Georgetown Electric - the Gift that Keeps on Taking

The city mid-year budget amendment shows the extent of the costs imposed on residents by the decision to go with renewable energy on 20 and 25 year contracts.

Keep in mind the FY2019 electric budget included a 4.33% increase in base rate effective January 1, 2019.

The initial 2019 budget identified the following expense line items in the Electric fund:

Purchased Power                 $48,000,000
Congestion Credits              ($ 3,500,000)
Transfer to General Fund      $ 5,610,000

The budget was amended on January 8, 2019.

Power Cost Adjustment                $2,469,834
Reduce General Fund transfer to $4,325,000

The budget was again amended May, 28, 2019 and included the following expense line items.

Purchased Power                 $53,185,477
Congestion Credits              ($ 3,000,000)
Legal Fees                            $   455,000
Salary Savings                     ($   171,004)

The net increase in the expenditures for the Electric Fund is $5,969,473 since January 8, 2019. You might ask where are they getting this additional $6M? Why, they are increasing the Power Cost Adjustment to bring in another $6M. Coupled with the Power Cost Adjustment in January, the city is extracting $8.5M from the rate payers just through the PCA!

Oh! Isn't it wonderful that the city is now incurring $.5M in legal fees related to the renewable energy! Who knows when that will quit?

Notice the city is still transferring $4,325,000 to the General Fund from the Electric Fund. Why is that??? Shouldn't Electric Fund revenue be used to pay Electric Fund expenses?

Electric Bills Increasing Again!!

David Morgan

City Manager
(512) 930-3723
May 29, 2019

Energy charge increasing again June 1 Georgetown

The City again needs to increase the power cost adjustment, or PCA, on customers' electric bills. This follows an initial increase in February that was originally expected to be reduced in September.

The PCA allows the City to compensate for fluctuations in purchased power cost and is one tool to ensure the stability of the electric fund. The City has increased and decreased the PCA several times over the years in response to changing energy prices.

The increased costs for energy is in part tied to energy providers not being able to supply energy to the statewide electric grid. This phenomena, known as congestion, occurs when there is more energy generated than is needed to meet demand. If the energy is not consumed, the transmission lines "fill up," breaching their limits, which can cause reliability issues. This congestion increases the overall cost of energy for the City.

Customers will incur an increase of $0.00625 per kilowatt hour, resulting in a new PCA of $0.02375 per kilowatt hour. This new PCA amount will be assessed on electric consumption starting June 1. The average customer uses 949 kilowatt hours per month and will experience a $5.93 increase on their monthly bill. During the summer, the average use increases to 1,600 kilowatt hours, resulting in an increase to $10 on their monthly bill.

"As we get through this fiscal year, we will revisit the PCA," City Manager David Morgan said. "Based on the current performance of the City's energy contracts and uncertainty regarding the energy costs this summer, fully reducing the PCA may not be possible."

The City has taken steps to address congestion, as well as securing new third-party energy management partners that are able to more rapidly respond and react to changing market conditions and better ensure against market volatility. Along with bringing on new partners, the city is focusing on internal and external resources to increase the reporting, oversight, and accountability for decision-making related to the energy contracts.

Utility bond rating adjusted

This week, rating agency Standard and Poor's adjusted the City's combined water and electric utility bond rating from AA to AA-.

The factors cited in Georgetown's rating include the energy the City is under contract to purchase above what is needed to serve customers, above average customer electric rates, as well as low energy prices and transmission congestion in the statewide energy grid.

However, S&P highlights a stable credit outlook for the utility, citing strong debt and cash management, continued customer growth, and a strong local economy. The new rating is expected to increase costs for issuing debt by less than 0.1 percent.

"Although it's disappointing, a AA- rating is still in line with or better than most utilities our size," Morgan said. "In Texas, similarly sized city-owned utilities have bond ratings that range from A- to AA."

"We are working to address the issues highlighted in the rating as soon as we can," Morgan added. "This is a multi-year challenge. There is no silver bullet or short-term solution. Our current focus is bringing in new partners to help improve the day-to-day management of our energy portfolio."

The search for a new general manager begins

The City will be reorganizing the management of its water and electric utilities as part of the budget process currently underway. Earlier this month, long-time General Manager of Utilities Jim Briggs announced he will retire at the end of September. Current Utility Director Glenn Dishong will continue to lead the City's water utility, and the City will begin the search for a new general manager of electric this summer.

The new general manager of electric will focus on improving the performance of the City's energy portfolio, developing new measures to evaluate portfolio performance, as well as clarifying the process for how these measures are shared in meaningful ways with City Council and the public. This person will also be developing and implementing a comprehensive risk management policy that sets boundaries on risk tolerances, financial obligations, and guides decision-making at all levels of the electric utility. Finally, they will be charged with studying alternative governance structures for the electric utility (e.g., a separate oversight board) and the implications of opting into the competitive retail market.

City Awards Contract for I 35 Overpass Connecting Rivery and Austin Ave

The City Council approved a contract to build a new bridge over I35 and it is expected that construction will begin in July and finish by July 2020.

This project is for the construction of the Northwest Blvd Bridge over IH35 connecting Austin Avenue to Rivery Blvd. The project will provide an addition Interstate Highway crossing and help relieve congestion on Austin Avenue and Williams Drive. The project will consist of 4 lanes and ultimately connection to (1) the Rivery Blvd extension currently under construction on the west end and (2) the forthcoming FM971/Austin Avenue realignment project expected to bid late 2019.

A total of six highly qualified contractors submitted bids on the project with CHASCO being the lowest bidder. CHASCO has completed many similar projects in the Central Texas Area. Both the consulting/design engineer and staff recommend awarding the bid for the Northwest Blvd Bridge to CHASCO in the amount of $8,149,698.00 .

Funds for this project are generated from the 2015 Voter Approved Road Bond Program and are available in the Transportation CIP Account.

Here is a schematic diagram of the project.

click to enlarge

Update on Georgetown Energy Assessment Townhall

The energy assessment town hall was deemed a bust in an earlier post because of extremely limited attendance and lack of audio for the internet and broadcast video.

It turns out that video was restored about half way through the presentation, but, reviewing the video shows at most 3 citizens attending! The City Manager and several staff were there in addition to the Schneider Engineering presenter.

One of those in attendance was the newly elected councilman from District 3, Mike Triggs. It is unknown whether or not Mr. Triggs has been sworn in as he missed the formal swearing-in ceremony at the last council meeting.

Councilman-elect Triggs asked several insightful and penetrating questions about the Bloomberg grant for installation of solar panels and batteries in/on 15-20 homes. WilcoSun, Sunday May 26, 2019

Mr. Triggs was absent from the meeting(where the grant was approved), but said he would not have voted to accept the grant. 

“When you currently have financial difficulties it is not wise to enter the unknown,” he said. “We know this is filled with expenses and are not sure of the financial rewards. It all comes down to risk and reward and at this time I see more risk than reward.”

But he added he’s not surprised council voted for the grant. “Experience tells me that people who make poor financial decisions tend to continue to make poor financial decisions. There is a little bit of not admitting to being wrong earlier, and in this case they are not playing with their own money. It’s the ratepayers’ money they are gambling with. They have no skin in the game,” he said. 

He questioned city officials about the solar program’s impact during the town hall. Mr. Morgan said the program’s impact will be small. The city plans to install solar panels on the roofs of 20 homes. “It’s a very minor impact, but the results of the study will have a tremendous benefit for distributed energy,” Mr. Morgan said. 

“You may consider that minor, but with the problems you have, you can’t have any more bumps in the night on those things,” Mr. Triggs said. 

The councilman said it’s disappointing that the city has not already undertaken Schneider’s suggested remedies. Hiring a professional and having better financial reporting and control are both basics and they should have been undertaken long ago, Mr. Triggs added. “It appears not much progress has been made by the city to correct the situation,” he said. “To mitigate the situation you have to act, not sit back and wait.”

Mr Triggs is articulating all the right questions and clearly he has a bias for action. Let us hope for the tax payers and rate payers sake he continues to aggressively question city spending. 

Central Texas Towns Showing Rapid Growth

According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Thursday, the Statesman reports that New Braunfels ranked second in growth last year among U.S. cities with a population of 50,000 or more,  New Braunfels’ population grew at a rate of 7.2% from July 2017 to July 2018, the figures show.

Georgetown has made the list of the top 15 fastest growing cities in the nation for the past five years. Mayor Dale Ross said the city boasts the lowest tax rate in Central Texas, good schools and a low crime rate. Builders are constructing new homes every day, he said, that are ideal for small families. 

“The biggest challenge we have as a government is to stay ahead of the infrastructure growth,” Ross said. “People have discovered the secret of Georgetown, Texas. ... The people are the most giving and the most generous folks you’d ever want to meet.”

The Mayor continues his mischaracterization campaign when talking to the press about Georgetown. Every property tax payer in the City knows that the "lowest tax rate" is irrelevant as it is the taxes paid that are important and the property taxes paid to the City are increasing at more than 10% annually as the appraised values increase. Why doesn't the City lower the tax rate so that the taxes paid by property owners increase no more than population plus inflation?

I guess the mayor is not aware that Georgetown ISD has 3 schools on the Texas Education Agency's watch list as they are not meeting standards! Mitchell Elementary, Forbes Middle and Wagner Middle schools all "Need Improvement" according to the TEA.

Its time the Mayor and all city officials tell the truth about what is happening in Georgetown. Electric rates anyone?

Energy Assessment Townhall was a Bust

The City announced a public meeting for tonight, May 20, 2019, to present the results of their contracted energy assessment. The following announcement was posted on the city website.

The City will also host a public meeting to present the findings and answer questions from the public on Monday, May 20, starting at 6 p.m. The town hall-style meeting will be in the Council and Court building, located at 510 W. Ninth St., as well as broadcast on Suddenlink Channel 10 and on georgetown.org/gtv.

It looks like there were no public attendees visible in the real-time video and there was no audio for at least the first 15 minutes. At 20 minutes after 6pm the channel was showing a wildlife video!

Clearly the City needs to improves their communications!

The Sun Editor Castigates Georgetown for Accepting Bloomberg Grant

As predicted here last week, the City Council approved accepting the Bloomberg solar grant with all the attached strings. The editor of the Wilco Sun newspaper has a great editorial in the Sunday, May 19, 2019 edition. Here is the editorial in its entirety.

"Who Votes with the mice?

The Sun editorial published Sunday May 19, 2019

Those of us who buy electricity from the city can thank Coun­cilmen Kevin Pitts and Tommy Gonzalez for thinking of us on Tuesday during the debate on the Bloomberg Grant. The vote to accept the grant and sign the agreement passed 4-2, with Pitts and Gonzalez on the los­ing end. The Georgetown billpayer has now been saddled with another energy experiment. Under this grant we will install solar panels on a dozen or more roofs, feed the electricity into big, neigh­borhood batteries and see what happens.

Although we are already buying twice as much electricity as we use — then sell the surplus at a loss — the council voted to see if we can make things even worse by making even more electricity. Every watt of power from these solar panels will create a surplus watt that we will sell at a loss.

The grant came about when George­town entered the idea in a Bloomberg contest called the Mayor’s Challenge and won a $1 million grant to try it out. It sounded interesting, like a big science fair project.

Not long after, we learned that the city’s all-in move to wind and solar had backfired, and that we would have to pay higher electric bills because of it. Sud­denly, making more electricity no lon­ger made good money sense. The idea is interesting. The financial consequences are not.

Pitts and Gonzalez made practical objections, saying that the additional grant work would come at a time when the electric department is already mired in digging out of the debacle of genera­tion-long wind and solar contracts. Even though the grant pays for most of the experiment, the citizen will have to pay, also. The staff estimated that it would add up to over $200,000.

During the discussion, no one said the experiment would be good for those who pay electric bills. That’s not surprising, since we bill payers are not the beneficia­ries of the experiment. We are the mice who are being experimented upon.

Those in favor of the project argued that there would be no extra work load on the staff since the staff has the free time to take on this extra chore. Although this appears to answer the extra-work objec­tion, it brings up a new question — how is it that the staff has this extra time? Is the department over-staffed? Do we need make-work projects to keep everyone busy?

The grant agreement requires the city to do so much publicity that the commu­nications department will have to devote considerable time to it — all paid for with taxpayer cash.

The grant also requires that all media releases be approved by the Bloomberg people before being given to the citizens of Georgetown. Paragraph 12a of the agreement reads: “The Grantee [George­town] shall provide copies of all Media Releases to the Foundation and obtain the Foundation’s consent prior to publi­cation or distribution in any format of any Media Release.”

This means that the city cannot re­lease, on its own, any information about the project without first getting permis­sion from New York. We anticipate, based on the city’s prior behavior, that if the news is bad the city will cite Paragraph 12a and decline to answer questions from citizens or reporters.

By signing this agreement, the council has, once again, made the citizen’s inter­est subordinate to an outsider’s interest. We see how that has worked with the wind and solar contracts where the cit­izen who pays the money is far, far less important than the people who get the money.

The city is obligated to move the $100,000-a-year manager of the project to the “public budget” in the third year if the project is “successful.” Since the project is to place solar panels on one or two dozen homes, and this shouldn’t take very long, we wonder what a $100,000-a-year person will do every day once the project is running. Check the meters? Sit in the shade and watch the batteries?

In the end there is only one guaranteed good that can come of this — publicity. Our mayor will get many photo ops in front of the batteries and the solar pan­els. He will go to New York and hang with the glamorous elite.

We citizens, on the other hand, will stay home and pay electric bills.

* * *

During the council discussion, the staff and council talked of two kinds of money: hard money, mostly Bloomberg money, and soft money, which is taxpayer money. The terms are exact.

Bloomberg money must be earned. That’s hard. Citizen money comes easier, so it’s called soft."

Stateman Front Page Article on Georgetown Energy

The City of Georgetown is receiving a lot of publicity caused by the renewable energy debacle! The Austin American-Statesman has a feature article on the front page of today's paper. 

By Claire Osborn cosborn@statesman.com GEORGETOWN — The City Council plans to consider new third-party managers for Georgetown’s e n e r g y p o r t f o l i o t h a t includes its controversial long-term wind and solar contracts. Georgetown owns its own utility and has come under fire for losing money on its renewable energy contracts due to depressed natural gas prices. In February, the monthly electric bill rose by an average of nearly $13 for customers. 

Now the city is planning to hire new consultants who can devote their full-time energy to the nuances of the energy market, where prices on the state’s energy grid can change every few minutes. “We expect to bring a new portfolio manager for council to consider this summer,” Assistant City Manager Jackson Daly said Wednesday. He said the request for proposals to manage the city’s energy was released in February. 

The City Council heard a presentation Tuesday from a partner in an engineering company the city hired to assess its energy practices. S t e v e M o f f i t t o f Schneider Engineering said the city does not have enough people to dedicate themselves solely to the management of Georgetown’s energy contracts. The city’s general manager for utilities, Jim Briggs, for example, also is an assistant city manager, Moffitt said.

Moffitt said the city should hire new partners and recommended increasing oversight and accountability on energy decisions by establishing reporting guidelines for each level of contract management. He also recommended that the city develop a comprehensive risk management policy. 

The city paid Schneider Engineering $30,000 for the assessment. On Wednesday, Daly said such a policy “would address the limits within which staff, outside consultants or energy managers could make decisions with regards to the city optimizing its renewable resources without approval from the City Council.” “With the current market structure,” Daly said, “optimization opportunities can have a short window for action.”

It is interesting that Schneider Engineering did not recommend that the city explore the possible sale of the electric company to a private business. Why not?

Texas Municipal League is Crying the Blues

After many years of getting their way with effectively lobbying the state legislature for the benefit of cities and against the best interest of tax payers, the Texas Municipal League(TML) has run into significant resistance. Texas Tribune

This tax payer funded organization of Texas cities has always supported legislation that increased the power of cities at the expense of its citizens. Now they are tracking over 150 bills that diminish a city's power and authority from baning plastic bags to controlling a residents ability to rent their home for short periods.

Nowhere has the lack of cooperation been more evident this session than on the issue of property tax reform, a top imperative for the state’s top three Republicans leaders.

The bill, which aims to slow the growth of rising property tax bills, makes a host of changes designed to make the tax system more transparent and accessible. But it includes one provision — widely disliked by city and county officials — that requires local governments to hold an election before raising 3.5% more property tax revenue than the previous year. Currently, residents must petition for an election if the property tax levy surpasses 8%, a rate set during a period of high inflation in the 1980s. 

Municipal leaders say the proposal could hamstring local budgets while providing only a marginal dent in most homeowners’ bills. While they successfully defeated similar proposals to constrain revenue growth last session, their respite was short-lived. By the time the Legislature reconvened two years later, the legislation had been resuscitated — and it came back with terms considered more punitive than before.

Mayor Ross's opposition to property tax reform was previously chronicled, Mayor Adler and Ross and presumably TML was also lobbying against limiting city's taxing authority without voter approval. Georgetown is a dues paying member of TML.

Progressives Against Voter Integrity Bill

In a surprise to this blogger, the Williamson County Elections Administrator, testified against the proposed election integrity bill, SB9. Senate Bill 9

Chris Davis, president of the Texas Association of Election Administrators, said the bill would turn away hard-to-get poll workers and election judges because of the added regulations placed on them that must be followed or risk criminal punishment.

The original SB9 would require a paper trail for recount or audit purposes and would explicitly disallow the Secretary of State from waiving state election law. The substitute bill under consideration by the Texas house did not include these provisions. Yet the Association of Election Administrators still testified against the bill passage.

Maybe it's time to consider election of Election Administrators instead of appointment by the county commissioners!

Integrity in our elections is fundamental to preserving our republic and the rights of individuals!

The Press Continues to Lie About Renewable Energy

Writing in the Idaho State Journal, Mike Larkin (citing Georgetown, Texas) claims that cities are committing to renewable energy for a number of benefits.Idaho State Journal

As the Trump administration attempts to move the country toward more coal, oil and gas, many cities and some counties across America are moving forward toward 100 percent renewable energy. Cities are doing it for several reasons, but first of all is to save money.

Additional benefits are more local jobs, cleaner air, and building a city image that’s forward focused and attractive to top performing companies that employ skilled, aware young people who are overwhelmingly in favor of raising their families in a greener and cleaner world.

Larkin’s claims are demonstrably false; the city of Georgetown, in fact, is losing millions of dollars and raising its electric rates for consumers to make up for its bad bet on renewable energy.

It has been repeatedly reported in Texas that after a solar or wind farm is constructed, the number of jobs created are often less than 10. That means the subsidies that are awarded these renewable energy companies by federal and state governments are a very high price for very few long term permanent jobs.

“The promise to use 100 percent renewable energy achieves the right political goals, but at great expense to consumers—and the facts,” says TPPF’s Chuck DeVore. “Intermittent renewable energy simply can’t provide all the power the city of Georgetown needs, when it needs it, so Georgetown inevitably uses electricity generated by traditional sources—including natural gas. The ‘100 percent renewable’ claim is little more than virtue-signaling.”

This dishonest reporting needs to stop! Reporters need to get the facts before they write these misleading columns.

Energy Consultant Reports to City Council

The main take away from the energy consultant is that the City hire a third party to manage its energy instead of relying on the city’s utility department. Statesman

Moffit said in a presentation to the Georgetown City Council Tuesday that the city did not have enough people to dedicate themselves solely to the management of the city’s energy contracts. The city’s director of utilities, for example, also is an assistant city manager, Moffitt said.

He also recommended that the city start a rate-stabilization fund to absorb some of the impact to customers when energy prices increase. The fund would make it possible for the increased costs passed along to customers - called power cost adjustments- to be made more gradually.

This is typically how government works. We pay someone $30,000 to tell us the obvious. A number of Georgetown residents have already told the City they need experienced personnel to operate in a speculative futures market. 

The next thing we will find out is that the City has paid a consultant to tell them they should not engage in long term fixed price contracts without escape clauses! Oh wait, I think numerous citizens have already told that to the City.

Well it's not their money, it's the taxpayers money!

Georgetown City Council

The Georgetown City Council held a special meeting last night to swear in the newly elected council members.

1. Tommy Gonzales was reelected to represent District 7.

2. Steve Fought was reelected to represent District 4.

3. Mike Triggs defeated John Hesser for the right to represent District 3.

Gonzales and Fought were sworn in and Triggs was a no show. This evidently means that Hesser is still the council representative for District 3 until such time as Triggs is sworn in.

There was no indication why Triggs was absent or when he would join the council.

Councilman Hesser and Councilwoman Jonrowe were absent for the ceremony.

Mayor Ross gave a short tribute to John Hesser for his life long commitment to public service, including being awarded the purple heart.

Shell Road in City MUD

Have developers, with help from the City, found a new way to transfer development costs from the developer to the home owners and renters?

The City has plans to approve an in-city municipal utility district (MUD), which under state law possesses taxing authority.

Here is a location map of the proposed MUD.

click to enlarge

This development encompasses 317 acres and includes multiple uses. Here is the breakdown of land use.

click to enlarge

This development includes 1046 Single Family homes, 246 Town homes and 220 Multifamily units.

Is Shell Road and Williams Drive designed to accommodate the traffic generated by another 1513 residences?

Another interesting factoid. The electric utilities service area is split between Georgetown and Pedernales as show below.

click to enlarge

The blue line designates the boundary of the Georgetown electric service area, yet, the chart indicates the City will be the exclusive electric provider for the MUD. How does that work?

Here is the "money" chart for the development.

click to enlarge

Here we see that the MUD is authorized to impose taxes and sell bonds with value up to $39,500,000. These bonds, which are to be used to build infrastructure, will be paid by the residents/property owners within the MUD.

Notice how the developer has transferred his costs to the new property owners in the MUD. At the same time, the City gets paid for the services it provides and does not incur any debt and associated payments. The City will be free to raise it's fees to the MUD without raising property taxes, and the MUD will just raise its taxes.

This is a classic example of socializing private costs to the public property owners.

Since the developer has to pay for minimal development costs, his profit is maximized with the help of the State of Texas and the City of Georgetown. What a deal!

Texas Tax Burden

Want more proof that taxes in Texas are too high? Check out the latest data!

click to enlarge

Texas ranks #2 in local debt per capita among all 50 states. This is not an honor to be #2! Debt is paid by taxes, so more debt means more taxes.

What drives the debt and thus taxes? Spending of course! All our local taxing authorities need to rein in their spending. Just because property valuations increase at double digit rates is no reason for spending to grow at double digit rates.

Debt payments can crowd out money for essential services and individuals have less money to spends which negatively impacts economic growth and entrepreneurship. In other words, debt is "bad".

Let your council members, county commissioners, school boards and other taxing entities know they need to restrict spending to no more than inflation plus population growth. Oh wait!, It appears the state legislature may limit revenue growth to either 2.5% or 3.5% unless an automatic vote of the people authorizes higher revenue growth.

Stay tuned!

Bloomberg Solar Grant NOT Free

Everyone probably thinks the grant for installing solar panels on rooftops in Georgetown is free! Guess what? The $1M grant comes with "strings" attached.

The City Council is likely to approve accepting the grant at the Tuesday council meeting, unless Georgetown residents tell them no more. Look at the budget associated with the grant.

click to enlarge

Notice that $220,000 is expected to be paid by the rate payers!

Not only do we not need more renewable electricity because we are losing money on our current long term contracts for renewable energy, but, the city wants to acquire more renewable electricity and we have to pay a premium of $220,000 to get it.

When does the stupidity stop?

City's GUS Management Contractors Continue Obfuscation

The presentation by Schneider Engineering to the City Council at their workshop on Tuesday, May 14, 2019 on their assessment of the management of the Georgetown Utility System (GUS) continues to omit key information. 

Look at this chart from the presentation.

click to enlarge

Just how hard would it be to show the cumulative loss over the 3 years? Well, not hard.

Loss over initial budget: $27,516,814!

Loss over revised budget: $24,909,689!

Compare these numbers with the Mayor's numbers:

"We did have a bad year last year and I think we lost about $3 million," Ross said. "But in the five years that we've been doing this, the net is over $15 million so this is a 25 year plan not a 25 month plan."

And what is not mentioned is that the losses are continuing today as long as the long term contracts are in place.

Another area that would be improved by adding additional information is the financial impact on consumers. This chart shows the increase in retail rates for an average customer in graph form. It would be helpful if the actual numbers were also on the graph bars.

click to enlarge

It appears the cost increase is about $20/yr for a consumer who uses 1,000 kWh, which is about the average use for 1 month.

Thus, for 1 year usage at 1,000 kWh/month, the increase in the average electric bill per year would be $240. Why don't we see that kind of analysis in the presentation.

Given that the average residential electricity consumption is about 1,000 kWh per month, it would be helpful if the median monthly consumption was presented. The median is where 1/2 of the customers consume less and 1/2 consume more than the median.

Also, a table showing the cost per kWh over the entire range of usage would be useful. That would allow individual consumers to assess the impact of the rate increases on their own usage.

So much more could be done to increase transparency! Demand more transparency from your city officials!

The Days of Unilateral City Annexations in Texas are Over

A bill to stop all cities in Texas from annexing property without owners’ consent has passed the state legislature and is awaiting the governor’s signature.

House Bill 347 extends the limited annexation reform enacted in 2017 to all 254 Texas counties and eliminates the unequal two-tier system it created.

Once the bill is signed into law by the governor, all Texas property owners will be equally protected from future land grabs by cities looking to expand into neighboring unincorporated territory against the wishes of the landowners.

The City Council had directed staff to propose an annexation policy for consideration by the Council. If it has been prepared, it will now have to be changed to incorporate the requirements in the soon to be signed Texas law governing annexation.

Initial GUS Management Assessment by Schneider Engineering

The following is courtesy of Councilman Fought as published in his newsletter.

GUS -- Management Assessment

The City Council selected Schneider Engineering to conduct a thorough analysis and evaluation of the Georgetown Utility System (GUS) Electric management control and information system along with GUS's policies for purchasing and selling power.  They will present their findings and recommendations at the 14 May Workshop.

 

Their report includes: 

• An assessment of the City's overall Electric Resource Management organization/functional area.
• An evaluation of the current wholesale power supply portfolio and the performance outlook for the portfolio.
• A listing and discussion of factors that contributed towards decisions that culminated in significant increases in cost to the wholesale power portfolio.
• An assessment of the impact of the power supply portfolio on recent City's budgets, retail electric rates and other City business areas.
• A forward-looking evaluation of steps the City may consider to effectively manage and optimize the portfolio and consider market factors that may influence the performance of the portfolio.

Please click here to read the report, and here to view the slides which will be presented at the workshop. 

 

This is a very important initial assessment of the GUS-Electric issues. Given the importance of this topic, and in addition to reading the report and viewing the slides, I recommend attending the Council Workshop in person or watching it live on line, or on video tape.   

The Workshop begins at 3:00 PM on Tuesday, 14 May.  Please click here for the Agenda item Summary Sheet for the Workshop discussions.  If cannot attend the Workshop, please click here to link to the City Website and then use the tabs to watch the presentation live or on recorded video.

Schneider will also present the report and findings at a public meeting on May 20.  A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file and other public materials are being developed to facilitate that meeting. (The time and location of the meeting will be announced later.) 

GUS Manager to Retire!

Long-time General Manager of Utilities Jim Briggs announced his retirement today. After more than three decades with the City of Georgetown, Briggs will step down at the end of September. Georgetown

Energy Shortages Coming this Summer?

Renewable energy weakens the Texas electric grid due to coal and gas powered electric generators being replaced by wind and solar generators. Because of the heavy subsidies given to renewable energy companies, new fossile fuel based plants are not economical to build, thus, when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, there is a shortage of electric generating capacity.

You wouldn’t think the top energy-producing state in the nation, home to the legendary Spindletop and nearly unfathomable reserves of shale gas and oil, would have an energy shortage. 

Yet the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the Lone Star State’s electric grid, is getting ready to issue energy alerts this summer. Its electricity reserves are at a historic low of 7.4%, and new demand records have been set 16 times in the last three years.

We think an extra $2.5 billion a year could help bolster the grid.

Why $2.5 billion? That’s how much Texas taxpayers are charged every year to subsidize wind and solar power. Yet even after being boosted by tens of billions in taxpayer dollars, renewables only provide 18% of Texas’ energy. 

That’s higher than the national average, but nowhere near enough to power the Texas economy, which outproduces nearly every country in the world, including Russia. Texas Energy Shortages

There's No Such Thing as a Nonpartisan Election

Politicians are known for dodging questions, and one of the biggest they dodge is: “What is your political affiliation?”

Depending on the political demographics, this is almost always followed by: “Local elections are nonpartisan and I’m running to represent my constituents.”

Baloney. This is political-speak for: “I’m too scared to be honest with you about my political views.”

If a candidate is running and the local area they are running in has a political demographic opposite of their own, they will often use this excuse. Why? Because being honest will hurt them. They know they’ll be judged for their political views, as they should, and they’ve got a race to win.

What’s a local voter to do? Stop relying on politicians to be honest about themselves, and do a little searching.

It is sometimes not easy as shown by the following steps to find the campaign financial reports for the city council candidates.

You can find the campaign finance reports by going to records.georgetown.org and then clicking on the link at the end of the first bullet point. This will take you to the Laserfiche web portal. Once there, please click on “Browse” in the top left blue box. Then click on “City Secretary” and then “City Council Finance and Election Documents” on the next page. Here you will see all the districts and the candidates.

For state offices the campaign finance reports can be found at Texas Ethics Commission.

By observing the donors one can deduce a candidate's political philosophy. You can be sure that when elected the candidate will be listening to their major donors and will act accordingly in their official capacity. So political beliefs are important when voting for any candidate.