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."

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.