05/05/2023
Argyle Neighbors,
Mr. Schmidt is out with a post that contains several false statements in an attempt to do damage control after the rash attempt to force a deal with Oncor.
Schmidt claims, as did Mr. Bradford at the April 24th special meeting, that I personally received a letter from Oncor in September 2022 “advising of the possibility of transmission lines going through parts of our town,” in Schmidt’s words, and that I ignored it.
The fact is that Ms. McComis received the letter from Oncor. Ms. McComis did not discuss the letter with me when it was received. See the letter to Ms. McComis below.
Ms. McComis forwarded the letter to the council and me on November 22, 2022. The email is provided below. Ms. McComis states that staff reviewed the letter and took no action, but the fact is that the September 22 letter did not provide anything like sufficient information to trigger concern or questions. The other towns in the study area likewise did not react to the letter.
Ms. McComis worked effectively with me throughout the Oncor process until recently. See the text from her commending the effort that Mayor Rettig and I made in organizing the Oncor opposition. In retrospect, our working relationship started to deteriorate when I filed to run for a council seat.
If he cannot correctly report who received the September 2022 letter from Oncor, the rest of what Schmidt has to say should be taken with a large grain of salt.
Schmidt makes several confused claims about the two alternative routes that Northlake and Argyle proposed. The US Army Corps of Engineers participated in and hosted meetings to discuss the two alternatives.
Note that USACE worked with Oncor, the coalition of five towns, and our Austin and Washington DC representatives to find a way to cross Corps property and ultimately did so at the old 377 right of way. What Schmidt says about the Corps and Oncor insisting that Corps property could not be crossed is false.
Those meetings included Oncor representatives, who made commitments to engineering work to qualify the routes at the request of Congressman Michael Burgess and Senator Tan Parker. The time that has passed since the alternative routes were suggested in January has been almost entirely consumed by the engineering work, which did not conclude until Senator Parker called a meeting to brief the mayors of the coalition on the Oncor findings on March 24th, 2023. Schmidt claims, however, that I failed to report to the Argyle council during this period. There was nothing to report until March 24th, when I wrote up a statement for the council and the public.
Again, Schmidt’s claim is false.
At the March 24th meeting in Senator Parker’s office, Oncor stated that that the “undergrounding” option was too expensive and that they were still studying the old 377 route. Oncor was not confident that they could make the old 377 route work so they offered a compromise. Oncor’s compromise included certain adjustments to the routes close to FM 1171 and removing the northern routes subject to all five of the towns in the coalition agreeing to accept the other routes on the map. Oncor asked the five towns to confer internally and to come back with their responses. The timing of council meetings meant the earliest all five towns could respond would be April 18. Oncor did not say this timeline would be a problem.
There was NEVER a deal with Oncor that Argyle could accept on its own. Oncor wanted all five towns to agree to the compromise and support the revised map in the Public Utility Commission review. The mayors agreed to take the deal back to their councils.
I brought the deal to the Argyle council at a March 28th special meeting. We agreed to support the compromise. Senator Parker and Mayor Rettig asked Oncor to complete the assessment of the old 377 route at the same March 24th meeting. At this time, no towns have ruled out the compromise, contrary to Schmidt’s claims about Northlake.
Schmidt claims that Oncor offered to remove the northern routes if “no other municipality would object.” That is false. The compromise was offered to secure the affirmative commitment of all five towns to support the revised map.
Schmidt further says Argyle was not required to make a “formal acknowledgement”, which is likewise false. The town would have been required to provide a formal submission.
Schmidt falsely claims that I supported his plan to go to Oncor and ask for the northern routes to be removed from the map at the April 24th special meeting. I told the council that our utility counsel Mr. Brocato could try, but that he would be unsuccessful. I did not “(feel) that we should accept taking the northern routes off the map” because the offer had not been made to Argyle alone and Mr. Brocato’s approach was not likely to be well received.
Oncor has not decided to submit the original map because Argyle and Northlake offered the southern alternatives. In fact Senator Tan Parker is the government official who has been asking Oncor to provide some solid written information to either support or to rule out the old 377 route. Asking for the loop to be closed and for promised information to be provided is a normal and businesslike request.
On the other hand, going around the town’s negotiator and demanding something that has not been offered positioned Argyle as an unreliable party and was not a constructive signal to send to Oncor. And the opportunity to eliminate Argyle from the map was lost.
