Citizens of Livingston for Fair and Equitable Rates

12/13/2023

A letter from Joshua Grant, President of Citizens of Livingston for Fair and Equitable Rates

“In response to the City’s continued efforts to silence the voices of their citizens at the Public Utility Commission, and their insistence that the citizens’ only recourse is through the ballot box, I will be running for Mayor of Livingston in 2024.

Aside from knowledge about electric rates, transparency and a sense of duty to be answerable to the citizens who employ our city officials to represent our interests at city hall are severely lacking. When the city no longer listens to the citizens, or acts contrary to its citizens’ wishes in what we feel to be an ethically and legally questionable manner, it is time for a change of leadership from the top down.

My bid for Mayor will facially challenge the way this government conducts itself and I will push a strong policy of transparency, modernization, economic growth, infrastructure improvements, accessibility to our elected representatives, an assurance that the voices of all citizens are heard and acknowledged, and stopping the status quo mentality of “that’s the way we’ve always done it” that prevents Livingston from reaching its full potential.

Citizens of Livingston for Fair and Equitable Rates will also be formulating a ticket to fill the vacant council seat that was never filled after its vacancy and challenge the incumbent councilman for his seat.

In addition to campaigning for your vote, I and the rest of the members of Citizens of Livingston for Fair and Equitable Rates will continue to take our and the rest of the citizens’ fight to the City through whatever legal means are available to us until the current leadership comes to the table to correct their wrongdoing and do what’s right by the citizens of this city.

The time for change is now! A different name, a different face, different policies, different attitude towards our citizens, and a different representative with a proven track record of fighting for what’s right for all citizens of our beautiful community!”

12/12/2023

In case you haven’t heard, there will be a public hearing at the City Council meeting tonight to discuss moving the city elections from May to November 2024. We hope to see you there to voice your opinion either way.

11/27/2023

We have filed our response to the City of Livingston’s poorly thought out and fatally flawed legal argument asking the judge to reject our petition based on completely irrelevant sections of the legal code. It’s sad enough the City continues to fight its citizens, but even worse that they can’t even do it competently with the high dollar firm they’ve hired in Austin using tax/rate payers’ money.

“The result of the City’s misapplication of the standards is very serious: the City proposes
to reject signatures that are fully compliant with the statutory requirements of Subchapter C, Sec.
33.052 and deny the signatories their opportunity to seek Commission review based on an
application of the wrong petition signature standard. The City proposes to reject valid signatures
that, on their face, wholly conform to the information contained in the Polk County qualified voter
rolls for the municipality, which do not include telephone numbers. Finally, the City would
make qualification dependent on requirements for signatories to be the named ratepayer, served at
the service address, or the spouse of the named ratepayer found nowhere in the statutory language
of Subchapter C. The City’s claim would violate Rule 22.1(b)(3) and (4), would elevate form over
substance, and would unlawfully result in rejection of signatures that are fully and facially valid,
depriving qualified voters inside the City of their right to sign and appeal.”

Read the full text of our response here:https://interchange.puc.texas.gov/Documents/55661_32_1348524.PDF

11/17/2023

Yet again, the City is fighting to keep our case from being heard by the State. This time they are objecting to the validity of the signatures, signatures that concerned citizens of our City signed, and asking for the entire petition to be deemed invalid. They did so by pointing to subchapters of statutes that don’t even pertain to the subchapter we filed under. So, yet again, we will have to file an answer to their ineptly researched and poorly constructed objection. The fact that the City is fighting its own citizens so hard on this matter should raise everyone’s eyebrows and make everyone ask “why?”https://interchange.puc.texas.gov/Documents/55661_31_1346718.PDF

11/15/2023

The Tale of Two Cities, though the stories are quite different. Jasper has: asked to extend the abatement of the lawsuit so settlement discussion can continue in the best interest of their citizens, given its customers rebates from the SRMPA recoveries, adjusted the fuel component of their rates, ordered a cost of service study to determine just and reasonable rates, and wants a collaborative process throughout the settlement discussions with its citizens.

Livingston has: challenged jurisdiction, overcollected from its citizens on fuel, has not given any rebates from SRMPA recoveries, has filed for our petition to be dismissed, continues to ignore its citizens, elected the same perpetrators to the board of SRMPA, does not have a cost of service study, and has not expressed any interest in settling this case and addressing its citizens concerns or entering into any collaborative process.

While Jasper has a long way to go and are by no means angels, at least they’re doing something and listening to The People. Livingston….well…at least we have pickleball.

Livingston and Jasper residents hope a lawsuit will force their municipality-operated utility company to offer lower rates and create more transparency in setting rates. They’re among the 5 million Texans living outside the state’s deregulated market and cannot choose their energy provider.

11/15/2023

Sadly, but not at all surpringly, Livingston City Council without even so much as a question or comment, especially considering current litigation against the City’s electric rates, once again decided to vote for former Mayor Clark Evans to represent Livingston on the SRMPA Board. So our board members remain the current Mayor, Judy Cochran, and Clark Evans, the same two people who:

1. Don’t ask questions
2. Voted to reduce fuel prices from SRMPA but kept our electricity rates in the City the same, thereby overcollecting from the ratepayers in the City.
3. Knew SRMPA was undercollected and didn’t inform the citizens of Livingston.
4. Don’t understand ratemaking
5. Don’t understand capacity and fuel policies
6. Don’t understand regulations and the power market
7. Clearly don’t listen to citizen input

It’s desperately time for a change of leadership in this City, from the Mayor all the way through City Council.

11/12/2023

Livingston’s City Council will meet this Tuesday at 5pm. On the agenda is appointing a director the the SRMPA board. If you’ve been paying attention to the case filed against Livingston over its electric rates, you know SRMPA is Livingston’s affiliate that manages our purchase power contracts and passes on those costs to the city. Currently, Mayor Judy Cochran and former Mayor Clark Evans are the representatives for Livingston, neither of whom seem equipped or have demonstrated they have the ability or knowledge to represent the City on these matters. It’s time to appoint someone who will ask the following questions:

1. Why does SRMPA still overcharge the city on capacity and fuel?
2. Why doesn’t the SRMPA or the City pursue cheaper options through the market?
3. What portion of SRMPA’s funds come from hydroelectric power, and why haven’t these funds been used to offset the cost of capacity?
3. Why doesn’t the SRMPA have an effective ‘true up’ mechanism for fuel and capacity?
4. Why didn’t the City notify its citizens and ratepayers that SRMPA had undercollected and was then required to recover losses, and why were these undercollections charged over a short time to the detriment of the ratepayer and citizens of our city instead of being recovered over time?
5. Why doesn’t the city publicly publish its costs from SRMPA for the ratepayers to see?

These questions would be a great start to effectively representing your citizens and ratepayers on this board.

11/03/2023

Very interesting watch, particularly our Senator’s remarks at 1:09:37 (Senator Robert Nichols). It seems at least some legislators are aware that municipally owned utilities can, and in some cases (as in Livingston) absolutely ARE abusing their jurisdictional authority to set rates. Senator Charles Schwerther is absolutely correct when he talks about transparency and abuse. We are not asking Livingston’s MOU to permanently cede jurisdiction to the Public Utility Commission, but IF there are no appellate rights, as the city claims, then there absolutely needs to be legislation to make these abusive city’s answerable to a state agency. People running for council and other positions of power within our communities are not equipped to be setting rates, so elections are not a proper recourse. Especially when millions of other Texans are afforded the protection of appellate rights at the PUCT.

Live and Recorded Public meetings of Senate Committee on Business & Commerce (Part II) for Texas Legislative Council - Senate

11/02/2023

The Public Utility Commission of Texas open meeting is happening at 9:30 where our case against the City of Livingston’s electric rates will be discussed, Docket no. 55661. Watch online here:

AdminMonitor provides webcasts of administrative meetings and workshops as live streaming to be viewed in real-time, or on-demand from an archive we create for you.

11/01/2023

Citizens of Livingston for Fair and Equitable Rates has filed their response to the City of Livingston’s Motion to Dismiss. If you care about your community, I would encourage you to read it to understand the kinds of abuses the City is perpetrating against its citizens regarding electric rates:https://interchange.puc.texas.gov/Documents/55661_24_1342394.PDF

“City of Livingston’s municipally owned utility engaged in significantly abusive utility misbehavior of the kind that led the Legislature in 1989 to pass HB 911, currently codified as Chapter 33, Subchapter E of PURA, creating a powerful remedial program in which the PUC is charged with the responsibility to oversee municipal utilities that have abused their rate setting privileges by enforcing a type of probationary period for errant cities, during which the PUC can hear ratepayer appeals and set rates both inside and outside the city limits.”

“The Livingston ratepayers are not wealthy. They are salt of the earth. The rates charged to them by the City for electricity are not mere items in the family budget, but are substantial costs that affect their very livelihoods and the well-being of their families. Regardless, the City’s Motion to Dismiss tells those 307 ratepayers, and the remaining 2,450 qualified voting citizens, they have no recourse. The City’s Motion tells all the City’s ratepayers that, even though customers outside of city limits across the state have rights for Commission oversight, they, the ratepayers inside Livingston, have no such right under the Texas Utilities Code. The City is telling them they have no right to have the one agency with the skill, knowledge, expertise, and resources to make sure their rates are just and reasonable, or to tell them if, as these citizens suspect, the rates are unjust, abusive, a much too high.”

10/30/2023

A case was also filed against Jasper over their electric rates, just like in Livingston. Unlike Livingston, however, city officials in Jasper thought a more appropriate course of action would be to abate the case for a period of time and try to reach a settlement in the interest of their citizens. Livingston, on the other hand, wants our case thrown out by filing for dismissal and will continue fighting its people every step of the way. Mayor Cochran, Bill Wiggins, and any of the aldermen up for reelection who are acting contrary to the wishes and best interest of their citizens need to be taken out with the garbage in May due to their inaction, ineptitude, and arrogance.

10/27/2023

The City of Livingston filed a motion to dismiss our case over their electric rates on the grounds of “lack of jurisdiction”, despite SOAH already issuing an order saying they do have jurisdiction. Just so there’s no confusion, this is your city’s leadership telling it’s citizens and ratepayers to go to hell.

We’ve known they would try to get it thrown out any way possible. The city’s leaders clearly feel like they don’t need to listen to or address their citizens’ concerns, and they also don’t feel like they need to answer to the State. It’s time to clean house at city hall, folks.

We will be filing a response to their motion next week.