Last week’s agenda being nearly devoid of contentious items, one councilmember
sought out a new forum for disagreement – namely, Ronney Reynolds’ surprising
call last Wednesday to suspend a sale of the city’s electric utility. Reynolds’
announcement puts him in the same camp with Jackie Goodman, Gus Garcia, Max
Nofziger, and Brigid Shea, who had previously announced opposition to the
sale.
Reynolds disputes the assumption that the utility can’t compete
successfully with private industry, a burning question now that state
legislators, as early as next session, are expected to grant free rein to
wholesale electric providers previously barred from the service area of
municipal utilities. Reynolds has requested that the city manager assemble a 25-year plan to ready the utility for a free market. The plan, which
should provide management, policy, and governance direction, will be developed
concurrently with a $660,000 utility assessment and management audit currently
being carried out by Price-Waterhouse.
The move seems destined to create a rift in Reynolds’ usually cozy
relationship with the mayor. Bruce Todd – whose political consultant, former
executive aide, and father-in-law, all represent Texas Utilities, a
company that’s eager to purchase the utility – is itching to sell. On May 30,
Todd announced his intention to put a referendum for a utility sale on the
ballot as early as January. Then, during an executive meeting on July 19,
according to one councilmember, someone posted an item asking the council to
consider allowing Price-Waterhouse to solicit bids from interested companies.
The bid solicitation would come in lieu of management audit, which hasn’t even
started yet.
Todd’s urgency, which often leaves councilmembers and the public woefully
unprepared to consider an item, is well known. Todd helped create new criminals
last summer by pushing for a curfew ordinance, but according to Goodman,
neglected to tell Police Chief Elizabeth Watson until the proposal hit
the newstands. Last February, he asked the rest of the council to approve an
inch-thick agreement with Freeport-McMoRan, though councilmembers had only two
days to study it. By vote time, a majority of the council admitted uncertainty
about what they were voting on. More recently, at the request of business and
retail organizations, the mayor is aggressively pushing for a new
“anti-homeless” ordinance, but ignoring the fiscal impact that an estimated
5,500 new criminals could have on the county’s penal system.
In an August 2 press release, Reynolds indirectly knocked the mayor’s
habitual haste. “Once again, things are moving too fast, and we may be getting
the cart before the horse.” The complaint is an about-face by Reynolds, who
supported all the briskly passed items mentioned above.
According to officials at the session, Reynolds, Todd, and Mitchell were
noncommittal on the idea of soliciting bids, while the rest of the council “put
our foot down and said, `No way,'” says one source. The resistance delayed a
vote on the item, which could have occurred during the Wednesday work session
(after the executive session). Council is expected to vote on the
bid-solicitation proposal on August 17.
Reynolds, who is considering a run for mayor in 1997, says he does want to
remove the utility from the council’s guidance in order to improve efficiency.
“The only thing I’m concerned about is that the status quo is not acceptable,
and we’re going to have to change some things.”
Regarding his opposition to the mayor’s wish to sell, Reynolds says,
“There’s nothing personal. I think the mayor wants what’s best for the City of
Austin, and we’ll all vote our consciences.”
Todd, just back from a trip to Austin’s sister-city, Oita, Japan, has
avoided the fracas. “I haven’t paid any attention to that yet. I’m still
recovering from my trip to Japan.” n Thursday’s meeting was relatively spiritless. Max Nofziger read the
newspaper on the dais as staff from the Neighborhood, Housing, and Conservation
Office (NHCO) presented next year’s budget.
The $12 million plan, approved on a 5-0 vote with Mitchell abstaining, sets
aside $4.3 million to provide affordable housing. An almost equal amount, $3.9
million, will help refurbish affordable houses.
Mitchell, apparently annoyed that the proposed budget didn’t
dedicate even more of the $12 million to low-income housing, chided the council
for not pursuing the affordable-housing-in-exchange-for-tax-abatements plan
presented by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) last fall.
An angry Shea, who never liked AMD’s proposal, asked staff to return with
info about housing plans that are eligible for Federal Low-Income Tax Credits,
but not tax abatements from the city.
Also included in the budget for the first time is funding for Mitchell’s
plan to “wipe out” the blighted facilities on 11th and 12th streets, replacing
them with new, city-owned buildings. The plan received $900,000, most of it
from the highly successful Neighborhood Commercial Management Program (NCMP),
which matches investments from new or expanding businesses with city loans.
NCMP is slated to lose almost $700,000 – 38% of its funding – in the next year,
the largest dollar loss for any NHCO budget item.
Seeking funds for his own redevelopment plan, Mitchell con-sistently
criticizes NCMP because 1) its service area encompasses more than just central
East Austin (it also includes South Austin); 2) It doesn’t serve enough
African-Americans. Since the program’s inception in 1990, the program has made
19 loans; only one has gone to a black-owned business.
Last spring, according to NCMP officials, Mitchell pressured them to stop
promoting the NCMP’s projects. In fact, when Garcia invited an NCMP employee on
Channel 6 last spring to talk about the pro-gram, Mitchell called the station
up to read them out, according to another housing official.
The NHCO budget, unlike other city budgets, is approved in August to comply
with a deadline imposed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, which provides all of NHCO’s funding. n On August 2, the water and wastewater commission found themselves
deadlocked again on whether to recommend a proposed water service agreement
with Freeport McMoran to the council.
The agreement, fashioned between water and wastewater staff and Freeport
officials, calls for Freeport to spend $4 million to provide city water to
Lantana, a 700-acre property they own. The city would then reimburse the
de-veloper over the next three years.
Council has seen the proposal once before. On June 22, Garcia, Shea,
Goodman, and Nofziger, unsure if Lantana would build out fast enough to provide
the needed revenue ($2.3 million a year), sent it to the commission in pursuit
of a different repayment plan.
The commission voted on the item once before, on June 2, but as in the
latest round, managed a 3-3 stalemate on two different votes (Todd’s appointee,
Larry Deuser, missed both meetings; both times, the appointees of Goodman,
Nofziger, and Shea – Stephen Adams, Lanetta Cooper, and William Spelman,
blocked the proposal).
The first vote at last week’s meeting, sponsored by Reynolds’ appointee,
John Wooley, would have let the city manager decide the most favorable form of
repayment. Had the motion passed, the proposed repayment option would likely
have remained, since city staff had already brought forth what they considered
the most favorable repayment scenario.
Under the second motion, sponsored by Cooper, the city would repay Freeport
depending on the number of hook-ups to the proposed water system. This scenario
would still fulfill the city’s legal obligation to provide the area with water,
but would permit a more conservative investment by the city. The item is
expected to return to council on August 17, without a recommendation from the
commission. n This week in council: There are no council meetings. n
This article appears in August 11 • 1995 and August 11 • 1995 (Cover).