| Austin Energy: A Monopoly In Decline |
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| Written by Chris Tom |
| Wednesday, 01 April 2009 06:28 |
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I've been on either Austin Energy's grid, or Pedernales COOP. While the latter has had more publicity lately thanks to rampant corruption Austin Energy has been in decline for years. As a monopoly they have zero competition, and as a city run monopoly that Austin derives a large porton of its income from I can not trust them. Clearly policies have changed there despite the fact I get denials from employees, but I've lived here to long not to notice. Clearly the policy changes are designed to bring in more revenue and I can only speculate that this is a step to offset lower sales tax revenue, and city budget shortfall that has been intensified by the mishandling of the city coffers for years. You see during the boom times the city spends as much as it can saving nothing, and during the lean times the city squeezes its citizens so that it can continue to make vast expenditures for idiotic programs as if nothing has happened. Frankly it is disgusting and while Austin Energy is bad Capital Metro with its continuing failures could be worse. It is a close race in the quest to reach utter lack of competence. Right now in addition to policy change questions I have wonder why my March electric charges have tripled from last March. This is after new electronic meters were installed at my house, and after a mild March in which I did not run my AC once, and the heater only a couple of times. Of course it is a gas heater as is my water heating, and my stove so the only thing actively using power is my frig. I have all CCFL and LED ligthing in my home. The only computer is a laptop. My main TV is an LCD TV not that I have time to watch. In fact I have only lowered power consumption since last March by adding more LED lights replacing CCFLs, and installing new ceiling fans that were more efficient in power usage. I have not even used the ceiling fans thanks to the mild March. Something is amiss. I currently have requested that my meter be checked, and I hope I am wrong. My KWH has gone from 609 last March to 1563 this March. February went from 964 to 1300. January was 965 to 979 this year, and December was 800 to 711 this year. As you can see a pattern emerges when the new digital reader goes into place, and that pattern appears to swing in favor of the city. I'm interested in hearing from anyone else in Austin that is seeing a similar problem. We already know that traffic tickets and parking tickets go up in number as cities are hit with budget shortfalls. It is an invisible tax. This appears to be another tax, and it is wrong. Cities, counties, states, and our own government need to stop strangling citizens and busineses because they are hooked on spending. It needs to end, and we are the only ones that can put a stop to it. In the meantime you can check out my power consumption numbers back for the past two years here. I'd love to see yours if you are having the same issue. I can't wait for the day that solar or wind power takes me off the grid. I'll leave you with this quote from a CBS 4 Denver story that just makes me laugh. There may be other factors as well. Vehicle Control Agents -- the men and women who walk and drive around the city issuing citations -- are given strict quotas on how many tickets they should be writing every shift.
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