More On Airport Capacity Increase

There seems to be obfuscation and confusion about what constitutes an increase in airport capacity. It seems that airport capacity can be increased in multiple ways, but, only three ways when one does not change the length of the runway. The City wants the airport to be "profitable". This can be accomplished by increasing the number of aircraft operations. e.g. more fuel sales.

1. Increase the number of "operations" of existing types of airplanes (less than 30,000 lbs) by attracting more airplanes through a variety of incentives. e.g. enhanced services, lower cost services, etc.

2. Increase the number of "operations" by introducing a class of different (larger) airplanes (up to 70,000+ lbs) that will add to the existing "operations". This is accomplished by upgrading the runway to accommodate heavier airplanes.

3. Increase the number of "operations" by a combination of 1&2 above.

Scenario 2 increases airport capacity in two ways. One, the number of "operations" increase due to the new weight class of airplane using the airport that were not able to use it before because of runway weight restrictions. Two, the larger aircraft carry more people or cargo than the existing class of airplane.

Thus, the City Council's desire and action to increase the aircraft weight capability at Georgetown airport is indeed an increase in airport capacity.

If I were the airport manager, I would be working on scenario 3 with all my energy, because, he will be rewarded for making the airport "profitable" and the way to do that is increase the number of "operations" that are allowable within the airport reference code C-II. No runway extension would be necessary and no new airplane hangars or other capital intensive improvements would be required to increase the airport utilization.

Beware the "Californication" of Texas

According to a recent editorial in THE SUN newspaper,"Urbanism Experts" are here in Williamson County planning on developing the Cobb Cavern Ranch into a new Utopia. The ranch property is located a little over a mile north of the intersection of Ronald Reagan Blvd and CR 239, just east of Hwy 195. This property is likely within the Georgetown ETJ and is certainly within the Georgetown water service area since Georgetown took over Chisholm Trail water district. The property is owned by an Austin lawyer/developer and previous Georgetown City Councilman. One can be sure that the property will likely become part of Georgetown at sometime in the future, despite any protestations you may hear.

Utopia will consist of some 3,000 homes, ranging from small (800 SF) to very large homes, squeezed onto 40% of the land. Whoopee!  People of widely varying income levels and interest will be forced into compact living spaces along transportation corridors, a prime objective of the United Nations' Agenda-21 program. The different neighborhoods will be "walkable" -- that is a common Agenda-21 buzz word! The development will be "environmentally friendly" and "economically sustainable" -- both of these are also common Agenda-21 buzz words. But, there was nothing said about where all the jobs and work places would be to make it "economically sustainable".

Georgetown residents BEWARE! This is exactly the kind of thinking that has destroyed California -- the former "Golden State". This kind of development will attract residents who believe in the power of the "collective" and central planning rather than the freedom and independence of the individual.

Airport Capacity Increase

The City is requesting funds from TxDOT that are to be matched by the City to rehabilitate runway 11-29 and to repave runway 18-36. The total project costs are estimated to be $3,475,000 with $240,000 to be expended in 2016 with the balance expended in 2017.

Representatives from the Airport Concerned Citizens group requested that public input be included prior to requesting funds. The Council ignored the request and directed the City Manager to request the funds.

Reading the relevant airport documents indicate the existing main runway will support aircraft up to 30,000 lb gross takeoff weight. The repaving of runway 18-36 would allow aircraft weighing up to 60,000 lbs with single wheel main gear and dual wheel main gear aircraft up to 70,000+ lbs to operate into and out of the airport. Numerous Council members adamantly proclaimed that the airport was not being expanded, and that is true with respect to airport runway lengths and boundaries.  It is definitely not true with respect to aircraft weight and thus size! There may be good reasons for expanding the capacity of the airport, but, denying the capacity is to be expanded is not a hallmark of good government.

The following is an email sent to the mayor and several Council members.

In reviewing the Council meeting last Tuesday, WHY did no one address the issue of increasing the takeoff and landing weight capacity of the main runway? That is clearly a capacity expansion of the airport. I can easily show you the typical 30,000 lb max takeoff weight airplane and the typical 70,000 lb takeoff weight airplane. The 70,000 lb airplane is significantly larger! The FAA/TxDOT airport designation C-II clearly allows 70,000 lb aircraft. Currently, the runway supports only 30,000 lb aircraft. It is clearly within City authority to maintain a runway at 30,000 lb capacity and not maintain it at 70,000 lb capacity. Thus the City needs to admit it is increasing the capacity of the airport, just not the land boundaries.

Ask your City Council to be honest when dealing with the citizens of Georgetown.

Tidbits from General Government and Finance Advisory Board Meeting

The Police Chiefs proposal to establish and join a regional SWAT team faced significant hard questioning from Councilman Gonzales, who is also a member of the General Government and Finance Advisory Board. He pointed out that Georgetown, Cedar Park, and Leander are among the safest cities in Texas and the need for SWAT has been and is expected to be minimal.

Councilman Gonzales also questioned whether or not Georgetown could be liable for operations in the other member cities. There was no definitive response to that question.  Councilman Gonzales also pointed out that Williamson County maintains a SWAT team that is stationed in Georgetown.  Round Rock also has a SWAT team that can be called upon for backup.

Since this presentation by the Police Chief was more about the need to establish such a regional team than the finances associated with it, the board took no action and will wait for the City Council to decide whether or not to participate in such an interlocal team.

More Clarifying Info on Renewable Electric Energy

Gary Pitt has penned another letter to the editor of the WILCO Sun correcting another letter writers claim that excess solar energy is stored in the Grid and used later.

Electric grid's paltry storage capacity

Dr Kahn's letter of June 14 illustrates the need to educate the general public about some energy fundamentals. Dr Kahn assumes that excess power feeds into the grid where it is "essentially stored." This is a troubling assumption [because it] is essentially not true.

An Electric Reliability Council of Texas [ERCOT manages Texas electric grid] report dated February 2015 states that they have 36 megawatts of battery storage in a grid with 74000 MW capacity. So energy stored is 0.049 percent of capacity: in reality there is no storage available on the grid.

Donna Nelson, chair of the Texas Public Utility Commission said in March 2015 that wind and solar energy are inconsistent and fossil fuels are needed to power the grid during times the wind dies and the sun isn't shining.

We are fortunate to expect our power to be available 100 percent of the time. Today renewables cannot deliver on that promise.

Look, I am not against renewables and support continuing research in that arena. I just believe we should be reasonable about expectations regarding cost and availability.

GARY PITT

Duck Creek Lane

Proposed Central Texas Regional S.W.A.T. Team

The cities of Georgetown, Cedar Park, and Leander are proposing the formation of a regional SWAT team (CTRS).  The proposal will be presented at the next General Government and Finance Advisory Board meeting on Tuesday, June 16 at 3:30 pm at 510 West 9th street in Georgetown.  Details of the proposal can be found on the city meeting agenda website.http://agendas.georgetown.org/

The proposed scope of operations follows:

The Chief of Police from each Participating Law Enforcement Agency shall designate a representative or representatives who shall be authorized to request CTRS assistance in response to the following situations, including but not limited to:
 • Barricaded Persons
 • Hostage Situations
 • Active Shooter Situations
 • Hazardous Warrant Service
 • Terrorist Incidents
 • Dignitary Protection Details
 • Riot/Crowd Control Situations
 • Missing Person Searches
 • Strategic National Stockpile Delivery
 • Any event in which a member agency’s resources have been depleted and the agency is not capable of providing an effective response

It is the author's opinion that some of the aforementioned situations do require the services of SWAT, but, others clearly do not. Citizens need to make input to the city to make their opinions known on this subject.

More EMS Information

The Fire Chief has disclosed that 12 paramedics were hired in February, 2015.  The plan is to have 32 paramedics on staff by October 1, 2015 to assume responsibility for all EMS calls within the city of Georgetown and Emergency Services District 8.  It was also disclosed that the city will transition its fire engines to be advanced life support vehicles.

Keep in mind that no one within the city staff or Council talks about how much this is going to cost the Georgetown and EMS District 8 taxpayers. A strict accounting of these new costs must be demanded. An incomplete list of new costs follows:

1.  Medical Director on city staff
2.  Training and certification of most fire fighters to be paramedics
3.  Pay differential for paramedics over fire fighters
4.  4 new fully equipped ambulances and maintenance thereof
5.  Equipping fire engines to be advanced life support vehicles
6.  Additional life cycle costs of pension and health care for the new and higher paid paramedics and management required for EMS
7.  Replacement costs of ambulances every "X" years
8.  Additional staff/systems to operate medical transport billing system
9.  Additional staff also requires additional space and personnel and payroll services
10. Additional fire fighter/paramedic staff due to EMS

Remember also, that county taxes will not decrease as a result of the county no longer providing EMS.  The residents of the city and EMS District 8 will continue to pay taxes to support the county EMS which will be deployed to under-served parts of the county.  In fact, the county taxpayer supported EMS budget may have to increase to compensate for the loss of transport revenue from insurance companies for transports in Georgetown and EMS District 8.

Make your city fully account for the EMS costs!

Citizens Concerned About Airport Growth and Lack of Transparency

A group of concerned citizens that live near the Georgetown airport continue to express their dismay regarding the non-responsiveness of the city staff and Council for their concerns about the quality of life in their neighborhood.  The following is a letter they have submitted to their councilman in district 5.

Dear Councilman Gipson,

Your first important vote on the airport is rapidly coming to you as quickly as staff can place it on council’s next earliest agenda.  GTAB at its June 12th meeting voted to approve staff’s recommendation for its non-prior announced agenda Item “I”.  That recommendation is for city council to approve a pre-drafted letter from the city manager to TxDOT AVN for a $3.1 Million 90% federal grant to upgrade RW 18/36 to support 60,000 pound single-wheel loading.  Such runway strengthening would accommodate larger, heavier, and noisier aircraft than can currently operate off that runway.  According to the GRW-Willis 2005 Master Plan, RW 18/36 currently can accommodate up to 30,000 pound single-wheel loadings.

 

It is my understanding from the said master plan that the critical aircraft family for an airport determines the AIRPORT REFERENCE CODE (ARC), the classification system used to relate aircraft approach speeds and wingspan to airport design criteria.  The ARC has two components: the first is a letter depicting the aircraft’s approach category and relates to the aircraft’s approach speed.  The second depicted by a roman numeral is the airplane design group and related to airplane wingspan (physical characteristics). These are demonstrated by the following examples:

 

Category B: Aircraft approach speed 94 knots or more but less than 121 knots.

Category C: Aircraft approach speed 121 knots or more but less than 141 knots

Group II:      Wingspan of 49 feet up to but not including 70 feet.

 

Currently, RW 18/36 is designated to accommodate C-II aircraft.  RW 11/29 is designated to accommodate B-II aircraft.

 

Currently, per GRW-Willis, the pavement of RW 18/36 is capable of supporting 30,000 pound single-wheel loadings, which is in the low end of pavement strength required to accommodate jets in ARC C-II category. Pavement strength for RW 11/29 is 12,500 single-wheel loadings.  RW 11/29 is restricted from accommodating any aircraft weighing 12,500 pounds or more.

 

GRW-Willis recommended in its master plan that RW 18/36 be upgraded to 60,000 pounds dual-wheel loads as this improvement would allow accommodation of almost the full range of jets in the ARC C-II category and upgrade RW 11/29 to 30,000 pounds single –wheel loads to share in some of the high noise aircraft operations.  

 

GTAB at its June meeting approved staff’s recommendation to council for its approval of a letter from the city manager to TxDOT AVN requesting a $3.1 Million 90% federal grant to upgrade RW 18/36 to60,000 pounds single-wheel loads.

 

There is no question that such a modification would allow bigger, heavier and noisier aircraft to operate on a regular day and night basis from our airport than currently authorized.  However, questions remain as to what extent does this expansion in operations service represent as to the size, weight and noise of such new aircraft compared to those we now experience.  The Airport Manager never addressed that issue to the GTAB and no GTAB members requested the information. 

 

Clearly, clarity of new type aircraft that would be accommodated by construction implementation of the GTAB recommendation and the issue of their adverse impacts on residents of District 5 and the entire community requires full and complete vetting for the entire community.  There is also the issue of necessity of a new Part 150 Noise Compatibility Study due to these new proposed operational aircraft. This proposed item for city council agenda should be sent back to the GTAB for such full vetting in a free and open workshop in which the general public can freely participate.

 

I and a small group of ACC members would appreciate an opportunity to meet with you for a discussion of this issue.

Respectfully,

Hugh (Carl) Norris

Georgetown Transportation Advisory Board Meeting Observations

The GTAB met on Friday, June 12, 2015.  The primary issues discussed related to the Georgetown Airport and the Transit Development Plan with Capitol Metro.

With respect to the airport, it seems the Board and staff is ill-equipped to deal with the complex technical issues involved with making policy recommendations for operating an airport.  There was much floundering around with the issue of pricing aviation gas and jet fuel.  No decisions were made because of incomplete information necessary to make a rational recommendation to City Council.

There were several presentations by members of the public concerning the Airport Capital Improvement plan to repair and maintain runway 18/36 via a grant request from TxDOT.  Several citizens were concerned that the runway capacity is being increased to accommodate aircraft takeoff gross weights up to 60,000 lbs, a doubling from the existing 30,000 lb capability.

A developer recommended that the main runway be extended to accommodate larger aircraft.

The Airport Manager emphasized this is a maintenance effort only and the proposed repairs were recommended by a "consultant".  There were no discussions with respect to the consultant's qualifications nor were typical aircraft identified that would be expected to use the upgraded runway.  It was emphasized that the airport design criteria, C-II, were not being changed, even though the FAA has changed the calculation methodology used in defining acceptable aircraft wheel weight.  All in all, a data and fact free, disjointed presentation.

As with all public meetings, the Chair proceeded with the published agenda without acknowledgement of the citizens concerns!

Further analysis of airport issues will be forthcoming in an effort to make clear the direction the city is taking with the airport.

With respect to the Transit Development Plan, two items are worth pointing out.  One, it will cost $466,000 to provide the service.  At maturity, 2 years, 3 years?, 20,000 riders are expected annually.  With a fare of $1.50, that will generate $30,000 per year in revenue.  The net cost to the taxpayer for 20,000 riders is $436,000, or $21.80 per trip.

Two, it was revealed that the CARTS curb-to-curb on demand system that is currently operating, costs $36 per trip.  8942 passengers used CARTS last fiscal year at a cost of $322,000.

At a cost to the city of $22 to $36 per trip, it seems the city should consider reimbursing riders and let them use Uber or similar services.  I am sure that they could provide a superior service at a lower cost!

Great Letter to WILCO Sun on Georgetown Green Energy Claim

Gary Pitt, a retired IBM engineer had a letter to the editor published today which he has graciously allowed me to post here. He makes great points on the Green Energy claim by Georgetown and provides new data.

Georgetown Not 100% Renewable

The city of Georgetown has received considerable press and accolades for the recently announced plan to move to 100% renewable electric energy by 2017 with contracts for wind and solar farms. Unfortunately, there are times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining and these sources will not supply required power. During those times, Georgetown will rely on the grid managed by ERCOT. Last year, the grid got 88 % of its energy from natural gas, coal, and nuclear. Therefore, Georgetown will be dependent on non-renewables when solar and wind are inadequate. The City estimates this will happen about 2% of the time which seems small but is about 29 minutes a day or 175 hours a year. The claim of 100% renewable is inaccurate; wind and solar cannot meet that claim and storage technologies are not available to back them up. This is important to understand because electric providers are getting political and regulation pressures to put more renewables on line. And yet, to provide consistent power, the renewables must be backed up with fossil fuel or nuclear generators. In the end, we consumers have to pay for this redundancy.  I believe my view and concerns are shared by the Texas Public Utility Commission Chairman, Donna Nelson who addressed this issue at Texas Tech law school early March of this year. (http://lubbockonline.com/education/2015-03-02/public-utility-commission-chair-speaks-against-clean-power-plan-texas-tech-law#.VWPgwl1FC71)

The internet has numerous articles praising Georgetown’s plan to go all renewable with few mentions of the grid dependency for consistent power. My concern is the city of Georgetown is generating a false set of expectations regarding renewable energy. If all utilities in Texas followed Georgetown’s example, we would have a disaster on our hands.

Gary Pitt

Georgetown, TX

Stay tuned as more information and analysis is forthcoming!

Fresh Tidbits from the City of Georgetown

The City Council authorized spending $373,250 on 2 new Dodge 6.7L diesel ambulances at the council meeting this week.

The council authorized the Fire Department at 105 employees in addition to the Chief.


Chief                   1
Assistant Chief         2
Fire Battalion Chief    5
Fire Captain            9
Fire Lieutenant        17
Fire Driver            21
Firefighter            51
Total                 106

The number of firefighters required to be paramedics was not identified, but, it is safe to assume many of the 51 firefighters will eventually become qualified paramedics to assure maximum scheduling flexibility.  It should also be noted that at least 10 of the 106 positions are devoted to management and support personnel. A detailed breakdown will be available when the Department budget is submitted.

Over the last 10 years the number of personnel in the Fire Department has grown from 55 in 2005 to 106 in 2015. That is a growth rate of 5 3/4%. The number of personnel in management and support has grown from 3 to 10 people. At the same time the budget has grown at a 10.32% annual rate, and that does not include the recent assumption of ambulance service in the city. The population grew at a 3.6% annual rate over the same period. It is clear that Fire Department staff and budget are increasing significantly faster than the population of Georgetown.

The Council authorized leasing 3600 SF in the new Public Safety Center to the Texas Attorney General for its Law Enforcement Division for 5 years with options for 5 additional 1 year leases. The lease requires payment to the city of $1450/month for utilities and janitorial services. Selected Georgetown police employees will also be trained in digital forensics by the Law Enforcement Division.

Water restrictions have been lifted throughout the Georgetown service area as a result of the recent rains.

Up coming items include a review of the UDC code that will include amendments and public hearings and a review of the recently passed bond spending plan.

The staff is bring forth a proposal for city employees to assume operation of the waste water and water treatment plants. These plants are currently operated under contract. This bears watching to assure the economic analysis considers the life costs of additional employees including retirement and lifetime health insurance costs. Assuming these operations in-house certainly reduce the flexibility of the city to reduce staff in the event of an economic down-turn or a change in treatment and processing technology.

Finally, discussions on the Capital Improvements for the Georgetown electrical system were held in executive session. It seems that more changes are coming that the council does not want the citizens to know about until it is too late to effect any change,.