Mr. Archuleta and the PSB continue to contend that their policy of selling land for development is saving the rate payers money. In fact, when associated expenses are considered, math errors corrected, and the “spin” debunked, we can make an apples to apples comparison and show that those savings are negligible.
In his most recent presentation to City Council, Mr. Archuleta estimated the cost of Representative Byrd’s plan to set aside 868 acres for a scenic corridor on Trans Mountain at $28 million. That works out to over $32,000 per acre! This number is quite an exaggeration when you realize that land at the Palisades was purchased for $12,250/acre and at Resler and Thunder Canyons for $20-21,000/acre. Hunt backed out of a deal in the Northeast because the price of $26,000/acre was deemed to be too high.
A price based on a sales of a comparable place is $17,500/acre and not Mr. Archuleta’s $32,000/acre. When you realize that only 415 of the 868 acres are developable anyway, the math really begins to change.
PSB’s costs associated with providing infrastructure are about $7,500 per acre. The real cost of Representative Byrd’s plan is $17,500/acre less of costs of $7,500 X 415 acres comes out to be $4.2 million – not $28 million.
Now consider that there are currently 177,000 rate payers and on average 3,000 new rate payers are added each year. Take that $4.2 million over a 10 year amortization period (number of rate payers equals 207,000) and you get a one-time savings by all rate payers of 17 cents per month!
17 cents!
One last little detail: When Mr. Archuleta totaled land use in the 868 acres to get $28,000,000, he estimated 66 acres of drainage/trails at 10,000/acre or $6,600,000 according to the total in his presentation. Do the math. $10,000/acre X 66 = $660,000 not $6 million dollars. That $28,000,000 shrinks to less than $23,000,000.
Archuleta knows this, and so does his top brass. When will members of the Public Service Board stop being “yes” people and begin exercising some proper oversight?
As for us rate payers: Ask yourself, when did you ever see your water bill go down? If we are saving all these millions of dollars, when do we see an actual reduction in the bill?
Would you pay 17 cents per month to save the scenic corridor of Trans Mountain? Are you going to keep sacrificing your children’s and grand children’s quality of life because Mr. Archuleta says you can’t afford 17 cents a month.
PSB’s land policy seems arbitrarily determined and designed to benefit a select few. So why do we do it? It may very well be that this is one way that Mr. Archuleta maintains power. He says what we buy and sell. He dictates what land can be preserved and what land must be bulldozed. The reason for the policy seems to be one big power trip. For that egoism, we could lose the natural beauty of the Trans Mountain Corridor!
We actually should rezone all of the NW Master Plan as Natural Open Space. Short of that is the Byrd plan which also includes eliminating one additional overpass (Paseo del Norte) which would seem to be pretty easy to do without losing $80,000,000 for a highway project. We should question how another intersection (Plexxar) which was never a part of the Master Thoroughfare Plan even got to be included in the TxDOT freeway plan; and we should, at the very least, insist on a new Northwest Master Plan failing rezoning all of that land as NOS.
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