When our cities, counties don’t focus, we feel it when the power’s out or trash is missed | Opinion

Hold a special thought for Austin residents. It’s been a tough few days to live there — even tougher than usual.

The capital city suffered miserably from the ice storm that we quickly got over. More than 170,000 customers of the city-owned electric company lost power, many for more than a week. Anger at the utility, and the mayor and City Council hasn’t subsided.

Austin’s troubles are acute and dangerous, but they’re a symptom of a problem plaguing lots of local government: struggles with the basics of governance that make cities livable. In Fort Worth, it’s constant threats of floods from stormwater or things like the botched implementation of new garbage-collection routes. In Dallas, there’s trash trouble, too, along with the much-publicized failure to protect an important city asset, the zoo.

Local leadership affects your daily life more than state or federal government do, and when your city or county try to do too much, lose focus from the most vital tasks and get distracted by political sideshows, you’ll feel it. And you’ll be as angry as an Austin homeowner on day five without a hot shower.

In this case, Austin should have known better. A city audit report after the 2021 grid failure found Austin “did not adequately anticipate or plan for the risks posed by a severe winter storm or a widespread disaster” and “has not acted on many prior lessons learned and has not prioritized or funded disaster preparedness and community resilience.”

In particular, that report faulted communications failures, and yet what angered many residents most in this storm was the lag in clear communication from city and utility leaders. More than 24 hours passed before a news conference was held by either. The severity of the storm appears to have been overwhelming, but some residents grumbled about failures to trim trees well enough to prevent outages.

Preparations for this kind of storm are difficult. Human nature is a factor, too: Leaders, bureaucrats and voters alike set aside distant, theoretical problems to focus on something more urgent. Budgets are often drafted that way, too.

It’s not that big problems don’t get attention. Fort Worth officials know we have stormwater flooding issues, and they’ve tried to prioritize and add more money when possible. The city deserves credit, too, for doing a better job deploying warning signs at low crossings and other flood-prone roads.

But with $1 billion in projects backlogged, it’s worth asking if the sprawling city budget should be scrubbed to prioritize threats to people’s homes and lives to an even greater degree.

Too often, our local governments are spending too much time on cultural issues, heartfelt but meaningless debates and resolutions railing against the state or federal government, and partisan concerns that a county or school district can’t do much about.

This week alone in Dallas, county commissioners spent time and resources on a resolution defending critical race theory in education. If you’re wondering, no, the Commissioners Court doesn’t run the schools. Down the road, the City Council got tied up on a resolution making a statement about abortion rights, something now determined at the state level.

Don’t think Fort Worth is immune, either. Our City Council members spent time Tuesday interrogating city staff about the selection of documentaries for bimonthly screenings the city puts on — events that have drawn 6,000 people in a city of 1 million.

Many times, as in Austin’s power crisis, poor communication from those in charge is what really sets residents off. Fort Worth’s waste department went through that recently when far too many customers had no idea their trash routes had changed. When things go wrong, leaders need to be visible and forthright.

Voters bear some responsibility. First, more need to show up when we’re picking leaders. The fact that a school board or city council member can win with a few thousand votes or less is embarrassing. And voters should focus more on local issues and qualifications when they choose leaders — and less on party affiliations or solidarity on issues that aren’t part of the job at hand.

Planning for the long term on power outages or floods doesn’t make for sexy campaigns. But attention to those important issues sure can make our cities and counties better places to live.

This story was originally published February 10, 2023 at 10:53 AM.