What are your priorities for Austin?

by: Bill Spelman

Wed Apr 08, 2009 at 04:19 PM CDT

I believe the weak economy and the tight budget are the most pressing issues facing Austin today. Please join us next Tuesday evening for a town hall meeting to discuss them.

You're invited to share your ideas and be a part of the solution. Austin faces some tough challenges ahead, but by working together, we can leverage our city resources to get the most bang for our taxpayer buck. If you can't make the event, then please share your ideas online.

Thanks for your support. I look forward to meeting with you personally to hear how you think we can best improve Austin.  

Join me tonight at the Belmont

by: Perla

Thu Mar 12, 2009 at 02:08 PM CDT

Dear friends,

 While there are now only six weeks before Early Voting begins, we still have 100% of the campaign left to go.

I want to thank those of you who have invested so much of your time, energy, creativity and hard-earned funds into my campaign for Austin City Council, Place 1. Together, we have built an amazing campaign full of diverse supporters.

I am so very proud to share with you that just this week, I have gained the endorsements of five additional leading Austin organizations: the Black Austin Democrats, Capital Area Progressive Democrats, South Austin Democrats, Stonewall Democrats and the Texas Environmental Democrats. These endorsements, combined with those of the Austin Firefighters and the Central Labor Council (which represents 23 individual groups), have brought significant momentum from 29 endorsing organizations towards a victory for all of us on May 9th.

Come help me celebrate and meet other supporters tonight, March 12th, at the Belmont from 5:30-7:30 at the Belmont (305 W 6th St). All are welcome!

Throughout my campaign for City Council, I have been focused on the ways we can position Austin to come out of this economic downturn as a strong economic leader. And, with my background working on economic issues through the Texas Association of Community Development Corporations and at the State Legislature, I know we can achieve this goal. As part of how we achieve long-term economic strength, we must look at ways to dig deep and make investments even in tough economic times. That is what I will do when I am on City Council, and that is what I am doing on my campaign.

As we are all taking a hard look at our budgets right now, I hope you will consider investing in our City's future over seeing one movie ($10), eating out one night ($25), or going out for one Friday night on the town ($50).

You can invest in my campaign - and our future - tonight at the Belmont. If you can not make it tonight, you can always donate securely online here.

 You can learn more about my platform, sign up to volunteer, or donate to my campaign by visiting my website, www.VotePerla.com. Thank you again for all of your support.

Best regards,

Perla

Ps. We'll be celebrating tonight with the heaters on, so I hope you'll join me for a warm reception tonight, Thursday, March 12th, from 5:30-7:30pm at the Belmont (305 W 6th St).

Pol. Adv. paid for by the Perla Cavazos Campaign, Jan Soifer, Treasurer. P.O. Box 11530, Austin, TX 78711. This campaign has not agreed to comply with the contribution and expenditure limits of the Austin Fair Campaign Chapter. As such, no public funds will be utilized.

Austin City Council Votes for Nation's Largest Photovoltaic Array

by: citizen.sarah

Thu Mar 05, 2009 at 02:36 PM CST

Lee Leffingwell made the motion to approve item 16 with three additional recommendations.  The first direction was to include a provision that any federal stimulus funds, rebates, or incentives recovered would be passed on to Austin, rather than kept by Gemini.  The second was to create a new task force to review future energy projects.  The task force, he promised, would consist of diverse stakeholders and not be weighted in terms of energy usage.  This is an important point, as several representatives from the city's large scale industrial users such as Spansion and the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) specifically requested that future stakeholder meetings be based upon the size of user consumption-- meaning that in future energy projects, city council dialogue would be dominated even more than ever by large industrials.  As David Power, Public Citizen's Deputy Director, testified, that sounds a little too much like, "for every dollar I spend, I get a vote."  Cheers to Lee Leffingwell for insisting on a more inclusive process.

The third and final additional direction was, as expected, to roll the power purchase agreement into Green Choice, so that citizens would be able to voluntarily opt into a program to buy solar power at a locked-in price. Councilman Mike Martinez stated that he would be more than happy to be the first person to sign up for such a program, except that Leffingwell already called "shotgun" on that distinction.

Council members Sheryl Cole, Laura Morrison, and Randi Shade all made additional comments in support of the plant, stating that this was a tough decision to make in hard economic times but that this solar plant, far from a luxury item, was an important element of Austin's long term energy goals.

The Austin City Council has earned Public Citizen's most heartfelt appreciation for proving itself, once again, a renewable energy leader.  We especially respect the time and effort that the Council and its staff put into this contentious process, and look forward to working with them on future projects.

We also encourage Austinites to express their thanks to the Mayor and City Council for approving this historic first step towards our renewable energy future.

Sarah McDonald is Public Citizen's Media Coordinator and blog lady. But that doesn't mean she's not her own person!

Original post can be found at www.texasvox.org

Austin City Council to Pass Gemini Solar Energy Plant Proposal Today

by: Phillip Martin

Thu Mar 05, 2009 at 00:22 PM CST

Ed. note: We dedicated a lot of time to this issue because of its importance to our local and state community. Texas absolutely must be a national and world leader in the renewable energy industry -- both in wind and in solar. As we at BOR expand into our own office space, we hope to continue bringing this level of discussion to the big picture issues that matter most.

If you want to see more work like this and support the efforts of those on BOR who are committed to bringing the best coverage of state and local politics, we would ask you to contribute to TexBlog PAC as a gesture of appreciation.

As the Austin City Council prepares to pass the solar energy plant as we speak (and they may have done it by the time I finish with this post), I wanted to provide a single place to look back at the coverage of the past week.

The Austin Chronicle noted our work in their "headlines of the week:"

The perfect forum attendance of mayoral front-runners Lee Leffingwell and Brewster McCracken has spread to the Internet: Burnt Orange Report (www.burntorangereport.com) queried both candidates extensively this week on the future of solar energy.

The Chronicle had their own excellent story on the intricate policies of the solar legislation for the city. The article, titled, "Cool City: Solar Subsidies" rounds out a lot of what I wrote last week regarding the Green Choice program and other cost programs.

Here's a link to all major stories on the issue:

• BOR: The Austin City Council & the Future of Solar Energy in Central Texas
• BOR: Interview with Brewster McCracken on Austin's Solar Energy Future
• BOR: Interview with Lee Leffingwell on Austin's Solar Energy Future
• TexasVox: City Delays on Solar Plant Vote
  
• Austin Chronicle: Cool City: Solar Subsidies
• Statesman: Austin proposes nation's largest sollar array
• Express-News: S.A., Austin leaders want solar firms
  
• Express-News: Can two cities chase the sun?

In Fact Daily Publishes Cool Piece on Bill Spelman

by: Karl-Thomas Musselman

Wed Mar 04, 2009 at 09:00 AM CST

As such, In Fact Daily (subscription only) has published a really key interview a couple days ago now that has made the rounds and I think expresses this. Some clips below.

In Fact Daily, Michael May: Former Place 5 City Council member Bill Spelman wants his old job back, and it looks at this point like no one is going to stop him. Spelman doesn't have an opponent so far, and there is freedom that comes with that. In a wide-ranging conversation with In Fact Daily, Spelman was not shy about wading into the tougher issues facing the city, like where to cut the city budget if the economy doesn't improve. "We're doing better than most cities," he says. "But we have to prepare ourselves for hard times. I think the next budget year is going to be worse than this one."

With city leaders already cutting back on everything from hiring new employees to library hours, Spelman says the Council is going to have to make tough choices in the years ahead. "Some budget cuts are easy," he says. "But some are hard. We only have contracts with our public safety employees. It's always easier to cut into libraries or parks, where the employees don't have contracts. But at some point we're going to run out of options. I don't think the public safety contracts should be on the table now, but if the economy gets worse, we're going to have to investigate that."

It's not that Spelman doesn't think public safety is important. This is a man who left the City Council in 2000 to run a national community-policing program. He just thinks that Texas' collective bargaining rules - which only allow the police, fire and EMS unions to negotiate contracts - skew city priorities.

Spelman is what you might call a progressive pragmatist; it is an attitude he also brings to the recent Wildflower PUD controversy. He believes the Council did the right thing by postponing a vote on the project, rather than killing it outright. "The developers can already build retail with single-family housing in back," he said. "I'd like to see something better than that. The developers say they are willing to set a higher standard, and they say they have a plan that will protect the aquifer, but they didn't prove their case. So, right now, I'm not sure which vote would have better protected the environment."

Spelman is in a rare position. He's been on the Council, but he's spent most of the decade teaching public policy at the LBJ School at UT. It's given him a different perspective on what city government should be doing.

"It's hard to see the big picture when you are making decisions everyday," he says. "On Council, you're always stuck in the weeds, having to make a decision about this zoning case or that one. And you can make good decisions about which weeds to cut, but the important stuff happens at a higher level."

For one thing, I think it's a fool's errand for anyone to file against Spelman now who launched over 750 supporters this weekend and has been going all over town with town halls, policy meetings, and neighborhood events not to mention garnering all the endorsements that one could possibly get so far. And the second point is that it's really exciting to be able to have some honest discussion and debate outside of the Mayor's race and to a lesser extend the Place 1 contest which in the big picture helps to drive the discussion this spring.

BOR Interview with Lee Leffingwell on Austin's Solar Energy Future

by: Phillip Martin

Mon Mar 02, 2009 at 01:30 PM CST

Yesterday evening, I wrote a detailed post on the Austin City Council & the future of solar energy in central Texas. The post examined the proposed 30MW Gemini solar plant project that could come to Austin if the City Council approves it this Thursday.

To learn more about the project, I interviewed two key members of the City Council -- and the two leading candidates for the next Mayor of Austin -- Brewster McCracken and Lee Leffingwell, to learn what they had to say about the project. I posted my interview with McCracken earlier this morning. Below is a transcript of my interview with Lee Leffingwell.

---------------------------

Phillip Martin: I'm an undecided voter, and I see you on the elevator. What is the one thing I should know about this project?

Lee Leffingwell: First thing I want to tell you is that I will be voting for the proposal this week. I know there's been some criticism, especially in the context of the mayor's campaign, about the delay that I supported on this vote. I've actually heard some speculation that I don't support the idea of investing in solar, but I do. I just felt the delay was important so we had the opportunity to listen to everyone's concerns and think through all the implications of making a big investment like this -- $250 million.

I've heard some of those criticisms, and I wanted to ask you about them. Can you start, though, by talking to me about the concerns you've had about the project?

There are basically three questions that I've had about the proposals. The first is about the rapid and ongoing advancement in technology for solar. Is this the right time to make this size of investment? It's sort of the idea of if you think things will get better and cheaper in just a short time, if we waited would we get a better deal? It's like the idea of people that bought the first iPod a few years ago and found out just a short time later that an even better phone cost half as much.

The second concern is given what is happening in Washington with the stimulus package and the federal legislation this is going to involve a sizeable investment in renewable energy -- are we going to leave money on the table by acting now instead of waiting for this to actually happen?

The third concern, which has actually already been proposed and we discussed at the last meeting when we voted for the delay, is could we incorporate this into our Green Choice program so that customers should choose to sign up for this batch and voluntarily pay a premium for it and reduce the amount of the fuel charge that all the rest of the utilities' customers would have to pay to cover the costs of that investment.

I think I understand those concerns, and let's see if we can't tackle them one at at time so we can unpack them a bit. Let's start with the Green Choice program. For those who aren't familiar with it, can you explain what it is and what role you want to see it play in the financing of this proposed solar project?

The Green Choice program would help reduce the fuel charge. Roger Duncan has already confirmed that we can and we will, incidentally, offer this solar energy utility for customers through the Green Choice program, because there is no doubt that this will be very expensive energy. I'm hoping that we'll find lots of people out there who are willing to pay the premium to sign up for it. I especially hope that folks in the environmental community here in Austin will sign up for it, too. I've already offered to do that myself, and I hope that a lot of others will share their commitment in the form of paying a little bit extra to sign up for this.

The Green Choice program has always been here for these renewable energies. Originally the cost is a little higher, but over time we see that green choice batches go down in price so that customers actually save money over the course of time.

Let's go back and talk about the stimulus funding, if we can. I read a quick wrap-up of the debate the other night, and your response in the Statesman -- in regards to the stimulus funds -- seemed to be that you were discussing improving roads and creek erosion as a priority, as opposed to solar energy or environmental economy...

Obviously, part of our stimulus funding package is going to be specifically for renewable energy, and that part of the stimulus money I certainly want going towards solar energy. That part, that I guess, was referenced in the Statesman was in regards to discretionary funding. The part of the stimulus package for solar energy, though, I want to make sure I don't lose out on. We've learned that there may be as much as $800 million in grant money for construction of renewable energy facilities, and I know there's going to be a lot of competition for that money. I want to make sure that, number one, we are at the table for those funds, and that number two -- and this is important -- that the benefits accrue to the city, and not to the vendor.

To continue reading the interview, click "There's More" below.

The Austin City Council & the Future of Solar Energy in Central Texas

by: Phillip Martin

Sun Mar 01, 2009 at 07:00 PM CST

Ed. note: The following 2,500+ word piece, and the interviews tomorrow, were completed on volunteer time. If you want to see more work like this and support the efforts of those on BOR who are committed to bringing the best coverage of state and local politics, we would ask you to contribute to TexBlog PAC as a gesture of appreciation. We may just be kid bloggers, but we are committed to the community, and we believe journalism should be reflective of community values and community interest. Thank you for being part of our community, and enjoy the reading.

On Thursday, March 5th, the Austin City Council will vote on a proposed contract with the California-based group Gemini Solar Development Company that could potentially launch the solar energy industry in Central Texas. The official language on the Austin City Council's March 5, 2009 agenda reads as follows:

Authorize award, negotiation, and execution of a contract with GEMINI SOLAR DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC, San Francisco, CA, to purchase up to 30 megawatts of solar-generated power over a 25-year term at an estimated annual amount of $10,000,000, for an estimated total contract amount of $250,000,000.

Proponents of the measure point to the 30 megawatts of solar power the plant will bring to the city over the next twenty-five years, and argue that Austin can't wait to begin buildings its roots in the solar energy field. The proposal, championed by environmental groups and the Austin semiconductor community alike, has generated interest in communities as far as San Antonio, who envision developing a partnership with Austin to help, as a San Antonio Express-News article puts it, "chase the sun" in order to establish an economic corridor for the region that creates jobs and protects the environment.

However, some concerns persist about the project. The price tag -- though the most competitive among fifteen proposals made to the Austin City Council -- still appears to bring too little bang for the buck. At a time of economic uncertainty, there is worry that Austin is paying too much for too little, and that more time and a better negotiation process could lead to a proposal for a plant that would generate more energy at a lesser cost.

The proposed solar power plant has made its way into the Austin mayoral race. Austin's Mayor Pro Tempore, Brewster McCracken, has arisen as a strong and unflinching voice in support of the project. McCracken highlighted the proposed Gemini project during a trip two weeks ago to meet with San Antonio City Councilmembers (Source); he also hosted a "convergence event" focused on the possiblity of building a renewable energy corridor between the two cities. Lee Leffingwell, a fierce advocate of sound environmental policies in Austin, has focused less of his campaign attention on the project, spending more time on announcing endorsements. That being said, Leffingwell has stated that he supports the project, and that his concerns are more about implementation and making it cost efficient for the city than anything else. (Source)

Though the political implications of the vote are relevant to Austin's mayoral race, today's post will not delve into the political positions of McCracken or Leffingwell. Instead, I will post interviews with each Councilmember tomorrow, each of which extensively -- and almost exclusively -- discusses their views on the Gemini project and the future of Austin's renewable energy economy.

Today's post will focus exclusively on the pros and cons of the proposed project. Specifically, I will examine the following questions:

1. What is the history of the Gemini project?
   
2. Is 30 megawatts of solar energy capacity a big deal, or is Austin getting too little bang for its buck?
3. Is a long-term investment in a solar energy industry worth signing an imperfect yet promising deal with Gemini?

The discussion of those questions continues below the fold; click "There's More" to read, and be sure to come back tomorrow for the interviews.

Your City. Your Voice.

by: Bill Spelman

Wed Feb 11, 2009 at 03:22 PM CST

We're off to a great start!

Our campaign kickoff in January had over 200 people at Scholz Garten. Last week, we conducted our first volunteer block-walk and also hosted our first house party in the Circle C neighborhood. And to top things off, we just won the Central Labor Council endorsement.

Thanks to all our supporters who have helped make this campaign a success!

Now let's keep the momentum going. You're invited to participate in the first of our series of community town halls to discuss some of the central issues facing our great city. Come share your ideas and be a part of the solution. Over the next few months, we'll discuss the following issues:

* February 21: Neighborhoods, Public Participation & Open Government
* March 7: Economy & Budget
* April 4: Affordability & Social Services

Our first town hall is next Saturday. I look forward to meeting with you personally to get your feedback regarding how to best improve Austin.

COMMUNITY TOWN HALL
"Neighborhoods, Public Participation and Open Government"
Saturday, February 21
10:00 a.m. - Noon
Will Hampton Library
5125 Convict Hill Rd
Austin, TX 78749

In this era of new responsibility, meaningful citizen participation in local government is crucial to making a city that works for everyone. President Obama has inspired millions across the country to believe in their ability to bring change, and now we need to apply that same can-do spirit to the local level.  

Please sign up online and learn how you can make a difference. If you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to contact me at info@billspelman.org.

Thanks for your support.

Best regards,

Bill Spelman

Not Running

by: Robin Cravey

Fri Feb 06, 2009 at 03:36 PM CST

As friends and supporters (and candidates!) check in with me to find out my plans, I do regret losing the momentum and loyalty that I built up during my campaign last year.  And I miss the excitement and shared enthusiasm of the struggle.  Such things fade quickly, and are not easily called back into being.

But, when I sit down to write in my journal at leisure, or take a long walk, or read a book, I feel very good about my decision not to run this time.  It's not just that I'm glad to have free time, something that I certainly did not have in the crush of campaigning.  More important, I'm glad to be rebuilding clarity and stability of mind.  I'm restoring that stock of ideas and ideals that I drew on during the campaign.

If I do run again-and I plan to-clarity and stability will be every bit as important as the momentum and enthusiasm that are fading.  Moreover, I have time now to think about the lessons I learned at a gut level during the campaign.

Perla Cavazos Campaign Kickoff at Nuevo Leon Tonight

by: David Mauro

Tue Feb 03, 2009 at 07:00 AM CST

After Chris Riley's successful campaign kickoff at Threadgill's last week, Place 1 candidate Perla Cavazos will hold her kickoff tonight at Nuevo Leon.

You're invited to Perla's campaign kick-off on Tuesday, February 3rd from 5:30pm-8:00pm at Nuevo Leon, located at 1501 E. 6th Street.

As I've disclosed before, I am supporting Perla in this race, though Austin is lucky to have two (and before Rick Cofer dropped out, three) excellent candidates. Hope to see some of you tonight at Nuevo Leon.