I hope you caught this story in today's Metro section of the Dallas Morning News or followed the lead at the DMN Garland Blog. We knew there were burglaries being committed by teens skipping school. It's not indicated by this article, but I assume that previous report was a harbinger to this news.
 
Once again and every day, we owe thanks to the dedicated professionals that expertly work to constantly protect our community! Thank you.
 

From the Dallas Morning News:

19 teens arrested in string of home break-ins in Garland

12:47 PM CST on Friday, February 5, 2010
By ABIGAIL THATCHER ALLEN / The Dallas Morning News
 
Garland police have arrested 25 people, most of them teens, in connection with at least 15 home burglaries in the city.
 
One of the suspects faces a charge of possession with the intent to deliver heroin, and police believe the thieves were stealing flat-screen TVs and other valuable electronics to fund drug purchases.
 
"All of them are connected either through the offenses that they've committed or through the drugs that they were purchasing or selling," Garland police spokesman Joe Harn said of the suspects, who were arrested last month.
 
Of the 25 people arrested, 19 are high-school-age teenagers. Those still in school attend Rowlett, South Garland or Naaman Forest high schools, all in the Garland school district.
 
Around the beginning of the year, police noticed an increase in home burglaries in south Garland. While investigating one break-in, they arrested the first suspect, Harn said.
 
Police have issued a warrant for another suspect, 17-year-old Jonathan Barros, and Harn said more arrests may be made.
 
"This is still very much an ongoing case," he said.
 

Our crime stats for the last six months have been a roller coaster ride, up one month and down the next. January was a down month overall. Home burglaries matched November but both months represent the lowest reports in a year and a half. Building burglaries weren't as bad as some recent months but still higher than we usually see.
 
The category taking a jump this month were vehicle burglaries. We would have to go back to June to find a worse month. Catching the thieves is always a challenge. Fortunately they usually keep going until they are caught but that doesn't give much satisfaction to the victims. For thefts, incidents were down considerably and as most were shoplifting arrests, so more thieves were caught.
 
One District 1 neighborhood took a proactive stance against crime and it has paid off. They have a crime watch and have also installed high-quality security cameras and a recorder. Not too long ago a thief broke into three cars in the night. He took several items, including a wallet with credit cards. As he left the neighborhood his license plate was recorded. Not much later cameras at WalMart recorded him using the credit card. The investigating detective identified the man—who had been recently released from prison—as someone that had been arrested a couple weeks earlier for burglary. Police staked out the house where he was living and stopped him when he drove away in the truck photographed in the neighborhood. Several of the stolen items were still in the truck. He was arrested and taken to jail.
 
We don't have to be victims and there is a lot that we can do to help the police. After all, the more we help them, the more they are able to help us and our community.
 
If you want to review the areas that have reported incidents over the last month, download the complete report here for address-by-address information that includes your neighborhood. If you are reading this but do not live in District 1, you can get reports for your area here on the Police Department's website.
 

City of Garland Press Release:

Garland’s Atrium Named Wedding Favorite

WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced The Atrium at the Granville Arts Center has been selected to receive the WeddingWire 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards™ for Wedding & Reception Venues!
 
The annual Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and celebrates excellence in quality and service within the wedding industry, as determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 500,000 newlyweds.
 
The Atrium at the Granville Arts Center is among the top five percent of all vendors in the WeddingWire community, which includes over 100,000 wedding professionals across the US and Canada. Awards were given to winners across 19 different service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers.
 
"We are excited to recognize and honor the success of the top wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community" said Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. "The annual Bride’s Choice Awards program has given us the unique opportunity to highlight the best wedding professionals in each region as reviewed by brides and grooms who have utilized their services in the past year."
 
"I am so thrilled and honored that our brides have rated The Atrium in the top five percent of wedding and reception venues! For almost seven years now, we have exceeded many a bride’s dream for a beautiful and awesome wedding reception," says Mark Wilson, Event Director for the Atrium at the Granville Arts Center.
 
The Atrium is located in historic Downtown Garland and features more than 14,000 square feet of event space including a beautifully appointed ballroom, spacious lobby and landscaped outdoor courtyard. For more information, visit www.GarlandArts.com and click on the Atrium link or call 972-205-3981.
 
For more information about WeddingWire, please visit the WeddingWire Storefront.
 

In a subdued vote that marked a subdued process, the Council unanimously passed the 2010 Proposed Capital Improvement Program. The process was much shortened from past years and not a single citizen spoke toward the program at any time—probably because the whole package was much smaller than previous years and was low enough than no new taxes would be required for debt service.
 
From the City Manager Bill Dollar's budget message:

 

The tax-supported portion of the Proposed CIP totals $42.8 million and is heavily weighted towards Street and Drainage projects. A total of $18.4 million (42.9%) is dedicated to street and transportation improvements and $7.7 million (18.0%) is included for major drainage projects. The Proposed CIP also includes funding for Public Safety projects including the critical replacement of Police in-car video cameras and the refurbishment of Fire ambulances.
 
Economic Development is also a significant component of the 2010 proposed plan with funding for continuation of our Downtown Redevelopment efforts and improvements in the City’s commercial corridors. In addition, the Proposed CIP includes funding for the City’s libraries to update and expand the materials collection and to provide for facility improvements. Funding for Hollabaugh Park and the West Garland Recreation Center along with enhancements to existing Park facilities is also included in the proposed program.
 
The 2010 Proposed CIP includes $99.6 million in projects related to City utilities and internal support services. Within this amount, $27.0 million is related to GP&L infrastructure, $37.1 million is dedicated to Wastewater Collection and Treatment, and $19.6 million is to fund the capital needs of the Water Utility. The proposed program also includes funding for the completion of the Downtown Utility Services Building.
 
CIP Funding
The Proposed $142.4 million program will require the issuance of $12.5 million in tax-supported debt, consisting of $8.8 million in General Obligation (GO) authorized Commercial Paper, $2.2 million in Certificates of Obligation (COs), and $1.5 million in Short-Term Tax Notes. In addition, the utility-supported portion of the program will require debt issuance totaling $23.1 million, which includes $975,000 in COs and $22.1 million in Revenue Bonds.
 
Tax Rate Impact
No increase in the Debt Service Tax Rate for fiscal year 2010-11 is required to fund the 2010 CIP as proposed.
 

In District 1, there will be concrete trail development in the Spring Creek Forest area, including behind Naaman Forest HS, much of it with county funds, and will link to a new visitors center off Holford Rd (which is in Dist 7).
 
Two of the largest street projects will be the extension of Naaman Forest to Brand Rd, creating a back route for Special Event Center traffic, and the widening of Pleasant Valley Rd and a new bridge across Rowlett Creek, much of that money from NTTA and county funds.
 
For a complete copy of the CIP, download it here.
 

Is the web the new future for local news? More and more it seems so.
 
When the latest incarnation of the historic Garland News ceased publication several months ago, a greater silence fell over the community. We do have very competent local coverage by the Dallas Morning News but, as in all print publications, space is limited. There is more local news than can be fit to the space allotted. Also, there is the DMN NeighborsGo and the Garland Messenger as print mediums. Together the local picture reported gets a bit broader.
 
On the electronic side, sources vary but the DMN Garland Blog and the DMN Garland Community pages add to or recap the print edition of the Morning News. I think this blog fills a slot. Longtime local web surfers are familiar with the Garland Citizens Forum and Suzy Blitz but those are discussion forums, generally not news sites.
 
Two new sites have been established that are purely local news and both by reporters that were long with the Garland News. Linda Jaresh is continuing to publish stories and photographs at Around Garland and Kim Everett is publishing at The Garland Texan. I've added links below as part of each post that connect to their sites and to two of the DMN sites.
 
If you check all the sites regularly, you'll probably get some repeated information but some things need to be said three times to sink in (especially for politicians).
 

In my last post, I included a Dallas Morning News article that Garland would be at the Public Utility Commission last Friday. I didn't know that a subsequent article had run in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
 

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Garland city attorney and PUC spar over release

Posted Friday, Jan. 29, 2010
By JACK Z. SMITH, 817-390-7724
jzsmith@star-telegram.com
 
Tempers flared as an obviously miffed Texas Public Utility Commission assailed a Garland city attorney Friday over a news release in which he called a court ruling reversing a commission order "a big win for Texas ratepayers."
 
The meeting in Austin featured uncharacteristically heated and personal exchanges, coming on the heels of a Jan. 15 ruling by state District Judge Stephen Yelenosky of Austin. That ruling could halt or delay a $5 billion project to build transmission lines from West Texas wind farms to Dallas-Fort Worth and other populous urban areas with surging electricity demand.
 
In the news release, Garland City Attorney Brad Neighbor said, "The PUC should not put the interests of big transmission line developers before the interests of Texas ratepayers."
 
Commission Chairman Barry Smitherman told Neighbor that he found the release "offensive," Commissioner Kenneth Anderson called it an effort to "try to embarrass" the PUC and "inflame the public" and Commissioner Donna Nelson said it was fraught with "mischaracterizations, innuendos and untruths."
 
"Your proper forum to express your grievances is the courthouse.  . . .  It’s not the press," Smitherman said.
 
Neighbor responded with strong words of his own.
 
"This is your place. You’re in control. So you can continue to berate me if you so choose," he told the three-member body, which the governor appoints.
 
Neighbor said he was being "castigated for trying to represent the interests" of Garland and its residents. Garland, on the northeast edge of Dallas, is the fifth-largest city in the Metroplex, with 228,350 residents.
 
Anderson told Neighbor that the release implied that the commission "didn’t care about the ratepayers."
 
Ratepayers are electricity consumers, whose electric bills are increasing roughly $4 per month to pay for the high-voltage transmission lines, expected to be completed by the end of 2013 under the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones project.
 
Garland has a municipally owned electric utility that unsuccessfully sought contracts from the commission for some CREZ projects in the Panhandle. It appealed the commission’s decision to Yelenosky’s court. The judge issued a ruling that remanded to the commission its 2009 order awarding dozens of CREZ projects to utility companies.
 
The commission, in its order, cited "inherent difficulties" that it said would arise if the projects were awarded to municipal utilities, including that the commission "does not have jurisdiction over municipally owned utilities regarding their routing of transmission lines," nor "the timing of the construction." Yelenosky said some factors that the commission took into account in its order "are legally irrelevant" and that some of its findings "are not supported by substantial evidence."
 
The commission has not yet fully addressed Yelenosky’s ruling, which takes effect in mid-February. But the commission unanimously decided Friday that it will soon enter a separate order designed to prevent 10 "high-priority" CREZ projects from being delayed by the ruling.
 
Among those are seven projects awarded to Dallas-based Oncor Electric Delivery, the major transmission and distribution company in North Texas. Garland did not seek to win any of the 10 high-priority projects, according to statements at Friday’s meeting.
 

City Attorney Brad Neighbor and GP&L Director Ray Schwertner appeared before the Public Utility Commission (center, l-r)

Just as Council meetings are televised and available for later streaming, so are the meetings of the PUC and many other state agencies. The meeting referenced in the above article and in earlier postings is available at the PUC website here. The relevant video is posted as "PUCT Open Meeting 1/29/2010" and the portion dealing with Judge Yelenosky's order and Garland City Attorney Neighbor starts at about the 1:27:01 mark.   Watching the meeting, it is easy to understand the report that tempers flared. The so-called Q&A verged on the bizarre. The chairman seemed to first try to get Garland to castigate the other companies participating in the project, then he seemed to imply xenophobic feelings, and then berated the city for working with out-of-state bond companies. Clearly the commissioners by tongue and tone felt insulted that Garland had challenged their decision process. That the court agreed with Garland seemed to be only an irritant, not a pause to reconsider their decision.   The commissioners claimed the city's press release following the court's decision was "mischaracterizations, innuendos, and untruths" yet they didn't demonstrate where.   For all the probing, nothing in the portion of the meeting with city officials dealt with anything except the press release. No explanations of why in the process of selecting builders the PUC seemed to reverse course and exclude all municipal applicants (who can borrow money for less and are not taxed, allowing lower operating costs). The final result was an agreement by both parties not to issue additional press releases and then: "I'm sorry," "Me, too," and "Meeting adjourned."

From the Dallas Morning News

PUC to discuss Garland utility's bid today

12:00 AM CST on Friday, January 29, 2010
By ELIZABETH SOUDER / The Dallas Morning News
esouder@dallasnews.com
 
The city of Garland has thrown regulators into a riddle over plans to build transmission lines to bring West Texas wind power to big cities.
 
Garland Power & Light, a tiny utility with 32 employees, bid to build transmission lines in the Panhandle. Garland lost.
 
The Public Utility Commission said it excluded municipal utilities because munis don't have to answer to the commission on building transmission lines. Plus, if anyone in the Panhandle opposed the line, he would have to take his concern to the Garland City Council rather than to a state regulator.
 
"We don't know where the line's going. We don't know how much it's going to cost. We don't know what materials it's made of," said PUC Chairman Barry Smitherman.
 
So Garland sued the PUC. A judge earlier this month told the commission to rewrite its order for the transmission lines.
 
Smitherman plans to discuss the issue today with the two other commissioners at an open meeting.
 
If they decide to include Garland, that could delay the $5 billion project and fundamentally change the way traditional hometown utilities operate.
 
Garland city attorney Brad Neighbor said the Dallas suburb wants to build the lines to bring in money to offset customers' bills.
 
"What we would like to do, and what we feel capable of doing, is building those lines in the most cost-effective manner," he said. "As far as the benefit to be obtained, it's offsetting the cost of transmission" for customers.
 
Municipal utilities don't have to obtain a so-called certificate of convenience and necessity from the PUC to build a transmission line. To get a certificate, a utility must go through a process of notifying residents about a power line and hearing complaints.
 
The PUC then chooses the exact site for a line, the materials and a timeline based on a number of considerations including cost, environmental impact, aesthetics and community impact.
 
Because munis don't have to go through this process, it's not clear how much control, if any, the PUC would have over the construction.
 
Garland attorney Neighbor declined to say how, exactly, the City Council would handle complaints about the transmission line from Panhandle residents.
 
When the commission blocked Garland from participating in the project, commissioners offered eight reasons. A judge struck down four of them, including concern that a muni can't offer residents in faraway places an "independent, objective and statewide adjudication regarding the routing and timing of construction."
 
The judge didn't strike the PUC's concern that it doesn't have jurisdiction over munis.
 
Now commissioners must decide how to rewrite the order that chose bids of about a dozen utilities to build the lines.
 
They could simply edit the order by erasing the four reasons for excluding Garland that the judge disliked, without accepting the city's bid.
 
Or they could rejigger the project and give Garland a piece. Doing so could delay construction on lines that other utilities have already begun to plan. Delays to the lines mean delays to more wind power projects.
 
Smitherman declined to say which way he's leaning.
 
"I think it's incredibly important that we move forward with speed," he said.
 

 
As of this posting, I don't have any information on the results of Friday's Public Utilities Committee meeting. At stake for Garland ratepayers is the ability of GP&L to offset future transmission costs with income-producing infrastructure.
 
The gist of the PUC chairman's statements in the article above was that it's too late to reconsider how the PUC made its selections of CREZ operators, no matter if it was done legally or properly, that only speed matters. Judge Yelenosky has already disagreed and sent the decision back to the PUC, stating that there is no evidence Garland’s proposal would cause a relevant delay in the CREZ process.
 
I can find no relevance to the stated concern that the PUC doesn't regulate municipally-owned utilities. The transmission lines being debated will be regulated by ERCOT, which regulates our current transmission lines. There was an earlier suggestion that seemed to imply landowners would be better treated by the mega-utilities than by a municipality. As the judge stated in his order, the "PUC relied upon factors that are not relevant to providing transmission capacity in a manner most beneficial and cost-effective to electric customers and based its decision on underlying findings that lack substantial evidence" (emphasis added). Nothing in the article above gives any indication that the first concern is cost-effective delivery for electric customers because GP&L can reduce that cost.
 
The one point in the article that I don't follow is the reference to GP&L being a small, 32-person utility. GP&L is one of the largest municipally-owned utilities in the state and country and has far more than 32 employees. GP&L operates several power plants and maintains miles and miles of transmission and distribution. Maybe it was just a typo. GP&L isn't nearly as large as mega-utilities like TXU and Reliant but local services and reliability are much higher. Also, GP&L power costs have been lower than TXU for years (although GP&L doesn't currently compare as well against numerous companies other than TXU during this period of extra-low costs for natural gas).
 
I expect to learn tomorrow in a Council briefing if Garland ratepayers have been given an opportunity to contain costs or if they have to pay the mega-utilities for what we could have done ourselves.
 

Draped with the look of winter, a new city entryway along the PGBT is becoming increasing visible as work continues on the Eastern Extension. Miles Rd, visible in the foreground on the right and behind the front-end loader, is the city limit line with Sachse. Everything beyond in this picture is in Garland. Pylons show the route of the new highway and bridge that will span Rowlett Creek. The overpass in the background is Firewheel Parkway and the AMC is visible through the trees.

 
There is a lot of construction in northeast Dallas County: the Eastern Extension of the President George Bush Turnpike (SH-190), Lavon Dr (SH-78, starting in Garland and continuing north, eventually past Wylie), Murphy Rd between Garland and Sachse, and more is coming. The latest PGBT progress update from the North Texas Turnpike Authority is here. Note route map on page two. Here is an extracted update for our section:

 
In Section 28, on the east end of the Rowlett Creek bridge, the earthwork subcontractor has constructed the bridge header embankment. The contractor continued drilling bridge support shafts. Crews also began placing the retaining wall panels on the project and installing the roadway’s underdrain system.
 

 
Anyone experiencing it knows it hasn't always been easy but the general mood has been one of expectation and acceptance rather than complaining. A recent article in the Dallas Morning News captures the input of several District 1 residents and the impacts that have been felt in the area—some of them most unexpected. Read on:

From the Dallas Morning News:

Multiple road projects cause headaches for residents of Sachse, Garland

12:00 AM CST on Monday, January 18, 2010
By RAY LESZCYNSKI / The Dallas Morning News
rleszcynski@dallasnews.com
 
While the boom has died down in northeast Dallas County, the effects resonate in the form of construction disturbances – traffic and otherwise – near the Garland-Sachse border.

Heavy traffic flows around road construction near the intersection at Sachse Road on Highway 78. The tollway extension will be a relief - when it's finished. COURTNEY PERRY/DMN

 
A mall, a turnpike and the housing market brought prosperity to the area in the 2000s. The population of Sachse practically doubled.
 
Residents who live in the area say the projects are creating headaches, but they're looking forward to the benefits that will come when the work is complete.
 
The North Texas Tollway Authority's plan to link the Bush Turnpike eastward from State Highway 78 to Interstate 30 is good news to Mary-Kathryn Sherrard. She has watched traffic back up for years near her home in the Valley Creek neighborhood of Garland, which absorbs the turnpike's current endpoint.
 
"It's been getting more and more congested," she said. "Nobody likes to put up with the construction process, but the outcome is going to be good."
 
But wildlife near Rowlett Creek was disturbed by the construction, and Sherrard was bitten by a copperhead that presumably lost its home. A Garland official said plenty of other snake sightings have been reported in the area.
 
"As soon as something like that happens to you, people come out of the woodwork and tell you their stories," Sherrard said. "I hear a lot of complaints about increased noise from raccoons and armadillos. And complaints about equipment as well. They're running a crew all night and an early morning crew and sinking piers for the bridges, and it's really noisy."
 
Garland resident Kyle Maxwell reported a longer-than-normal wait at the Bush Turnpike-Highway 78 interchange Thursday night as a temporary traffic light malfunctioned.
 
"Not to mention the ongoing safety issues I see every day as I traverse the interchange," he said. "I've lived in Dallas all my life and commuted through some of the worst traffic flows we've had, and while I'm glad to see that this area is getting some construction, it strikes me as poor project planning."
 
North of Firewheel Town Center, the Texas Department of Transportation is widening Highway 78 from four lanes to six.
 
In Sachse, residents grew increasingly wary of their own deteriorating asphalt and voted in 2006 to spend $16.65 million for street and road improvements. Two of the city's projects line the border with Garland, and two are connectors to fast-growing Murphy.
 
Now that all of the construction has hit Sachse simultaneously, progress equates to a bigger mess than ever at rush hour. It is not uncommon at peak times to wait three or four full cycles for traffic signals at Highway 78 and Murphy Road or Fifth Street.
 
Relief will be drawn-out. The tollway extension won't open until late 2011.
 
The Highway 78 project started in November and will take 300 workdays – and will soon be extended to a second project another five miles to Wylie.
 
Sachse resident Chance Lindsey is excited about the new lanes on the city's "main drag."
 
"So far, I think they have done the best job possible keeping traffic flowing," Lindsey said. "It is much tighter, but at least there are still two lanes each way."
 
Sachse City Engineer Billy George said Murphy Road is scheduled for April completion, Fifth Street will run into August, and Bunker Hill Road reconstruction will take all of 2011.
 
Garland officials said the construction on their side of Murphy Road has resulted in street closures that affect garbage pickup and some services. Heavier traffic is reported on back routes near the Firewheel at Garland golf course and near the mall, resulting in longer waits on roads not directly affected.
 
"Because everybody is trying to avoid 78, those roads have deteriorated even further," Sherrard said.
 

 
A minor note: If you saw the article in the Metro section of the DMN, the artist's rendering of the Extension route was not totally accurate. It showed a loop in the route that doesn't exist. A more accurate depiction is the map at the NTTA link above, and a slightly more accurate map than that is here (also not to scale but it does show one more entrance route next to the Firewheel Town Center).