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ADVERTISE HERE! WEDNESDAY • JULY 31, 2024
Libraries’ photo contest winners to be announced at Aug. 3 reception Community Reports Photographs entered in Fort Bend County Libraries’ “We Are Fort Bend: Summer Splendor” amateur-photography contest will be on display in the Bohachevsky Gallery at George Memorial Library August 3 through late September. An Opening Day Reception and Awards Ceremony for the exhibit will take place on Saturday, August 3, at 2 p.m. The exhibit will feature original photographs that portray the culture, nature, people, and places of Fort Bend County - from hidden gems in our communities to favorite places and scenes around town. Amateur photographers were invited to enter original photographs for the contest in June and July. Winning photographs were determined by popular vote on FBCL’s website and social media. The winners will be announced, and prizes will be awarded for 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-place entries, at the Opening Day Reception. Awards and refreshments are made possible by the Friends of the George Memorial Library. The exhibit is free and open to the public, and it can be viewed during regular library hours. The exhibit can also be viewed on an online gallery on FBCL’s website. For more information, see the Fort Bend County Libraries website (www.fortbend.lib. tx.us) or call the library system’s Communications Office (281-633-4734). Fort Bend County Libraries’ George Memorial Library is located at 1001 Golfview in Richmond.
Fort Bend / Southwest • Volume 49 • No. 31 • $1.00
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After three decades, Stafford residents may soon vote on a property tax By Ken Fountain KFOUNTAIN@FORTBENDSTAR.COM
The Stafford City Council appears poised to making a decision that would allow residents to vote on perhaps the city’s most contentious issue: whether to a property tax for the first time in nearly three decades. The seven-squaremile city, under former Mayor Leonard Scarcella, eschewed any property taxes in the mid-1990s, moving to rely almost exclusively on sales taxes
and service fees for its revenues. Stafford is the only municipality in Texas without a property tax, a feature that has long been used by civic leaders as a calling card to attract new residents and businesses. But with Stafford’s substantial growth in the years since and the related strain on the city to provide services as taxes from retail establishments as shrunk. For the past few years, there has been a growing conversation about implementing some sort of property tax as a
means of addressing the city’s budgetary issues. In a January presentation to Council, Stafford’s chief financial officer, Alka Shah, laid out in fairly dire terms, the budgetary issues plaguing the city. Stafford in recent years has been focusing only on its operating budget and does not have the capacity to discuss capital needs or long-term innovation “simply because of a lack of resources,” Shaw said then.
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The Stafford City Council may soon place a proposed property tax before voters. Photo by Ken Fountain
CenterPoint CEO grilled by Texas senators at hearing
Texas Sen. Lois Kolkhurst, R-Brenham, poses a question during a special hearing on the impacts of Hurricane Beryl as her Democratic colleague Borris Miles listens. Both senators’ districts include portions of Fort Bend County. Screen capture of Texas Senate website
By Ken Fountain The Opening Day reception for the Fort Bend County Libraries’ “We Are Fort Bend: Summer Splendor” amateurphotography contest will be held Aug. 3 at the George Memorial Library in Richmond. File photo by Ken Fountain
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The CEO of CenterPoint Energy, the electricity provider for most of the greater Houston area including Fort Bend County, came under intense scrutiny over the company’s preparations and response to Hurricane Beryl from members of a special Texas Senate committee hearing on Monday which was broadcast online. Among the members of the bipartisan committee who posed pointed questions to Jason Wells were two senators with Fort Bend connections: Republican Lois Kolkhurst, whose Brenhambased District 18 includes parts of northeastern Fort Bend County; and Democrat Borris Miles, whose Houston-based District 13
includes parts of Missouri City and Fort Bend Houston. Fort Bend County was one of the counties hardest hit by Beryl, which struck the Texas Gulf coast near Matagorda in the early morning hours of July 8 and unexpectedly took an easterly path that cut a destructive swath through the greater Houston region. Thousands of residents were left without power for more than a week, and eight Fort Bend residents are said to have been among the 38 total who died of heat-related factors exacerbated by the lack of power. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick formed the 13-member Senate Special Committee on Hurricane and Tropical Storm Preparedness, Recovery and Electricity in the immediate wake of public
criticism of CenterPoint’s response to Beryl as well as its communication outreach in days that followed the storm’s landfall. Monday’s hearing was the first held by the committee. Beginning early in the morning. the hearing stretched late into the evening hours. Wells, who was named of the investor-owned CenterPoint earlier this year after serving in other senior executive roles since 2020, appeared largely contrite over the company’s performance and communications problems in Beryl’s wake. But even saying that he accepted responsibility for those failures did not assuage members of the committee on both sides of the political aisle. Wells resisted the idea that he should immedi-
ately resign, saying that he was best-positioned to lead CenterPoint in its efforts to understand how the company’s failures occurred and to manage the process of fixing those problems. Before coming to CenterPoint, Wells had worked for many years at Pacific Gas & Electric in California. Wells was especially apologetic about a photograph, widely promulgated in the media, which showed him participating in a conference call with elected officials in CenterPoint’s offices with a wall thermometer behind him registering the temperate at 70 degrees Celcius while thousands of residents were suffering without power in temperatures that were above 100 degrees. Much of the committee’s
questioning of Wells and other witnesses was focused on CenterPoint’s programs to address trees and overgrown vegetation that threatened power lines, the terms by which the company, which operates as a publicly regulated monopoly utility is able to recoup costs, and its decision in the aftermath of 2021’s Winter Storm Uri to spend approximately $800 million on supposedly mobile generation systems that went largely unused during after Beryl. Kolkhurst, whose district is largely, was particularly critical of the formula by which CenterPoint is able to gain reimbursement for capital costs, such as the generators, called the Distri-
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