Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Frisco City Council notes — October 8, 2008

By Jeff Cheney of Blogging Frisco

FRISCO — The Frisco City Council typically meets the first and third meeting of every month. This meeting was pushed back a day to Wednesday. For the second straight meeting, we changed the date to accommodate National Night Out. I enjoyed National Night Out again this year. I visited a half dozen parties this year while riding with the Police Department. As many of you know, Texas was test marketing a new date this year, pushing it back from our normal August date. Many people discussed enjoying the cooler weather. However, the downside was that many people’s parties ended earlier due to being a school night and had less attendance due to conflicts with after school activities. My neighborhood party was wrapping up when we got back so I was disappointed with sundown being earlier. Personally, I prefer the August date, heat and all. We will be reviewing the statistics and feedback to determine when to have NNO next year.

In other NNO events, the Fire won the Battle of the Badges which was a blood drive competition between the Police and Fire. The Fire won by 4 pints and collected 216 pints of blood. However, the Police got the last laugh by winning the Good vs. Good basketball game 43-34 while raising money for Special Olympics.

We had many lengthy topics which resulted in a meeting running very late into the night. We started with a discussion on Cities Aggregation Power Project, Inc. (CAPP) long-term power contract. The City is a member of the Cities Aggregation Power Project (“CAPP”), a non-profit political subdivision corporation aggregator. Created in 2001 in anticipation of the deregulation of the Texas retail electric market, CAPP pools members’ electric power needs in order to negotiate lower, more stable prices through bulk purchasing. CAPP is run by a voluntary 10 member Board of Directors, comprised entirely of city employees and city officials.

CAPP and its sister political subdivision corporation aggregator, South Texas Aggregation Project, Inc. (“STAP”), have more than 150 political subdivision members that purchase in excess of one billion kWh annually. Together CAPP and STAP have member savings that have surpassed $100 million since the Texas electric market deregulated in 2002.

The proposed contract called for lower power costs for our based load of power in exchange for the our commitment to a 24-year contract as well as paying 60% of the contract up front. This brought obvious questions from Council including why they are requiring so much of an up front payment, what other options we have that are not as long of a term, what happens if the company defaults, etc. We are going to have further discussions on this topic at the next Council Meeting to determine if this is a good deal for the City of Frisco.

A few months back, we heard a request from Community Waste Disposal for a fee increase due to the rising costs of fuel. If you recall, Council voted to not reward the fee increase. Since then, fuel prices have decreased substantially. Another agenda item was brought forward for a fee increase, although at a lower rate than a few months prior. My position had not changed since the last time we voted. We had negotiated a contract with CWD nearly 5 years ago and all parties should keep to those terms. CWD was awarded the contract in a competitive bid situation. It would not be fair to others who wanted this contract to improve the terms before completion. This contract expires in July and at that time we can pursue differing contract terms that take into account fluctuating fuel prices. Council voted 3-2 to deny the request.

We had our first round of discussions regarding a proposed parking facility next to City Hall. Partial funds for this project were approved by the citizens in our last bond election. The renderings were quite impressive and blended very well with the architecture of City Hall and the surrounding Frisco Square. The proposed cost is roughly $14,000 per parking space. Part of this is attributed to wider parking spaces since so many families visit the facility. A basic parking garage can be built as cheaply as $10,000/space. The proposed garage would have 578 spaces. We are going to have future discussions about the features, budget, and timing of this parking facility. With the current state of the economy, we are very sensitive to pricing and capital outlays.

A few other items to note:

* Chris Johnson was appointed as an ex-officio member of the Convention and Visitors Bureau

* We agreed on a proposal to true up costs in property swaps with the Frisco ISD

* As of August 25, there are 2,364 members at the Senior Center at Frisco Square. This compares to 1,383 from the same time frame in 2007. Congratulations to Judy Florence and her staff on this 71% increase in just one year!

* The FAC has a total of 4,538 membership accounts totaling more than 16,561 members. Did you know that the membership of the FAC is almost split evenly between males and females? Males made up 49.4% of the Center’s membership and Females constituted 50.6% of the membership. Members under the age of 45 make up 86.5% of the total membership of the FAC. By the end of August, the FAC had a total of 15,897 total members, with a daily average of 1,477 members attending the Center during the month.

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