Austin Energy Wastes Your Money
Austin Energy has committed $17 million of your tax dollars for an unnecessary upgrade to the city’s 290,000 electric meters. Wow, could this news be more timely with yesterday’s rant about the $20.6 million dollar budget deficit.
Sure, these meters supplied by Cellnet are nice, advanced pieces of technology that will supposedly improve the customer experience and “allow for better analysis of energy consumption”, but in a city with a projected $20.6 million budget deficit, it is not a good business decision to waste money like this!!
Accoding to The Stateman article, the cost will not be offset by a reduction in the contract workforce that currently reads the meters because those same contractors also read the water meters. From Cellnet’s website, the only cost savings associated with these meters are said to be efficiencies gained from eliminating meter readers. As far as this blogger can tell, there is no payback on the $17 million “investment”.
This is just another example of one the mayor’s “I wanna be governor someday” projects. It’s also interesting that the Vice President of Marketing and Sales of Cellnet, Gary High, was a classmate of Mayor Wynn at Texas A&M in the early ’80s. A&M is a big university - probably just a coincidence.
I’m not privy to all the details, but on the surface this smells. It’s unfair to the Austin tax payers and utility customers. The project should have been, at the very least deferred, until this city is in better financial condition. Why not replace meters as needed?
Let’s face it - this a project that was probably justified and funded under the “Green” umbrella even though I doubt there will be any green benefits. Austin Energy is a City of Austin department and should not be sheltered from the budget crisis because being green is the cause du jour. Don’t get me wrong being green is the right thing to do, but let’s not get duped by snake oil salesmen claiming benefits that don’t exist.
Wake up Austinites. This should not be happening in a city with the political awareness of Austin.
