Tag: utilities

Hour 2, 4/19/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 22:  The Warehouse in Victory Garden

It is worth thoroughly understanding this.  Here’s the lot in question:

It’s the building split into four quarters, with the red pin dropped in it.

If you’re not very familiar with Victory Gardens: Top right is Black’s BBQ, on Hull street.  On the left, Patton street crosses the railroad tracks. If you’ve squiggled through Victory Gardens to avoid a stopped train on Guadalupe or LBJ, you probably ended up crossing the tracks there. The Historic District starts on the other side, after a little more squiggling.  

It sure looks to me like the only way in or out of that warehouse is onto Camacho, smack in the middle of that triangle, which is a heavily-used playground. That is Victory Gardens Park, which is probably the pedestrian-heavy heart of Victory Gardens, right next to the church.  Camacho is narrow and already gets too much traffic, especially when cars are trying to escape the stopped trains.

This is a terrible place for a warehouse, mostly because of trucks on that tiny road, with kids and pets roaming around. The neighborhood is right to oppose it.

The neighborhood showed up in strong numbers to voice their opposition.  Usually if a neighborhood mobilizes like this, P&Z and Council will side with them. (And P&Z did – they voted to deny, 9-0.)

Here’s the problem: the lot is already zoned Heavy Industrial.  That means that the owner can do a lot of pretty gross things, without having to get permission from the city or anyone.  Picture manufacturing or waste products, etc. (The city can’t just change the zoning without the owner’s approval.) 

It’s been abandoned for a long time, and the owners claim it’s a hazard and eyesore.  

If this passes, council can tack on riders about finding an alternate entrance, regulating what goes on there, and so on.  If council does not pass this, then the owner can do whatever the hell he wants.  The only reason the owner is here is because he wants to enlarge one of the buildings more than 25%, and he wants an exemption from one part of the code.

What’s the right answer? The “right” answer is that the owner needs to launch a charm offensive and win over the neighborhood.  Then council can approve the Alternate Compliance and tack on appropriate conditions.

Is the owner doing that? The night before, the owner flaked out on a community meeting and pissed everyone off, instead.  So no. (Carina Boston Piñales has been doing her best as a liaison, but unsuccessfully so far.)

Council voted to postpone, and strongly encouraged the owner to win over the neighborhood in the meantime.  Hopefully he will meet and appease the neighbors and start to build a relationship. But if the neighborhood remains unmoved, I’m really not sure how this will unfold.

One final thought – it would be wise for the neighborhood to prepare a list of demands, to tack onto Council’s approval. Close off the Comacho entrance? Nothing with overnight hours or weird smells? No manufacturing or waste? Etc.

Item 2:  Revisiting Commissioner Scott’s dumb idea about water rates.  If you recall, currently your first 6000 gallons of water are priced at the cheapest rate, and then the price goes up. Shane Scott wanted to extend the cheapest rate to 8000 gallons. 

The city put together a first rate presentation of the logic and reasoning of the existing rates.

  • How much an average customer pays, how much they’d save. (None, because the average customer uses 5,400 gallons per month.)
  • How 72% of us are under 6000 gallons of water, and 15% of us are over 8000 gallons. So only 13% would even stand to benefit.
  • How it would de-incentivize conservation.
  • Lifeline rates are under-utilized. On average, 25% of applicants via Community Action are getting funded.

And so on. (Powerpoint slides here.) Everyone abandoned any thought of Shane Scott’s proposal. We will work with Community Action and find out while the lifeline rates are not reaching the public the way they should.

In the end, that was the end of it.  I savored a wee bit of smug satisfaction.

September 7th City Council Meeting (Part 1)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

This was a big, important meeting. Here are the items I’m categorizing as Top Tier Importance:

  • The 21-22 budget
  • Rate increases for various utilities and setting the property tax rate for the next year
  • School Resource Officers
  • GSMP

I’ll start tackling these, and split it into separate posts if need be.

As an aside: this meeting ran until 1:05 AM on Wednesday morning. Wouldn’t it be nice if they adjourned at 10 pm, and reconvened on Wednesday evening for the last three hours? A well-rested councilmember is a happy councilmember, maybe?

  1. Item 21: Proposed Fiscal Year 21-22 Budget

The budget is one of these items which is very difficult for me to weigh in on and analyze. I don’t have years experience to compare this to. I did not watch the workshop in August where they sliced and diced it more finely.  So for now, I’m mostly observing and not analyzing.  The total city budget is $259 million.

There not many substantial questions. Shall we make the budget available to the public in infographic form?   Should departments notify council for budget adjustments? Sure, sure. Controversial details were hashed out already.  Aside from one: there are a number of rate increases which will be voted on in the next few items, however.

2. Items 22-25: Rate hikes for waterwastewater, electric, drainage, and solid waste.

Several rate increases for the utility funds: water, electric,  drainage utility solid waste. All votes passed the hikes with a 4-3 vote, with Commissioners Scott, Garza, and Gonzalez voting against the hikes.

The total rates average $100/year increase per household. Commissioner Scott made the case that this is a pandemic year and we should wait and double the rate increase next year. Gleason sensibly points out that these projects desperately need funding. Mayor Hughson also pointed out that saving the hike for a year and having to hit households with a doubly large hike isn’t necessarily best for anyone, either.

In my opinion, this is an “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” situation. Keep your utilities maintained and running smoothly, lest ye run up a boatload of catastrophic expenses when a disaster strikes.

Of course I’m sympathetic to people in poverty being asked to contribute an extra $10/month. I would much prefer it if we had a progressive tax code instead of regressive one. But with utilities, it is scaled by usage, and it is worthwhile to incentivize reduction of water and electricity. Let’s keep utilities solvent via rate hikes, and then be generous with a social safety net. (Granted, we are depressingly stingy with the social safety net. But still. This is not the place to make up the difference.)

Item 26: Overall property tax rate for the coming year.

So, this is a bit math-heavy. Let’s see if I can keep it simple. The state of Texas caps how much a city can raise it’s property tax rate. By that, our upper bound tax rate is $0.7554 per $100 of property value. We are staying well below that, no worries.

Next up is the No New Revenue rate, where the city brings in the same amount as last year. This is set at $0.603 per $100. Now, the city has a bunch of properties that weren’t taxed last year. Those new properties will bring in $1.4 million under this tax rate, and so all existing properties actually get a tax break, which totals about $300K less than last year.

Finally there’s a penny deduction, which is discussed at length. Can we run the city on a tax rate of $0.593, instead of $0.603? On average, this will save each household $17. It costs the city about $600K to drop down.

They’ve prepared both a $0.593 and a $0.603 budget. So what gets cut? Six new positions for the police department. The city tells us that the extra $600K will pay for three traffic officers and three 911 dispatchers. So there’s the rub: lower taxes or fund the police? (As a dedicated lefty, I took a moment to relish the sheer poetry of making conservative commissioners pick between these choices.)

Commissioner Gleason was the first to wring his hands over this. He tries to find the $600K out of the CIP budget, but those projects aren’t actually paid for out of the current year, and so next year’s budget doesn’t do us any good right now. Commissioner Gonzalez tries to raid development impact fees, but that also can’t be redistributed for this use.

Commissioner Scott suggests that we use traffic ticket revenue, which pisses me off. That is exactly the kind of counter-incentive that leads to aggressive over-policing of minority communities. (Commissioner Baker makes that point in rebuttal.)

Chief Dandridge is invited to weigh in. I find him to be measured and thoughtful at these meetings. He says that we have 3200 car crashes per year, and a high number of young drivers, and every crash is time-consuming. Most cities have dedicated traffic officers to deal with accidents. As to the 911 dispatchers, we are covering a larger area than just the city and the staffing hasn’t increased since 2013, but our calls have gone up a lot.

Commissioner Baker weighs in. He’s okay with the 911 dispatchers but questions the need for more police officers, and points out that this is not the best way to reduce car crashes. He advocates for redesigning dangerous intersections and implementing a Slow Streets project, where streets are designed in a way that drivers automatically reduce their speed. (I am also a fan of these solutions.)

Commissioner Gleason again wrings his hand over this choice: Safety! But lower taxes! But safety! But lower taxes! You can see the smoke coming out his ears.

Commissioner Derrick speaks up. She agrees with Baker on the alternate solutions for safety, but points out that those take years, and we need to provide health, safety, and welfare now. (This is basically where I land, too. Traffic cops can be abusive or they can be a benefit to society. I don’t know which they will be, but the solution is not necessarily not to have officers available for car crashes.)

Finally it’s time. Mayor Hughson makes a motion to lower the tax rate to $0.593 …and no one seconds it! I was not expecting that! Exciting times.

So they vote on the original proposal of $0.603, which would fund the traffic cops and dispatchers.

For: Baker, Derrick, Gonzalez, Gleason, and Mayor Hughson.
Against: Garza, Scott.

……..

Let’s stop here, and we can save SROs and GSMP for the next post.