Year in Review, Part 1

It has been a year of many challenges for the taxpayers of Georgetown. Many battles to curb the growth of Georgetown's government have been fought, some won, more lost and still many on-going.

The battle to keep the MRAP(Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle from being used to intimidate the citizens was initially won, but, was last in the end. Our police department now has a military vehicle.

The battle with Lone Star Rail is still lurking under the radar. Capital costs of approximately $2 Billion for the passenger rail line and $1.16 Billion for relocation of the Union Pacific rail line will be funded primarily by: (1) yet-to-be-acquired grants from the Federal Government, (2) appropriations or grants from the Texas state government, and (3)the issuance of bonds by Lone Star Rail. It is well understood the taxpayer will shoulder all of these unknown costs.

Approximately $50 Million dollars worth of parking and street and road improvements have been identified by the City of Georgetown around the proposed station. They plan on issuing bonds to pay for these improvements. At current bond rates and a typical 20 year duration bond, property taxes on the average $210,000 Georgetown home would increase by about $187 per year. Remember that the current property tax bill levied by the City on the average home is about $911 annually. Also, this estimate assumes that the entire bond costs would be paid by property owners whose property taxes are not frozen due to being over 65 years in age.

Heavy rail is one of the biggest wealth transfer schemes ever imposed on the American people. Few use the service(<1%) and the remainder pay for it.

Debt is the stealth destroyer of a community. It is difficult to find consistent debt numbers for the city, however, the total debt identified in the 2015 Debt Overview document to be presented in next week's council workshop is $191,970,008. The city separates the debt into three categories, (1) Tax Supported - $103,056,309, (2) Self-Supported - $16,760,348, and (3) Revenue Bonds - $72,153,351 for the total of $191,970,008. It is observed that is a substantial increase over 2014.

Debt has been increasing at a greater than 10% rate through 2015 while population + inflation increased less than 6% annually.

The city has been on a tear enacting more ordinances for citizens to comply with or face fines. Banning deer feeding, establishing fees for Uber-like services and embracing International Building Codes. The City enacted a requirement for any person or business to engage in the non-emergency ambulance transfer service within the City ofGeorgetown or its ETJ. this is a mechanism for controlling private enterprise, aggregating additional power to the City, and another method of acquiring funds for the City. A franchise or license granted by the City is a barrier to entry for persons or businesses to engage in a legitimate business.

Of course our City Council gave themselves a nice pay raise in April. In regular session the council voted to increase their own compensation to $800/month for council members and to $1100/month for the mayor.

The BIG decision made by the Council in 2015 was to takeover operation of the Emergency Medical Services(EMS) within the City and ETJ. This was a pure and simple power grab as the citizens were being provided award winning services by Williamson County. The city had to purchase ambulances at $250,000 apiece and hire staff to man them. The council bought the story that this would be revenue neutral as all the costs would be recovered from insurance company payments. This city has "promised" to provide an accounting of the costs of this takeover. 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

11. Diesel mechanic for ambulances

Another big event was the announcement by the city that they had contracted with a solar company and a wind energy company to provide Georgetown 100% renewable energy in 2016. We do not know if this was good for the citizens of Georgetown or not, as the city will not release the terms of the contracts to the public!

Citizens learned that the City planned on doubling the landing weight capacity and increasing fueling capacity by 60%. This of course means more air traffic into and out of the airport. A group of citizens that live around the airport has formed a group call the Airport Concerned Citizens(ACC) to curb the expansion. So far the City has ignored these citizen's concerns. The ACC has not given up the fight and continues through a variety of means to stop the growth of the airport.