“This is probably why parking tickets were down. People got laid off and moved away from Houston.”
If the population was dropping why the need to increase the number of Meter Maids from four to 17?
Hubris. The first paragraph that I excerpted spoke to the city thinking they were in fine shape. There was a building boom going on, so they were expecting an increase in traffic and workers downtown.
As to the white/black change, I can't say. This was during the Kathy Whitmire administration.
-PJ