Saturday, November 9, 2019

Councilman Triggs Townhall

Councilman Triggs held a townhall meeting for his Sun City constituents yesterday. Here are several observations gleaned at the event.


Wayne Dawson was his campaign manager. Triggs spent the least $ per vote of any candidate.

Triggs focused on keeping property tax rate constant.

Admitted property taxes increased 1.6% due to increased appraisals and new property.

He used the Washington Monument defence when talking about reducing the city budget. That is, they would have to cut public safety services first.

He does believe the electric company should not contribute $4.5M or any amount to the general fund. He said is a minority of 1 on this issue.

He would like the city to go to a calendar year budget as it would give more time between when appraised values are available, late July, and budget adopted by September 30.

He stated all actions should be viewed through the prism of; is it legal; is it prudent; and is it ethical.

He believes the electric company should be separate from other city functions both management wise and financial.

Believes the newly hired electric company manager is well qualified.

The council has received 2 credible bids with incentives to manage the buying and selling of electricity for the city.

The city has started separating electric assets from other utility assets as the first step in separating the electric company from the other utility operations.
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All the utility bonds, regardless of use, have the electric company responsible for guaranteeing the payments. This will take a long time to correct.

About 80% of electric company customers are city property tax payers. The other approximately 20% of city tax payers are serviced by PEC.

X-walk lights in Sun City generated lots of discussion at a cost of $39K each.

Majestic Oaks also generated lots of heat and discussion, but, Triggs believes there are no solutions that would not require extended litigation and that would likely fail.

He was not supportive of bike lanes that would intrude on or take vehicle traffic lanes.

He was not supportive of spending tax payer $ on electric charging stations. Looking at lease options.

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