Mayor Parker screws 4th Ward again

The grinch stole Christmas, and the grinch is Mayor Annise Parker. Although this website primarily exists to track the City of Houston criminals who run Gregory library, we’ve put plenty of Fourth Ward / Freedman’s Town history here because the Gregory library is located in Fourth Ward / Freedman’s Town.

Recall in an earlier post how we explained the City use eminent domain to take three houses next to Gregory. The City could not afford to purchase those houses. Now the City is broke so they need to sell some land. What’s some of the first land on the auction block? Park land right next to the Allen Parkway Village public housing project. Why would Parker care if low income residents (mostly African American) don’t have a place to play? As long as Parker can shovel $6 million of taxpayers funds to subsidize Wal-Mart developers she’ll get plenty of campaign donations. Unfortunately low income public housing tenants can’t bribe politicians, so they get screwed out of park land.

Here’s how Channel 11 video report story: Channel 11 video on park land sale.
Or check out the text right here.

 

Radio appearance on KPFT

On Wednesday, December 8, the founder of Gregory Library Watch appeared on Minister Robert Muhammad’s KPFT radio show Connect the Dots. Minister Muhammad is the Southwest Regional Minister of the Nation of Islam. His radio show has hosted us before and he has long supported progressive causes, especially the death penalty and the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement.

Check out the video right here:

Library claims 50 visits a week! Cost to taxpayer: over $168 / visitor

The City of Houston’s Fourth Ward website claims that the Gregory Library, which was renovated for over $11 million dollars of taxpayer funds, is getting 50 or more visits per week! Please see Houston Chronicle: $11 million for renovation article for that cost citation.

By taking the Gregory Library’s current salaries (see document: Gregory Library budget 2010) of $437,405 and dividing it by 52 weeks per year, we see that it costs the taxpayers $8,411.00 per week just for library salaries. Then when we divide that $8,400 plus dollars per week by 50 visitors, we come out to a cost of $168+ per visitor.

That $168 per visitor figure is very conservative because that overhead does not include things like insurance on the building, security guards, and utilities. Once we obtain the data on those costs we will get the actual taxpayer cost of each library visitor.

Can you spell tax dollar boondoggle?

Artist sketch of Gregory Library

Channel 13 ABC covers our group

Channel 13 Video here!

On Friday February 5, 2010 the 6:00 news on Channel 13 ran a story on us. Check out the TV clip.

They also put the text of our open letter to the mayor on their website. Thanks to reporter Cynthia Cisneros.

Library watch group wants changes

HOUSTON (KTRK) — A group is fighting to have more access to a library in one of Houston’s historic neighborhoods. They say the city needs to allow more community involvement.

They’re talking about the African-American library at Gregory school in Houston’s Fourth Ward.

It’s a question Linda Feldman has asked often.

“I sit in my living room and look out and ask why there’s not more traffic going inside there should be a lot of traffic in there,” she said.

Feldman is a long time Fourth Ward neighbor and was thrilled when the historic and run-down school was renovated and recently reopened as the African-American library at the Gregory school

Neighbor Lenwood Johnson and others there complain the state of the art research facility is often empty and is not community friendly, meaning only those doing research on African-American history and viewing exhibits are encouraged to go inside.

Neighbors with whom we spoke say empty rooms should be filled with computers for homework and other projects.

“Families here are too poor to have Internet services, so this could do it,” said Johnson.

The city says the facility is not a traditional library. It is a research facility, however a mobile library with over a dozen computers for public use come here twice a week and is free of charge.

“The function of this facility is to provide a place to preserve the history of African-Americans in Houston,” said Sandra Fernandez with the Houston Public Library. “So that means what we’re gathering is a collection of archival materials, oral histories and other items to help reach that goal.”

The Houston Public Library says it’s also working with area schools to open the facility to school tours. And anyone who graduated from the Gregory School is asked to come by the facility to share their story.
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Re: An open letter to Mayor Annise Parker

Dear Mayor Parker,

On January 5, 2010 Mr. Lenwood Johnson and I met with Helena Stokes, the administrative manager at the African American Library at Gregory School (AALG). We offered our volunteer services including grant writing and advising on community involvement. Ms. Stokes not only denied to utilize our expertise in African American history and community organizing, she also denied community groups access to the library facilities.

We suggested that the AALG offer some after school programs which are particularly needed by the residents in the immediate vicinity of the library. There is a lot of drug dealing in our Freedmen’s Town neighborhood that children must walk by on their way home from school everyday. Our children need structured, regularly scheduled adult supervised programs to save them from the streets. In fact I will volunteer to teach an after school class two days a week.

One month has passed since our meeting with Ms. Stokes, yet she refuses to even bother to answer our followup correspondence.

As you may know, the AALG has an annual payroll of $437,405. In addition the AALG is also budgeted to spend $18,000 on unqualified consultants. The AALG is supposed to be an archive of African American history, yet it only holds less than 10 linear feet of collections and does not even have any historical black periodicals or even subscriptions to the current African American newspapers. Ms. Stokes and the entire Houston Public Library system does not have one grant in process to purchase African American collections, nor have they ever written one grant to build their non-existent collection.

Affirmative action programs need to be installed in the AALG in order to address the community’s needs. The AAGL sits unused because the community’s requests, the city’s own consultants and the city Housing and Community Development’s plans for the Gregory School building were ignored.

In these days of budget deficits the Houston taxpayers should not be expected to pay nine (9) library staff to sit around with nothing to do when they in fact could and should be serving the community. What is even more shocking is that not one employee of the African American Library at Gregory even has a credential in African American history or studies.

We respectfully request that one of AAGL’s three empty classrooms be immediately reprogrammed into a computer lab with one staffer assigned to assist patrons with job searches and homework. Furthermore, we request that the community be granted access to the facility so that we provide volunteer after school programs. Finally, we request that the excessive security forces in AALG be reduced to a normal amount.

Sincerely,

Timothy O’Brien, Ph.D
On behalf of Gregory Library Watch

(Copyright ©2010 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

Link to ABC TV posting of story.

Welcome to Gregory Library Watch

This blog is to monitor the activities of the African American Library at Gregory School which is located in the historic Freedmen’s Town area of Houston, Texas.

According to the Gregory Library, their mission is  “To serve as a repository for use by historians, researchers, and the general public.”

Unfortunately the library offers very little for the public besides a nice diversion for an hour or so to peruse their galleries. It will take years, if not decades, to build a collection of African American archives. In the meantime the Gregory Library and our tax dollars could serve the community. Gregory does not have a computer room for people to use to search for jobs or for children to do homework. They do not have any programs like most libraries do. They have lots of empty space and two floors but nothing for any of the low income or other residents that live in the immediate vicinity of the library.

Even for the researcher, whether it is someone with a doctorate in African American history, or a grade school student doing a history project, there is very little material to work with. Currently the library only houses fourteen (14) archival collections. Here is the complete list. These archival collections only add up to 11 linear feet or less than 6 full boxes of documents. The library also has done a few oral histories and made them available on their website. The link on the Gregory library website shows only 22 oral histories, eight (8) which were already owned by the Houston Public Library.

We are  a group of concerned activists living in Freedmen’s Town. Our mission is to ensure that all of the history of African Americans in the City of Houston, but particularly in the Freedmen’s Town Historic District, is represented in the Gregory Library.