Townhall Meeting for 2020 City Budget

Attend this townhall if you want to know what the City plans to spend your money on during the fiscal year that starts October 1, 2019.

The City of Georgetown will host a town hall meeting on July 8 to present projects and programs being considered in the 2020 budget and listen to public feedback. The meeting will provide an overview of the budget process and highlight challenges the City facing in adopting a budget that maintains service levels and responds to growth.

City Manager David Morgan will talk about programs and projects being considered in the 2020 fiscal year budget and then answer questions at the town hall. The meeting is an opportunity for anyone in Georgetown to learn about the budget process, ask questions, and share concerns related to the 2020 budget. The meeting starts at 6 p.m. on Monday, July 8 at the Council and Court Building, 510 W. Ninth St.

The town hall meeting also will be livestreamed on GTV channel 10 available online at gtv.georgetown.org.

The City Manager’s proposed budget for 2020 is scheduled to be presented to the City Council on Aug. 6. The first public hearing on the proposed tax rate is planned for Sept. 3. Additional public hearings and meetings on the tax rate and budget are planned for Sept. 10 and Sept. 24. The 2020 fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

More Trouble for Georgetown Electric

The co-editor of the Wilco Sun penned an insightful editorial in the June 25th edition of the paper describing how close Texas is to demand exceeding capacity and how the renewables are not meeting their potential capability when the wind doesn't blow.

He also notes that the solar facility is not producing electricity much of the time. It is time to ask the City why the solar farm is not meeting their contractual requirements.

One has to wonder if the terms of the contract changed when the solar farm was purchased out of SunEdison's bankruptcy by NRG Energy.

Here is the editorial:

Sun Editorial by Clark Thurmond 6-26-2019
Late Sunday afternoon I took a break from lying around the house to check ERCOT’s electricity spot price web page — a color- coded Texas map filled with dots. Roll your cursor across one and a pop-up appears with the spot price for that location. The state is usually a mix of greens and blues, indicating a price range of $15-$25 per megawatt hour. On Sunday afternoon Texas was red. The spot price was almost $800 everywhere. 

A download of the afternoon’s pricing data told an interesting story. Around 2:15 p.m. the average megawatt/hour spot price for wholesale electricity was $26. Texas was heating up and our air-conditioners were running harder. A little after 3 p.m., the average price had risen to $799. 

By 4:50 p.m. the average spot price had reached $997. Suddenly, only a minute later, it leapt to $6,000! 

Did additional generating units spin up to take advantage of the price spike? Perhaps so, because almost immediately the price started down and by 6 p.m. it was back to a normal $21. 

Sunday afternoon was a dramatic demonstration of what can happen when Texas’s high summer usage gets close to the generating capacity on the grid that day. 

At 4:34 p.m. the state-wide generating capacity was 63,827 megawatts. Demand was 62,808 megawatts — only 1.6 percent below capacity. 

Our city folk have said previously that our peak usage in the summer is around 150 megawatts per hour. If we were able to sell our surplus wind energy during those peaking hours, that would give us one of the promised benefits — making money by selling our surplus power. 

But Sunday afternoon, the wind was a no-show. Using ERCOT hourly wind production data for the Panhandle, I estimate that our wind farm produced only 5-7 megawatt hours of electricity during the 4 o’clock hour. If Georgetown was using 150 megawatts per hour at that time, where was the missing power coming from? Were we buying $6,000 electricity? 

And our bedeviled solar farm? It appears from the ERCOT hourly pricing data that it went live at around 3 p.m, perhaps to take advantage of the high prices paid for power. After 5 p.m., with spot prices back to normal, it appears that the solar farm shut down. Other solar farms stayed active another two hours.

Texas Legislature Passes Bill Criminalizing Sex Jokes on Campus

It appears the legislature has passed and the Governor has signed a bill that allows law enforcement to jail any campus employee who hears — or even hears about — a joke about sex on a college campus and doesn’t report it as a Title IX violation.

Here is the description of SB 212 from the first paragraph of the bill:

The bill would require an employee of a post secondary education institution who, in the course and scope of employment, witnesses or receives information regarding the occurrence of an incident that the employee reasonably believes constitutes sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence, or stalking and is alleged to have been committed by or against a person who was a student enrolled at or an employee of the institution at the time of the incident must report the incident to the institution's Title IX or deputy Title IX coordinator.

Here is an excerpt of the analysis of the bill from National Review:

Now, I obviously would agree with any non-sociopath that sexual harassment is an awful, harrowing thing that absolutely no one should have to go through — and that people who perpetuate it should be punished. The problem, though, is that the current definition places the standard for what does and does not count as “sexual harassment” solely on the interpretation of the person who claims to be experiencing it. If someone happens to make a sexual joke — even if that joke was not directed at a specific other person, and even if that joke was innocuous and tame — and that other person claims to have experienced difficulty participating in activities because of it, then the person who made that joke is automatically guilty of sexual harassment based on the other person’s feelings . . . regardless of whether or not he or she had actually done anything actually wrong.

What’s more, this essentially demands that campus employees report every single mention of sex or sexuality that they hear or even hear about, because they have no way of knowing whether or not someone who heard it is going to claim that they experienced significant emotional distress because of it — and, if someone does, they could go to jail. This is a completely unreasonable and stupid waste of time, and it will also likely result in campus officials being too bogged down with gratuitous claims to have the time and resources to focus on the actually serious ones.

The obvious question is; Did the Governor read the bill before he signed it? 

New Mexico Drinks the Renewable Koolaid

Zero-carbon mandate will cost NM citizens Albuquerque Journal

BY MIKE NASI / DIRECTOR, LIFE:POWERED INITIATIVEMonday, April 1st, 2019 at 12:02am 

New Mexico is the latest state to succumb to the siren song of the environmental misinformation powering the Green New Deal. 

Just a few months after New Mexico accepted nearly half a billion dollars from the federal government for oil and gas leases, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a “zero-carbon” energy mandate on public utilities, which will cost taxpayers millions. 

As a native New Mexican, I have always been proud of my home state’s citizens, who are both diverse and resilient. Sadly, this renewable energy agenda is neither.American energy grids have fueled our nation’s economic success and prosperity because they are based on a diverse range of energy sources, including the ever-resilient and affordable coal and natural gas. Those fuels have powered New Mexico through the coldest winters and the hottest summers, even when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. 

Even after tens of billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies, wind and solar produced a mere 8.2 percent of our nation’s electricity in 2018. 

Why? It’s simple: They cost too much and show up too little. Even the most advanced battery storage technologies in the world have been unable to affordably compensate for the intermittency of wind and solar. This plan is a desperate bet – with your money – that battery technology will advance dramatically, and on an arbitrary schedule set by New Mexico politicians. 

The experiences of governments that have tried to go 100 percent renewable have not been positive and usually ended with skyrocketing energy costs that hit low-income people particularly hard. 

The governor must not have heard about Germany’s cautionary tale. After Germany forced renewable energy mandates on its citizens, electricity bills have soared, up 46 percent since 2007. Germany actually has to subsidize coal plants to avoid brownouts when renewable energy fails. And cold-related deaths have actually increased under similar laws in the United Kingdom as skyrocketing electricity costs keep low-income senior citizens from heating their homes. 

If Europe’s failures are too distant, New Mexico need only look to its neighboring state of Texas. In the city of Georgetown, just a few miles north of Austin, a misguided renewable plan has buried its residents in a nearly $30 million deficit, with electricity bills already increasing. Soon these deficits could lead to price hikes exceeding $100 per household per year. 

Potentially worse than the financial cost of renewable mandates are the environmental consequences. Solar and wind energy consume massive amounts of land, destroy wildlife habitats and are dependent on rare-earth minerals. Production of these minerals is dominated by the Chinese and produces toxic and radioactive waste, destroying more land in the process. 

It is bad enough that New Mexicans will be subjected to the fiscal and environmental consequences of unreliable wind and solar energy. What is worse is how little this plan will actually benefit our environment.According to models used by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even if all of the U.S. power sector eliminated all carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, global CO2 concentrations would drop only 0.7 percent by 2050, rendering a projected temperature decrease of 0.016ºC. This is not a debate about climate – it’s simple math. 

And, as an attorney who has practiced air-quality environmental law for 25 years, I can tell you that we have made our air safe without the need for renewable energy, and further emission reductions will not deliver measurable environmental benefits – certainly not enough to justify the costs 

The United States is the only highly populated nation to meet the World Health Organization’s standards for particulate matter, which, unlike carbon dioxide, actually harms people. We have achieved these reductions through innovation and pollution control technologies, not top-down mandates. We can continue to keep emissions down using a diverse and affordable range of fuels, including coal and natural gas, so the reliability problems and costs associated with renewable energy are just not justified. …

Renewable Energy is Not the Panacea

It is continually pointed out that renewable energy has several serious flaws when it comes to supplying reliable, economical energy, yet, the lies and propaganda continue.American Thinker

The bottom line is that solar is not a good method of supplying electricity and it is not a good method for reducing CO2 emissions. It keeps going because the promoters constantly lie and spread propaganda. They often brag about cheap solar purchase contracts without mentioning the huge subsidies and the state mandates that force utilities to buy solar (and wind).

More Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs)

It is not well known that the City currently has 12 MUDs within the city limits with more applications awaiting approval. This is additional work for city contract management staff to assure the MUDs are in compliance with state law. This will ultimately result in hiring more city staff!

MUDs are authorized to impose taxes and sell bonds. These bonds, which are to be used to build infrastructure, will be paid by the residents/property owners within the MUD.

This allows the developer to transfer 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!

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

It certainly appears to be the case!

Why are there MUDs within the city limits and more are requested? Inquiring minds would like the answer.

Transportation Tidbits

Who knew that the City of Georgetown has a Master Transportation Plan?

As a result of completion of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (CAMPO) 2035 Transportation Plan, the City of Georgetown has updated the City’s Overall Transportation Plan (OTP). This update occurred in 2015 and is therefore somewhat dated, but, it is still the guidance used by the City.

Here is the overall map for Georgetown:

Click to enlarge  

One item of interest to the author is the designation of the Southwest By-Pass as a proposed freeway. It is indicated by the purple dashed line and runs from I 35 near the Inner Space cave to Williams Drive. The southern most section is nearing completion. The next proposed section will connect to Hwy 29. No word on when the section between Hwy 29 and Williams Drive is to be completed.

A related project is to turn Hwy 195 into a freeway. That means overpasses and limited access.

Changes are coming!

Council Plans to Spend More of Your Money

The City Council will hold a workshop today, June 11 at 3pm in City Hall to hear the proposed share of Wilco bond proposals that will occur within city boundaries. The staff will also present the proposed city contributions to the projects.

The total proposed Wilco bond proposal is $573,335,300 and the projects with the city are identified as follows:

1.  Southwest bypass extension - $4.8M of which the city would provide $2.5M.

2.  Westinghouse/CR111 - $20.2M of which the city would provide $8.2M.

3.  Southeast inner loop extension - $22.5M of which the city would provide $9.0M.

There are also bonds proposed to fund parks and trails which are to be discussed. The County total for those is: $67,594,960.

So, expect both city and county taxes to increase!

Tx Legislature Changes City Behavior

James Quintero of the Texas Public Policy Foundation has captured several of the legislative changes that promise to change city behavior toward more openness and recognizing citizen's personal liberty.

Bob Dylan said it best: “For the times they are a-changin.’” It used to be that cities had their way at the Texas Capitol. By wielding local control as a cudgel, city officials and their favorite trade association expertly advanced their agenda and killed any bills that threatened their power or revenue. But no longer. 

This legislative session saw cities come fully under a new paradigm — one that holds up local liberty over local control. It’s an immense philosophical shift that portends an aggressive redefinition of city governance in the years to come. Though still budding, this realignment is already producing fruit, too. 

Here are some ways that Texas’ city halls will soon change for the better. First, expect more public participation. Annexation is one area where this is especially true. Last session, lawmakers passed a bill to give some Texans the right to vote before being annexed by a city. The new law proved to be quite popular, but it was flawed in one big way. It didn’t apply to everyone. This session, lawmakers went back to work on the issue and finished the job. They passed House Bill 347, which gives every Texan the right to vote before being annexed, no matter where they live. All property owners now have a chance to have their voices heard. 

Second, look forward to (somewhat) more property tax predictability. In response to growing public outcry, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 2, which lowers the rollback tax rate — now called the voter approved tax rate — from 8 percent to 3.5 percent for cities. In doing so, lawmakers have finally changed a rate established four decades ago under much different economic circumstances. Under the newly reduced rate, cities can increase property tax revenues by a little from one year to the next without asking for the public’s permission. However, if city officials need a lot more tax money, then they’ll have to make their case to voters and win an election. That’s a major change in the status quo, and it should force some difficult (but much-needed) conversations about budget priorities. 

Lastly, anticipate the public asking more questions — and getting answers. In the wake of two tough court decisions, a growing number of cities were citing exceptions to the Public Information Act to purposefully withhold information from the public. To help reverse this trend, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 943, which grants Texans access to the particulars of most public contracts with private businesses. 

Lawmakers also passed House Bill 81, which requires cities to disclose certain spending information about publicly-funded concerts. The bill came about after the city of McAllen refused to tell the public how much it spent putting on an Enrique Iglesias concert in 2015. 

Without a doubt, city governance is transforming right before our eyes. We’re seeing fresh new thinking replace old stale ideas and a lot has been reconsidered, from whom cities can govern to how much they can tax to what they must tell the public. Importantly, the impetus for much of this movement is, of course, the transition away from local control and toward local liberty. Dylan was right — the times are a-changin’. For those who prefer limited local government, that’s not a bad thing!

Quintero leads the Think Local Liberty project at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Unreliable Renewable Energy Increases Cost!

Wind and solar are making electricity more expensive in the United States. Electricity Costs  A study is not needed for the rate payers of Georgetown to know wind and solar generated electricity has increased their costs - they just have to open their monthly utility bills!

The cost to consumers has been staggeringly high: "All in all, seven years after passage, consumers in the 29 states had paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy," they write. 

Last year, I was the first journalist to report that solar and wind are making electricity more expensive in the United States — and for inherently physical reasons.

Solar and wind require that natural gas plants, hydro-electric dams, batteries or some other form of reliable power be ready at a moment’s notice to start churning out electricity when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, I noted.

The abstract from the University of Chicago Study shows that not only do prices increase, but reliability decreases and indicates the social costs of carbon are much higher than other forms of electricity generation. 

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are the largest and perhaps most popular climate policy in the US, having been enacted by 29 states and the District of Columbia. Using the most comprehensive panel data set ever compiled on program characteristics and key outcomes, we compare states that did and did not adopt RPS policies, exploiting the substantial differences in timing of adoption. The estimates indicate that 7 years after passage of an RPS program, the required renewable share of generation is 1.8 percentage points higher and average retail electricity prices are 1.3 cents per kWh, or 11% higher; the comparable figures for 12 years after adoption are a 4.2 percentage point increase in renewables' share and a price increase of 2.0 cents per kWh or 17%. These cost estimates significant ly exceed the marginal operational costs of renewables and likely reflect costs that renewables impose on the generation system, including those associated with their intermittency, higher transmission costs, and any stranded asset costs assigned to ratepayers. The estimated reduction in carbon emissions is imprecise, but, together with the price results, indicates that the cost per metric ton of CO2 abated exceeds $130 in all speci cations and ranges up to $460, making it at least several times larger than conventional estimates of the social cost of carbon. These results do not rule out the possibility that RPS policies could dynamically reduce the cost of abatement in the future by causing improvements in renewable technology. 

Bad News or Good News for Georgetown and Texas?

U-Haul Rates Suggest Migration from California to Texas Is Accelerating (FEE)

Click to enlarge

"Periodic comparisons of one-way U-Haul rates for a 26-foot truck going in two opposite directions for matched cities. As can be seen, there is a huge premium for trucks leaving California for Texas and a huge discount for trucks leaving Texas for California. I’ve argued before U-Haul’s one-way truck rental rates are market-based to reflect relative demand and relative supply."