Houston City Council Confirms Herb Sims to Run Human Resources and Rebekah Williams to Lead Neighborhoods - and Orders the Airport Study Back in 90 Days
Tuesday's session filled two of City Hall's top jobs in one vote day - the Neighborhoods director moving over to HR, his successor confirmed behind him - and attached a 90-day reporting string to an airport efficiency study, after a previous $770,000 study whose findings council says it never saw.
Houston's City Council spent Tuesday rearranging the top of City Hall's org chart. In its consolidated session at the City Hall Annex on November 10, the council confirmed Herb Sims as the city's Human Resources Director and Rebekah Williams to lead the Department of Neighborhoods, according to the session record read in full this run - the mayor's two department picks, confirmed on the same day, in a session that worked 62 items with 32 speakers.
The moves are connected. Sims does not arrive at Human Resources from outside the building - he moves there from the Department of Neighborhoods, the office he has been running, and Williams steps into the Neighborhoods role behind him. Human Resources is the department that hires, disciplines and pays the city's workforce; Neighborhoods is the one residents meet over code enforcement, permitting help and community services. Tuesday's votes put confirmed leadership over both at once.
The day's accountability item rode on the airport agenda. Council approved the airport efficiency study with an amendment from Councilmember Ramirez requiring the Ernst & Young findings to come back to the Budget Committee within 90 days - an amendment the session record says exists because the council never saw the results of a previous $770,000 E&Y study. The condition is the story: the city is paying for a second look at its airports with a reporting deadline attached, so this study's findings land in a public committee whether or not anyone circulates them.
The council's next session is November 17, and its headline item is already set: canvassing the results of Proposition A, the charter amendment Houston voters approved on marijuana enforcement and no-knock warrants. Between the confirmations, the airport deadline and the canvass, Tuesday's meeting set the table for the rest of City Hall's November.
