June 26, 2008 KHOU, Fighting Houston's floodway ordinance

KHOU article

Fighting Houston's floodway ordinance
10:42 PM CDT on Thursday, June 26, 2008
By Jeremy Desel / 11 News

HOUSTON -- If you are going to save lives, you have to practice. That’s just why the McKee brothers have donated their land, time and cars to the city. “We’ve had a lot of good times back here,” Rick McKee said. “We have allowed the city of Houston to come in with their Jaws of Life program for about 15 years.” The city has shown its appreciation with plaque after plaque, but that’s not the only thank you they’ve gotten. “They said, ‘your property is in the floodway. Sorry you are denied,’” Dave McKee said.

This prime real estate was supposed to be a nest egg. Now the McKee’s say thanks to Chapter 19, the city’s floodway ordinance, it’s worthless. “We have had many people look at it — a lot of people look at it,” Dave said. “And they all come in and say, ‘whoa this is great.’ Then they say, ‘wait a minute — is this in the floodway?’ We say, ‘yes it is.’ They say, ‘see ya.’” Worthless practically, unless you listen to the Harris County Appraisal District. “They jacked up the price almost $500,000 dollars on one piece of property,” Dave said. He’s fighting that assessment.

“This is probably my 15th or 20th trip for these five parcels of property that I’ve got,” he said. Just last year he went to binding arbitration setting the value of his floodway property at $289,000. This year it was assessed at $617,567. “This has no value. This property is in the floodway,” Dave said. “I was denied a building permit last week. “I can’t build anything on it, I can’t do anything with it, but I can damn sure pay taxes on it,” he said.

The McKee’s are far from alone. The Appraisal District said there are 10,695 taxable properties in the city of Houston in the floodway. You’d think they would be treated the same way, but no: This year values increased on 4,052, did not change on 2,197 and went down for 4,446 land owners.

“We don’t have a position on it. We want to make sure that it is appraised at current market value,” Chief Appraiser Jim Robinson said. “We made some initial assumptions on it. They may or may not be correct. If they are not correct, we are going to correct them.”

He said his office met with the city to learn more about the floodway ordinance. “We were also told that if there had ever been a structure on the property that it could be buildable as long as it met the conditions that were set forth in the ordinance,” Robinson said. “We are not going to tell them how to appraise property, but we are going to tell them how the rules will be interpreted,” Assistant Director of Houston Public Works Andy Aiken said. But only if there was a building already there.

Don’t tell that to Dave McKee. “That’s what they have said, but that is not what they are doing,” he said. His application to build, denied by the city earlier this month, property that may be on the waters edge: “We got some flooding a little bit to the inside of this fence,” Rick McKee said. But never in the building.

The Mckee’s and several other landowners have sued the city over the floodway ordinance. Others have been loudly protesting anywhere they can.

The outcry from property owners seems to be getting heard at HCAD. “Because there are some unanswered questions. In fact we placed that hold on last week,” Robinson said. “And again as I told you at the outset, there are some that have already made it through the process. But we are going to look at those too.”

And more importantly at the city: “Accept the fact that if there was a building there before it is ok to put a building back there again,” Aiken said.

Now on the table before City Council is a complete rewrite of the floodway ordinance that would allow building in the floodway, but require pier and beam construction on currently vacant property.

“We are not going to get away from the fact that there is very little elevation change in the 625 miles of the city of Houston,” Aiken said. “Flooding is going to be a perennial problem no matter what we have done. It is going to come as little solace, but we have created community sensitivity to this subject.”

Sensitivity is one word for it.