Texas Citizens, Cities Slammed with Huge Utility Bills Following Storms | Climate Denial Crock of the Week
By: PeterWSinclair (Climate Denial Crock of the Week)
According to city documents, the average price of energy per megawatt hour in February was $23.73. During the rotating outages that began on Monday morning, that increased to $2,400 per megawatt hour.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
with Peter Sinclair
Texas Citizens, Cities Slammed with Huge Utility Bills Following Storms
February 23, 2021
Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle:
Denton Municipal Electric since Tuesday has spent $207 million to buy electricity, and officials now have to borrow the same amount to make the company whole in a crisis they didn't create.
"This is a situation that no one could have predicted, obviously," said David Gaines, an assistant city manager and Denton's chief financial officer, in a virtual Denton City Council meeting Friday morning. "Our power expenses on a single day exceeded the expenses for the entirety of last year."
DME is the city's electricity provider.
"The immediate concern we have is what this means to our fund," Gaines said after the meeting.
The DME budget is about $231.4 million.
"The $207 million we spent is for buying power off the grid," he told the Denton Record-Chronicle later. "The immediate concern is that depleted our reserves. We had $100 million fund balance in the electric fund, but we had $200 million in unexpected costs. We've got to make up that whole $200 million just for immediate cash flow needs."
Council member Deb Armintor called it a "statewide financial crisis."
"This is very serious," she said. "And a lot of ratepayers are wondering how … this will affect them."
Armintor pressed DME Assistant General Manager Terry Naulty for answers on whether DME customers will be impacted by increased utility rates. But Denton Mayor Gerard Hudspeth, when Armintor mentioned how Flower Mound is mitigating the effects on utility customers, told her that city staff members "have been working 20-hour days" and told her to refer questions in writing to them.
"The fund itself is going to have to recover the cost," Gaines said. "We have to have the cash to make these payments. A lot can change from today to two months from now. State or federal aid could come. We just cannot say what the magnitude what rate changes will be at this time."
According to city documents, the average price of energy per megawatt hour in February was $23.73. During the rotating outages that began on Monday morning, that increased to $2,400 per megawatt hour.
"Obviously, the fact of the matter is it's huge and we need to finance it," council member Paul Meltzer said.
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Cities and municipalities were playing the "Griddy Game", gambling with taxpayers monies.
Now they expect Austin, FEMA or Washington to bail them out.
Wasn't it Cruz and Cronyn that voted against the feds helping out NJ in their diaster? Well I wonder how they would feel if senators voted against Texas getting aid.
Pendejo Pinada Cruz should request aid for Mexico, they paid for the wall didn't they.
Sold out, $100.00, approximate 2 week back log.
It's not fat enough...
Too funny but he needs to add about 20 lbs to pendejo pinata Cruz belly.
That's why you stuff it with candy and tamales
You gotta love unregulated capitalism. It works great. Until it doesn't.
Meanwhile, undetected or low priority water main breaks are causing massive sinkholes...
Everything is bigger in TX.
Car left in a safe parkaging garage encased in ice
Not another leak anywhere except on her car.
Including the fuck ups
Let's deregulate everything. Sure seems to work out well...
This is perfectly logical.
During an outage, electricity is rare. Anything that's rare is expensive.
So it's perfectly logical anyone who gets electricity, while others do not, should pay a BIG premium.
If they're not happy, they can move to Cancún.
Ah...I get it! Sarcasm, right?
Me?? Never.
That's just plain old COMMON SENSE! There's never a better occasion for making money than in the middle of a disaster.
It's the American Way.