Putting Lipstick on the Georgetown Electric Fund Pig

The City is moving money around within City accounts to make the Electric Fund look better. But, it does not change the bottom line that the Fund has and continues to lose money. Check the 11/27/2019 edition of the Wilco Sun to see more analysis. According to the co-publisher of the Sun, the Electric Fund has lost $11.1M this year for cumulative losses of $38M since this debacle started.

Here is the chart being presented at the 11/27/2019 Council Workshop.

Click to enlarge

Here is the City explanation of the adjustments.

2019 Electric Fund adjustments

There are several proposed amendments in the Electric Fund both on the revenue and expense accounts. The purchased power budget must be amended to $58,465,559 and the CRR Credits be amended to $-2,821,759. This is a result of increased costs for purchase power and transmission of purchased power. The following actions mitigate these increased costs. First, staff proposes to sell land owned by the Electric fund to the Fleet Fund. This site on FM1460 will be the future home of the Fleet Services Shop identified in the facilities study. The land sale totals $481,927. There is a corresponding amendment in the Fleet Fund.Next, staff proposes the Water Fund purchase the Electric Fund’s portion of the Westside Service Center as well as reimburse the debt service payments made for the facility in the past. The purchase of the building totals $356,895, while the previously paid debt service principal and interest totaled $470,000 and $305,234 respectively. The Water Fund will also assume the remaining liability on the facility, shown as $1,562,500 under non-operating transfers in.The third proposed amendment is to increase the transfer amount from the South Georgetown TIRZ Fund to the Electric Fund by an additional $85,405 for capital infrastructure investment from previous fiscal years. This is also under non-operating transfer in.Fourth, the amendment proposes selling a portion of the City's fiber network owned and operated by Electric to the IT Fund for $645K. A multi-year plan will be developed to sell the remainder to IT and allocate costs to all using departments. Other amendments include recognizing utility revenue ($1.2M), decreasing operating expenses ($440K), decreasing the Return on Investment transfer to the General Fund ($500K), recognizing not moving forward with the Bloomberg Grant ($100K), selling Renewable Energy Credits in the amount of $722K, selling scrap material for an additional $10K, increasing debt service expense by $500 to account for handling fees, and decreasing capital project expense by $160K.