Month: February 2023

city utility rates are assessed by local monopolies          

 

Our local utility rates for energy, gas, AT&T, Suddenlink/Optimum/Altice (whatever the TV cable company is) are local monopolies and each pays a Franchise Fee to the City of Paris to operate here.  Usually, the franchise fee is based on a percentages of the rates the company charges consumers.

Of course, the City of Paris has a local monopoly on water and sewer utilities, and trash pickup (at least, until it’s privatized). And just as with the city’s utilities, council members have the responsibility to approve or disapprove every rate increase requested by these Franchisees. 

(Over the years that the Paris Chamber of Commerce has existed never, to our knowledge, has there ever been a request for a rate decrease.)

This means that every time a rate goes up, so does the income to the city from the franchise fee.  It is a hidden tax sort of thing.

This doesn’t get a lot of publicity.  Perhaps, because local media receives “advertising revenue” from these local monopolies and those who benefit from what the monopolies do or don’t do.  The news then gets colored by local government representatives, who report to the media what they’re doing (or not doing), until you don’t know what or who to believe. 

These factors mean that what you read and hear about local rates – or even how things may work locally – will not usually be found in columns about the need for open public information and full public disclosure. It is how Freedom of the Commercial Business Press works today. 

Anyway, we brag about our “low cost of living” when compared with other Texas’ cities. 

Yeah.  Chicka-boom-boom! 

Our “low cost of living” is because we have hundreds – thousands – of buildings older than oak, and they sell c-h-e-a-p! 

Look at the houses, neighborhood after neighborhood, block after block, and you understand why housing costs are so low.  You will also understand why retirees aren’t flocking to Paris like English Sparrows looking for a nesting site.

What you will not understand is why we brag about it.

While there is a reason for our low housing costs, there are no reasons why our city utility rates and costs should be among the highest in Texas.  (Along with our tax rates, with the sales tax requiring $8.25 cents on every $100 we spend.) 

We should be striving to hold down franchise fees, which include utilities:  Electricity, gas, cable, as well as City of Paris water, sewer, and trash pickup.

Every time the City allows a utility rate increase the less fortunate are penalized; requiring more of the widow’s mite. 

Of course, Paris is not alone in doing this.  It is the way politics generally works.  The least powerful individuals among us are the ones who most feel every increase in utility rates, gas prices, and taxes that dig deeper and deeper into their income. 

Cities, like Paris, raise city utility rates – not because it is the right thing to do – but because their citizens all need or must have what the utility monopolies are selling. And they are far easier to approve than an increase in property taxes.  Plus, people tend to blame the utility company when they get the bill, not the ones who approved the rate increases.

If Paris ever gets really serious about being the kind of city you want to live in, we’ll stop rubber-stamping every request for another rate increase. As we lose population, we should be reducing or – at least – holding the line on spending.

In the meantime, other companies would likely be happy to offer a lower rate for the same or similar utilities, if we invited them.  It might, at least, improve service.

Is there a law that says we can’t at least get bids?    

                

return to    Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

              

Paris, Texas is a city in decline, beset by problems of its own making. 

We know this factual statement will bring screams of resentment from those living in an alternative reality.

Unfortunately, we first made it back in October, 2011.  Wasted years. Wasted years . . .

We also recognize that the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce engenders considerable resentment from some people, just by being.  They seem to blame us for most of the problems in Paris, if not all of them – as if our observations and what we do are the problem, rather than the decisions of those who are actually in charge of community and economic development.

We are strictly a voluntary organization and, as such, don’t even have a vote on local decisions.  But the resentment our work engenders is real.  We don’t really mind the criticism, and we basically ignore the invective that come from limited or unthinking minds.

We like the give-and-take of ideas, and don’t worry about “image”, as we’d rather be hated for what we are than loved for what we’re not…  (And, yes, we realize this allows those others to shape our image.) But we know who we are . . .

So please…  Understand we only state the facts as we find them; drawing conclusions, which we believe are objective, based on situations as they stand at the time. We never say that conditions can’t improve. Or that they won’t improve.

The truth is; we are optimistic. We believe Paris, generally, is heading in a wrong direction.  But we also believe that…sooner or later…if given data and information…the community will make the right choices that will put Paris back on sound footing. Sooner or later, the more intelligent members of the community will eventually tire of the recent history of incompetence, finger-pointing, happy talk, and wrong decisions and look at things as they are – and do what must be done.

Please pay careful attention to the data we cite. And please send us any corrections to the facts. As we have repeatedly stated, we will happily publish any correction that can be substantiated. But please don’t send us accusations about “misstatements” or against our character, threats, or baseless claims about our lack of concern. If we didn’t appreciate the possibilities of Paris, none of the incompetence and wrong decisions would bother us.

We know that what we do involves politically charged and emotional issues.

Our conclusions are not easy for some citizens to accept. The fact that Paris is in a decline, as the 2.8% population loss in the 2010 Census (and 1.77% in 2020) show, is a very painful story that some present day movers and shakers do not want to hear.  And refusing to face facts, they react negatively to us.

And their limited-thinking sycophants follow suit.

The Paris Chamber has never said that the local organizations do not have Paris’ best interest at heart. We believe they do. But we also believe, when it comes to community and economic development, they don’t know what to do and, therefore, do too many things wrongly.

For, as the facts show, Paris is in a decline, beset by problems of its own making.  The Paris Chamber of Commerce simply challenges folks to re-examine what Paris is doing, and what they believe Paris should be doing.

Sometimes, thinking is a painful process.

We speak out because we believe someone must. And we have pooled our resources to do it. We are independent.  We do not ask for, nor want, tax dollars.  We prefer to be free from the pressure of answering to someone else paying our bills.  We will keep our list of memberships and supporters private, as much as allowed by law:  Our members and supporters have the right to privacy, free from short-sighted invective and economic threats.   

We do what we do because our political leaders, our business leaders, and our cultural leaders have made a long series of catastrophic choices that, as examples, include:

 (1) From those whom we employ to manage our organizations to those we elect or appoint to manage the managers (and don’t);

(2) In dividing Paris – for whatever reason – into two separate parts;

(3) Failure to establish a community-wide, recognizable structure of authority and responsibility for all governmental units, and known accountability that can – and must – be applied to each unit;

(4) Playing favorites among local non-profit voluntary organizations and rewarding the favored quislings that toe-the-line with tax dollars;

(5) Failure to develop worthwhile, affordable community and economic development programs (which develop needed, worthwhile and affordable projects);

(6) Thinking we can buy a “plan, study, consultant” that will tell us how to solve the problems we created.

For decades, Paris papered over these problems with a number of industrial payrolls that covered the holes in the fabric of our community, which can no longer be hidden…

We’ve reached the point where we will have to fix what lies at the heart of Paris’ decline… or be satisfied with stagnation and a vastly lower community standard in the future.  And possibly, a continuing loss of population.

The decision to fix what is wrong is not ours to make.

As we enter 2012, that decision can only be made by the citizens of Paris. 

Wasted years, wasted years . . .