If you announced a shelter, what we would have had is people who were fearful would have rushed to the shelter and they would have been overwhelmed and the people on the streets would be...

We’re very pleased with All-Star Week. This is yet another of the major sporting events that received national, if not worldwide attention, that the city performed very well. We’ll look to continue to host these...

When there’s a criminal investigation going on, we can’t go in like a bull in a china shop, asking questions.

We think the major shelters will be closed next week.

The justification cited was increased costs of services and supplies. We don’t have any written documentation.

We’ve worked long and hard for several months to try to bring MLS soccer here. Houston is a great sports town and the fan base for soccer is a great one.

The city of Houston has a $2 billion-a-year budget, … so $3 million is not going to make or break your city budget.

I’m not privy to what the investigators are doing or saying or talking about. We’re going to let them do their jobs.

We are a city of four million people. Did we take care of everyone? Probably not. Are there homeless people with mental difficulties we couldn’t help? Yes. We’ve made an effort to help. In our...

We’re essentially picking up a small city and inserting it into Houston.

What they’re doing with it, I don’t know.

We’re working hard to make the housing department more efficient and provide more affordable housing. Those efforts aren’t diminished. But we’re complying with what the Housing and Urban Development department has said.

[In the Sept. 3 article] Katrina revives old lessons, … We are going to try to define our limits as a society and do it to the best of our ability.

This has been going on all over the country.

Houston is a business town, and we’ll go after all the business we can get.

Is it unfair to the people who have been on the waiting list for years? Probably. But it’s the reality of dealing with a crisis situation,

We think we’ve been in the cross hairs of history … been on the bad side of that with hurricanes and dealing with those things. Now some good is coming.

The state law is clear … they are required to take the test at the same time and in the same place so they’re all together. The way they grade the tests, everyone stays in...

The weekend meeting was set up shortly after that.

He was an old-school journalist who believed in having his facts straight.

They are basically doing what we do when we get extremely cold conditions,

People need to begin to take responsibility for themselves.

but we were told Friday that they [FEMA] had put $39 million in the bank.

We think the program is proving to be very successful, saving Houstonians a lot of money and cutting down on freeway collisions.

Here less is more,

It’s always a major undertaking when you get that many people coming from so many places around the country and from around the world. We’ve had a lot of practice at it.