The Baytown Bulletin Board

(These thought were sent to the Mayor, City Manager & City Council members last week about our fair town.)

Thank you for the opportunity to voice my concerns and opinions regarding the future of the city of Baytown. I have been a Baytonian since I was a year old, and love my city. I graduated from R.E. Lee and proud to have been a member of the Gander's Famous Robert E. Lee Band and Orchestra.

1. As a woman and one who loves to shop, we are plagued by the lack of fine stores at which to shop. Many travel to Houston stores, namely Baybrook, Dearbrook, the Galleria and other malls to shop good stores. We need to raze the San Jacinto mall and start over again with a state-of-the-art mall with top-of-the-line stores to keep the shoppers here.
Have you thought about a public questionnaire as to why people shop out of Baytown? Every store we have is not the quality we should have. A friend who went to shop at Kohl's a couple of weeks ago went the morning of the start of a sale, and the merchandise wasn't there. She asked why (this was not the first time either). The clerk said she'd have to go to a larger Kohl's to get the products as this store doesn't carry everything. That's really outrageous! It's a brand new store, yet it's not a full store. Why is that? Everyone's talking about keeping our money in town, but why should we if we don't have the best stores that Houston does? Baytown has such a stigma of having second-rate stores. We shouldn't stand for it!

Relating to that, we do not have the great places to eat either. Why don't we have a Pappa's (and their other lines), an Olive Garden, a good steak house, etc? Thank goodness for El Toro's, Luna's & Antonio's.

2. We have vacant retail buildings, such as the previous Kmart, Office Max, store fronts next to the old Randall's, again the mall, others. Do our city fathers invite retail businesses to come to our fair city? I have personally emailed and asked H.E.B. (not a pantry store!) and Dress Barn to come to Baytown. Without competing with Kroger, Food Town and Wal-Mart grocery shopping, a large, full-size H.E.B. north of town where many housing editions and schools are popping up, would be a great enhancement to this growing area. By the way, a post office really needs to be at this end of the town too.

3. Weaknesses to the city have been addressed rather well. One that I haven't heard about are billboards. Some are still up advertising events that have long since come and gone, yet the billboards still invite. One billboard I just recently saw was more than half-way torn down, whether by wind or person. What an eyesore. Sorry, I don't remember where that was. You want garage sale people to bring down their signs in 24 hours after the sale, but what about all this huge advertising. Which, by the way, is distracting and clutters the beauty of the city. I just saw the Gun Show billboard advertising its event for March 1-2, 2008. Irritating!

4. The next idea has been hashed over and over...Texas Avenue. I wonder, has anyone thought to go to Old Town Spring and find out how they were able to revive their older part of town to be a great asset to them. Many from here travel to Old Town Spring to shop. That's an hour away, but it is appealing! I don't agree that the city should foot the bill for setting up shop for retail businesses to come in. They should do it themselves, of course. If anyone has been to Branson, MO in the last few years would see that they took the opposite end of their town from the entertainment section, and made a huge walking area/open area mall. No vehicle traffic except those that deliver merchandise to stores. It was really enjoyable to walk leisurely through, with benches to rest on and tables to sit at and eat. What a refreshing area that was. Someone from here should travel to Branson and see what it is all about and find out how they did it. Nothing like that is around here.

5. Give citizens a place to dump their unwanted "stuff".
Mont Belvieu does. Not just the recycling center or the designated recycling days that I see is coming up. I believe that would help stop the dumping on the sides of the roads!

6. I completely object to ruling over one's property. Like I read last week (3/26/08) from a man that was at the town meeting..."And new ordinances limiting property owners' rights is one of the changes he's not too fond of. 'I'm tired of having all my rights removed here in the city of Baytown. I thought I owned my property, but apparently, the City of Baytown owns my property.' "
It isn't right to take away citizens' property rights. When people plan to move into a housing addition, they usually find out what the civic association there requires and either accept it or does not move there. That's one thing. Placing restrictions on a person's property after they've been living there is just wrong!

My last thought is the Raceway Park. I have a business where I deliver beauty products to customers homes. I was called to bring an order to one of my customers that dreadful day of the most recent race (now the one back the first of March), and before I knew it, I was caught up in the one-way traffic on 565. There was no getting out of it, and a 5 minute trip to her house (across from the race park) turned into 45 plus minutes. Like I just wanted to waste my time and gasoline! I thought that was horrendous, but coming out of her housing area, I could only turn right and that took me even longer to get home!! I really thought that was a public road, not a private event road. How does a private company control a public road? Someone needs to get their head on straight concerning this problem. And regardless of what the racing group and vendors have to say, it is not desirable except to their pockets. Oh, and the comment that it brings revenue to Baytown...where did I benefit from it, or any other private citizen?

I realize this is out of the city limits, yet Baytown citizens are involved and it does effect Baytown.

Enough. Enjoy your day!
Cheri :)

Hey gang, meet Cheri I asked her to share this letter with our board because I thought she made some fantastic points. I hope it gets some attention with the City Admin.

Thanks for sharing, Cheri, and welcome to the Baytown Bulletin Board.

No,I think we need to try to get the lady elected to the job of mayor.This town is on its last leg.I lived not far from here much of my life and the town was one of the best in Texas.But I think the industry that brings real money to town is gone. There is no money without basic industry.Factories.Machine shops .People who build things to sell to outsiders.If you need electronics components you might as well drive over by NASA to get what you need.Teds auto parts was a great place.Just about anything you needed they had it.But supply places depend on building people who bring in money.The sad thing is industrial people get dirty and greasy.That is a big shame today.Because you can extort money by adding and increasing taxes.A clean industry but it works like a vampire.Eventually the blood supply runs dry. I see many new banks opened here.Ha ha ha! Funny.I think they work with the idea that debt is as good as money made. Our nation is in deep economic troubles.Both sides of the politicians are only going to fix things by new taxes and more shyster projects on the level of gambling or some other racket. We need the old guys who got greasy then got rich. Leo Fender is known all over the world for guitars.He had a high school education.Now he is rich.If the economy caves in completely we will learn a long overdue lesson.It will be good for us. There are many things we can build in Baytown. But where do all the grads go after they leave college?What are they teaching? Paper shuffling? Get some engineers here.Get people with a brain to run the city.>OH YES! A greasy mechanic did this. All the while highly educated auto corp CEO played golf and expanded his benefits .We need more mechanics and less shysters>> http://www.yahoo.com/s/847545

What made the USA rich in the former years? A person comes up with a better idea for some machine or device and ends up with a product made in the USA and sold to every country. We have forgotten how we obtained wealth but shysters have taken our nation into economic disaster yet we continue down the same track.Houston has some people who know which direction to recovery is.> http://www.inventors.org/

Well the town is clearly booming since the smoking ban. And the air is so clean I sometimes forget I'm in Baytown and think I'm in Aspen.*


*sarcasm

Well Thano,That was a masterpiece in legislation,That and the two stripes of paint down Texas Avenue. Maybe they could go across the border and enact legislation to save these people from industrial smog.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.ht...A966958260 --------------------------------------------------- Mexico's Hope for Industrial Might

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By LOUIS UCHITELLE, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: September 25, 1990

LEAD: From down the highway, the Ford Motor Company plant, which manufactures more than 1,000 car engines a day for the United States, seems at first glance like just another brown hillock on the vast desert plateau that surrounds this boom town.

From down the highway, the Ford Motor Company plant, which manufactures more than 1,000 car engines a day for the United States, seems at first glance like just another brown hillock on the vast desert plateau that surrounds this boom town.

Up close, a different story emerges. The Ford plant is a modern, high-tech factory, manned by highly skilled Mexican workers - and a pioneer in a process that is beginning to establish a manufacturing zone in northern Mexico that might some day rival South Korea or Taiwan or even the American Middle West.

Most of the force behind this process comes from United States companies, particularly auto manufacturers, that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in up-to-date plants, whose products range from Kodak cameras and I.B.M. computers to Whirlpool appliances and Caterpillar forklift trucks. Big European and Japanese companies, including Volkswagen, Nissan and Sony, and several Mexican companies are also part of the movement. And their marketplace is primarily the United States.

The emergence of a high-tech industrial zone in northern Mexico, one roughly as large as California, would significantly alter both the United States and Mexican economies. If the movement takes root - and the factories do not pull up stakes in a decade or so - northern Mexico will become an extension of the United States manufacturing base, in effect increasing America's most sophisticated industrial capacity.

''Ford was among the first to demonstrate, with its Chihuahua engine plant, that the most sophisticated, high-quality manufacturing can be carried out in a rural, third world city that lacks experienced workers or adequate roads and communications,'' said Harley Shaiken, an economist at the University of California at San Diego, who has studied manufacturing in northern Mexico.

Perhaps most important, northern Mexico would add to the American labor force a pool of skilled workers, technicians and engineers, numbering perhaps two or three million people, whose wages for many years would probably be lower than their American counterparts. Already these new workers are showing up in neighborhoods of newly built, two-story apartments in Chihuahua, Monterrey, Hermosillo and Saltillo. Many have rooftop television dishes aimed north to capture American stations.

So far, United States labor unions have not strongly challenged the growing presence of these skilled workers, who earn only a fraction of the wages and benefits that are paid to American workers with similar skills. ''But if the United States unemployment rate were to rise during a recession, then what is happening in Mexico is likely to arouse considerable protest,'' Mr. Shaiken said.

After Ford came to Chihuahua in 1983, General Motors, Nissan, Volkswagen and Chrysler soon set up similar export-oriented engine plants, and now modern auto manufacturing plants are also being built, the most notable being a recently opened Ford factory in Hermosillo that makes cars for the United States.

The Second Stage

The new industrialization represents a second stage of manufacturing investment in Mexico. First came the assembly plants that are ubiquitous in northern Mexico. Known as maquiladoras, they are simple, labor-intensive operations that import parts for assembly into finished products that are then exported. Despite their numbers, the maquiladoras accounted for only 30 percent of Mexico's $12.5 billion in manufacturing exports last year. They create little wealth for the nation, beyond the $3 or $4 a day paid to the thousands of unkilled, often semiliterate workers.

In the second stage, Ford and the others are putting down deeper roots, carrying out most of the manufacturing process here. They have helped to double Mexico's manufacturing exports since 1985. Their success has depended on tapping into a hitherto ignored pool of Mexicans who have little manufacturing experience but are graduates of technical and vocational schools in every big city.

Big Technical Schools

Most of the schools are state-run, but some are private, the most famous being the Monterrey Technology Institute. It is a college level school with 45,000 students, several campuses and millions of dollars in support from private industry. I.B.M. and Apple Computer, for example, donated $20 million for a research center, not so much to develop technologies, but to teach existing skills.

Ford hired from this pool of workers for its new engine plant, which gave Chihuahua, until then a cattle and mining center, the town's first experience with heavy industry. The recruits learned not only to run the assembly line but also to maintain and repair the computerized machinery, and even to improve upon the manufacturing process.

''In the beginning, we had 50 Americans to train these people and to transfer our engine technology and engineering procedures, but now these skills are spread among many Mexican technicians and supervisors and we have only three Americans left here, including myself,'' said Lyle L. Raymond, the plant manager.

Ford officials brag that the 950 Mexican employees in Chihuahua are as productive as their American counterparts who manufacture the same four-cylinder engine in Lima, Ohio. The workers here earn $3 to $5 an hour, including benefits, while Ford's American employees receive more than $15 an hour.

A Typical Worker

Fernando Llanas, 30 years old, a graduate of the state-run Technology Institute here, is typical of the new work force. A supervisor at the Ford plant, he manages a team that both operates and repairs the computerized equipment that machines engine blocks and crankshafts. Before joining Ford in 1982, he considered emigrating to the United States. Now he earns $1,000 a month, a wage handsome enough in Chihuahua that his wife does not have to work. The couple have three daughters.

''I knew nothing about factories when I came here,'' Mr. Llanas said. ''I spent two months in Michigan for training and people came from there to teach us.'' Today, he and his colleagues train the newcomers, who always start as assemblers, and work their way up, through a series of in-house training sessions and exams, to technician and supervisor.

Now the Mexico-United States free-trade agreement, just entering the negotiation stage, is likely to accelerate the industrialization of northern Mexico. Without tariff barriers, manufacturing companies, foreign and Mexican, would concentrate on high-volume production. Each plant would be dedicated to a single product, to supply markets in both countries. Factories that for years served only the protected Mexican market would probably be forced out of business as too costly, or upgraded to high-volume production.

But free trade and open borders are still years in the future. For the moment, the foreign companies come for two main reasons: the pool of low-cost, skilled labor and the need to meet a Government requirement that foreign companies generate exports as a quid-pro-quo for the right to serve the Mexican market.

The Chihuahua plant, in fact, was a gamble on Ford's part to try to fulfill this requirement and compete more effectively against Japan by staffing a factory with low-cost labor sufficiently skilled to produce a world-class engine. Major Mexican companies have adopted the same strategy.

Joint Ventures

Whirlpool, for example, is installing a washing machine factory in Monterrey, in a joint venture with Vitro Inc., a Mexican conglomerate that manufactures glass products. Whirlpool pursues lower labor costs while Vitro seeks the technology to manufacture appliances on its own for export to the United States.

''We know that the Mexican labor advantage won't last forever; maybe 5 or 10 years more,'' said Tomas Gonzalez Sada, president of Vitro Household Products, the joint venture subsidiary. ''Once wages rise and the advantage is gone, and Whirlpool perhaps departs, we want to have the technology to continue on our own.''

Vitro's strategy will undoubtedly work, economists say. But Mexico has only about 10 manufacturing conglomerates, and they cannot by themselves sustain northern Mexico as an industrial power.

Foreign corporations are indispensable, businessmen and government officials say. But whether they stay, once Mexican wages have risen, depends on whether these companies find themselves hooked on Mexico. Probably the biggest hook is the development of a nearby network of reliable parts suppliers.

Decision Due in November

That, at least, is a major issue in Ford's thinking. The four-cylinder engine made here is soon to be phased out, and by November, Ford will decide whether to retool the plant, a process that could require tens of millions of dollars for new machinery to manufacture a new engine. Ford could also decide to move the factory to another country, the main candidate being the United States.

''The decision will probably be determined by Ford's overall global strategy,'' Mr. Raymond said. ''But a major consideration is ties with local suppliers.''

Those ties have come slowly, mostly because Mexican suppliers have had difficulty meeting quality standards. When the engine plant opened seven years ago, 65 percent of the parts were brought by truck or rail from the United States. Now this has been whittled to 50 percent.

Fuel injectors, some valves, the flywheel, the electrical harness and other items are still imported. But Mexican companies now supply the engine block, the intake manifold, clutch plates, piston rods, gaskets and, soon, the oil pan.

Seeking Suppliers

Above all, Ford wanted a Mexican supplier for the engine block, a heavy item that is expensive to ship from a Ford plant in Cleveland. The company finally found Cifunsa, a manufacturer in Saltillo that had been making the blocks for years, but only to the standards required for cars made and sold within Mexico.

Cifunsa was forced into a major upgrade, including a $150 million investment in a new plant. Although Ford did not underwrite the upgrade, it insisted that Cifunsa acquire engine block technology from Fiat and for months Italian technicians worked at the Saltillo factory, helping to train its employees and transferring the technology. ''We started with 27 Italians and we still have three here,'' said Ernesto Garza Martinez, Cifunsa's general director.

Ford experts also spent months at the company, supervising quality. To achieve the cost reductions that come with high volume, Cifunsa was encouraged to also supply engine blocks to General Motors, Chrysler and Volkswagen as well.

Now those engine blocks are less expensive than any available in the United States, Mr. Garza Martinez says, in part because Cifunsa's 2,000 employees are paid much less than their American counterparts.

''We aren't able to make breakthroughs in engine block technology,'' Mr. Garza Martinez said. ''But when others introduce improvements, we are now in a position to apply them quickly to our operation. And we now have in our hands the Fiat process.''