinger’s newsletter, the scope of work includes clearing and grubbing approximately six acres of land, removing and disposing of debris, trash, and tires at a landfill, as well as the removal of trees.
Any trees removed for the purpose of accessing the ditch will be replanted at a later date by Council Member Flickinger’s office with the help of Trees for Kingwood.
The project is entirely on Bear Branch Trail Association BBTA property and is being closely watched by BBTA and neighbors.
Project area outlined in red
The project cost is $350,568.00 and is funded through the Houston Public Works Dedicated Drainage & Street Renewal Fund (DDSRF).
The City is preserving native trees wherever possible and trying only to remove invasive species. However, some trees may need to go to allow heavy equipment room to maneuver.
Project Completion, Work Hours, Impacts
Crews are already hard at work. And the project should end by Friday, August 29, 2025, weather permitting.
Construction activities will take place Monday through Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Sundays upon approval from the project manager.
The City expects no impacts to the sanitary sewer system. During the course of the work, some minor water line adjustments will be necessary. Citizens will be notified 72 hours in advance of any water outages.
Safety Caution
Please be aware of flagmen and orange traffic cones that may be present on-site to guide traffic as needed. However, this project is not expected to cause any traffic or mobility issues, such as lane closures or a significant increase in truck traffic.
Also note: there may be elevated noise levels at times due to the use of construction equipment and vehicles in the area.
For more information, please contact the District E office at (832) 393-3008 or via email at districte@houstontx.gov.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/30/2025
2862 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/20250629-DJI_20250629192138_0422_D.jpg?fit=1100%2C619&ssl=16191100adminadmin2025-06-30 18:53:112025-06-30 18:53:12City Begins Clearing Blocked Ditch Under Kingwood Drive
HCFCD Bond Updates Make No Mention of Surprise $1.3 Billion Shortfall
7/2/2025 – Part 2 of a 3-Part Series about the integrity of HCFCD’s information and its transparency. On 6/26/25, HCFCD’s director testified in Harris County Commissioners Court that the 2018 Flood Bond could have a $1.3 billion shortfall.
But two flood-bond updates (Year End 2024 and Q1 2025), strangely released after her testimony, make no mention of a shortfall and starkly contradict her testimony. The disconnect is stunning.
Bleak Testimony in Commissioners Court
Dr. Tina Petersen claimed a flood-bond funding shortfall of $1.3 billion – 25% of all bond and partner funds. Four Democratic commissioners used that to justify cutting 80% of all remaining projects in the bond.
They then reallocated all remaining money exclusively to projects with a high “equity” component. They also decided to fund those projects all the way through construction, even if the bond included only a preliminary engineering review. But…
Bond Updates Make No Mention of Shortfall, Just Sunshine Galore
In stark contrast to the bleak discussion in commissioners court, HCFCD released two Flood-Bond Updates hours after the meeting– one for Year End 2024 and the other for First Quarter 2025.
Petersen’s Year End 2024 report is full of sunshine. It never mentions a shortfall. Instead, it talks about “Achieving Funding Stability.” It brags about “closing the funding gap” and how the District can now “move forward with financial stability, ensuring we can deliver projects with confidence and certainty.”
Further, it says, “This report provided clarity and accountability across all 181 bond IDs, providing alignment between budgets, project scopes and goals of the program.”
That’s a pretty rosy picture compared to the dire report she had just delivered in Commissioners Court.
The Q1 ’25 update never mentioned an impending shortfall either.
And just this April, I captured the screen image below. At the time, HCFCD claimed no projects would be cancelled.
Voters I talked to felt blindsided by this whole mess.
Suspicious Timing
The timing of the release of the bond updates is suspicious. Affected voters had NO WARNING and NO CHANCE to protest the re-allocation of the tax dollars they approved for projects in their areas.
After listening to two hours of one-sided public comments from Rodney Ellis surrogates, Democratic commissioners voted 4:1 to reallocate all money remaining in the flood bond to projects that will benefit only communities with the highest equity scores, regardless of the volume of flood damage elsewhere. The motion they adopted will penalize 1.2 million Precinct 3 residents disproportionately.
Stay tuned for more on this topic as we head into another Harris County budgeting cycle.
I suspect the Democrats are getting ready to tell us they need another flood bond if we want to complete the previous flood bond. County Judge Lina Hidalgo has mentioned it already.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/2/25
2864 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
HCFCD Data Shows Spending Going Up and Down Simultaneously
7/1/25 – Caution: This post will make your head swim; but it’s better than drowning in the next flood. Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) data presented to the public differs radically from data presented to commissioners last week. One audience sees spending going up. The other sees spending going down.
Commissioners used confusing, contradictory data like this, at least in part, to cut 80% of the remaining projects in the flood bond last week with a claimed 25% funding shortfall.
Some areas will get little or no support from HCFCD while others that have already received hundreds of millions of dollars will get hundreds of millions more. My conclusion: flood-mitigation decisions have become purely political, not data driven under this commissioners court.
How Reliable is the Data?
So how reliable is the data? In this and upcoming posts, I’ll look at several different examples. Today, let’s look at two trend lines: one presented by HCFCD Director Dr. Tina Petersen last week to commissioners. The other comes from HCFCD’s public-facing website.
Here is a graph from the last page of Petersen’s presentation. It paints a pretty rosy picture. Work and spending going straight up for five years. If you’re a commissioner, you’re probably thinking, “Gee, I better get my project completed before the money runs out.”
But buried on HCFCD’s website several layers down is this graph. It paints a bleaker picture. If you’re a resident, you’re probably asking, “With billions of dollars in the bank and inflation eating up bond dollars, why is mitigation activity slowing down? Hurry up and finish my projects!”
Another portion of the page below shows that HCFCD has only spent $1.5 billion from the bond so far, but Petersen’s presentation shows they have $5.2 billion when you include partner funds.
This is a very concerning graph that raises questions about the efficiency of HCFCD and how much of the bond has been lost to inflation.
To show the differences between the two trends, I combined them in a third graph. It’s one thing to paint rosy projections for your bosses. And it’s another to overcome years of lost momentum. But there’s an even bigger problem. Look at the years where lines overlap in the middle. The data for past spending doesn’t agree. Oops!
Where the lines overlap, the graphs should match perfectly, but they don’t. So I called for an explanation.
HCFCD explains the difference by saying the dark line uses calendar-year data and the orange line uses fiscal-year data. They vary by three months and $23 million. But HCFCD says that otherwise the two sources “numerically align.” I asked what that meant and was told “They match.” Ooooookayyyyy….
But according to data obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests in previous years, HCFCD spent:
Now my head is swimming. We have THREE values that vary by $42 million for 2023 and $69 million for 2024. See below.
You could build a major project with $69 million!
Unanswered Questions and Uncertainty
An old proverb says, “A man with two watches never knows what time it is.”
Harris County Flood Control District has a real problem. Their financial projections have all the certainty of a 5-year weather forecast. They can’t even agree on LAST year’s weather.
Yet they’re making policy decisions that affect people’s lives with this data. And in the process, they’re destroying trust in government.
There may be a logical explanation. But it’s not apparent or explained anywhere with the data people see.
Why are their numbers different in different places? Who is getting the truth and who is not?
More examples to follow. This is Part One of Three.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/1/25
2863 Days since Hurricane Harvey
City Begins Clearing Blocked Ditch Under Kingwood Drive
6/30/25 – The City of Houston Public Works Department wasted no time in starting to clean out a blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive. Once they found it.
The ditch, which parallels Valley Manor Drive west of Kingwood High School, had been neglected for so long that crews had a hard time finding it.
Distraught residents were ready to call in Indiana Jones. But City Council Member Fred Flickinger arrived first.
Still contractors are in for what qualifies as an “archeological dig.” Who knows what they’ll find in there? Residents found a mummified car wreck nearby, completely encased by a jungle of vines.
Photos of Work Beginning
It’s far from done. But at least you can see what you’re up against. Contractors are reportedly trying to get clearance from the Kingwood Country Club to remove the downstream blockage, too.
All that silt reduces conveyance and backs water up in heavy rains. 110 homes upstream from this blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive flooded during Harvey.
Scope of Work
According to Council Member Flickinger’s newsletter, the scope of work includes clearing and grubbing approximately six acres of land, removing and disposing of debris, trash, and tires at a landfill, as well as the removal of trees.
Any trees removed for the purpose of accessing the ditch will be replanted at a later date by Council Member Flickinger’s office with the help of Trees for Kingwood.
The project is entirely on Bear Branch Trail Association BBTA property and is being closely watched by BBTA and neighbors.
The project cost is $350,568.00 and is funded through the Houston Public Works Dedicated Drainage & Street Renewal Fund (DDSRF).
The City is preserving native trees wherever possible and trying only to remove invasive species. However, some trees may need to go to allow heavy equipment room to maneuver.
Project Completion, Work Hours, Impacts
Crews are already hard at work. And the project should end by Friday, August 29, 2025, weather permitting.
Construction activities will take place Monday through Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Sundays upon approval from the project manager.
The City expects no impacts to the sanitary sewer system. During the course of the work, some minor water line adjustments will be necessary. Citizens will be notified 72 hours in advance of any water outages.
Safety Caution
Please be aware of flagmen and orange traffic cones that may be present on-site to guide traffic as needed. However, this project is not expected to cause any traffic or mobility issues, such as lane closures or a significant increase in truck traffic.
Also note: there may be elevated noise levels at times due to the use of construction equipment and vehicles in the area.
For more information, please contact the District E office at (832) 393-3008 or via email at districte@houstontx.gov.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/30/2025
2862 Days since Hurricane Harvey