Please see the full Real Media
video record,
of our interview with Mrs. Fath.
Inserted comments
refer to the analog audio tape copy of the interview
[Tape 1 of two.]
DT: This is David Todd, and it
is June 3rd, 1997. We are in Austin, Texas, and I am interviewing Shudde
Fath about her many contributions to Texas conservation. She worked--as
we'll, I think, find out--in large part in Austin and has done a lot for
the Utility for Water Quality, land use and many other things, and
thanks for taking the time to talk and remember.
SF: Well, I hope I remember.
DT: [Laughs.] Well, I thought I
might start with your parents, and I'm always curious what contribution
they might've had to somebody's love of the environment and ...
SF: Yeah.
DT: ... an interest in that kind
of work.
SF: Well, I'm glad you asked
about my parents. My joke is that I was raised wrong. They made me work,
[laughs], 'cause--'cause they worked so hard. My parents were--my daddy
was a family doctor in Bastrop and he practiced almost 40 years and
started the first hospital there and--my mother was--got a degree here
from U.T. in 19, I think, oh-six, and was awarded a scholarship to
Galveston Medical School by a Colonel Brackenridge from San Antonio,
without which she could not've gone, and her full maintenance for a year
at Galveston Medical School--scholarship was $240. But anyway, she met
my father down there and he was a year ahead of--a year ahead of her and
they fell in love and she dropped out and they married. She finished two
years down there and they married in his--Christmas of his senior year.
And he's--they were big civic workers and town boosters and he was
real--he was president of the School Board and a big athletics fan and
we're--I'm--there were six children. I'm one of six children and--my
mother used her medical background to give his anesthetics during
surgery, and then when X-rays came into being, she took a course and
learned how to be an X-ray technician and bought her own machine and
that was her little business at the hospital. [Laughs.] And, one of my
childhood memories is that any time of the day I could be outside
playing and I'd look up and Mother would be walking out of the door in
her white uniform and I knew she was headed to the hospital to do--she'd
had a call to do something. And, I never have remembered how the
child-care problem got solved, but I--you know, I--I 'member she'd tell
me--I was the--I was the third child of six and she'd say, well, you
know, "Look after the little ones," or something. [Laughs.] But I don't
know how they handled night calls. Anyway, they both grew up in rural
backgrounds. Daddy was from Liberty Hill, up here in Williamson County,
and Mother grew up on the banks of the Sabinal River in Uvalde County.
And 'course they--they worked the land, they knew how to live off the
land. And, Daddy was a--well, they were both expert growers. Daddy
raised all of our vegetables and a lot of fruit all the time we were
growing--you know, all his life and Mother did the horticultural. We
used to joke about--we had a big--we finally had a house on a big lot
that was a third of a block that went all the way through right in
downtown Bastrop, across the street from the school, and--and it used to
be kind of a joke. They would fuss about where to draw the boundary
between the--the food growing and the horticultural--[laughs]--beauty.
But, anyway, I heard my mother talking about native plants 60 years
before I ever heard the word xeriscape. I mean, she was into native
plants and--one thing. Next door to our house during the CCC days, the
Civilian Conservation Corps days in Bastrop--that would be in the early
'30's, it was a New Deal program--and the CCC boys built the Bastrop
State Park. And the landscape architect lived--lived in a rented house
next door to our home, and Mother learned--says she learned a lot from
him. She picked his brain about landscaping and, you know, plants but,
you know, they were planted--the--out at the State Park they only used
native plants and I'm sure they're all still there, so ...
DT: In the '30's.
SF: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
DT: Well, that must've been a
good ways ahead of their time.
SF: Yeah, I think it was. They
were smart people. [Laughs.]
DT: Well, do you remember what
your mother's garden looked like and what sort of species she used?
SF: Well, she just--it's
shrubbery--you know, mostly shrubbery and flowers and bulbs--and Daddy
had a--a great big garden. During the Depression--the first money I ever
earned, during the Depression and the drought--there was a--you know,
there was a big drought in the early--what, in the 1920's. When I was
just a kid, I and my older brother peddled vegetables door to door out
of Daddy's garden. And, you know, Mother--in the morning they'd--we'd
pick something or they'd pick something and we'd--they'd sort 'em out in
little packages--and these are so many tomatoes and that's, you know, 15
cents and that's a quarter or whatever--and we went around town knocking
on doors to peddle Daddy's vegetables.
DT: That's great.
SF: Entrepreneur. [Laughs.]
DT: Yeah. From the very
beginning. Well, ...
SF: But people were glad to have
'em because of the drought and, you know, my daddy always--never could
understand why poor people didn't have gardens, you know, their--and
raise a lot of their own food. But see, he grew up--they both grew up
doing that. But they both grew up in drier, poorer soil, and they just
loved and appreciated the Bastrop and good ol' river--flat, sandy loam
and all the water--you know, plenty of water. Daddy served--he was
elected Mayor twice. He was, you know, president of the Lions Club,
Chamber of Commerce, and he was a great big football fan. I was going to
U.T. football games with him when I was in high school. We'd drive up
here--you know, the home games. We'd drive up here and watch football
games and I was a rabid football fan. It took--I think--and, well, my
husband and I--you know, I followed sport, specially football, all
during my school years and after we finished U.T., we still had
home--home season--home game season tickets, and I think what happened,
after the Russians launched Sputnik something happened to me. It was
like sports weren't that important. We better get on the stick, you
know. [Laughs.] Looking back, that's--you know, that scared the world
when the Russians were ahead of us in technology.
DT: Can you tell a little bit
about your schooling?
SF: Well, I was--I think there
were 18 in my graduating class and I was valedictorian. My--my sport was
tennis. I won the county tennis tournament in singles and my partner and
I won doubles, but I never got beyond that. I--we'd go to district and
we would lose. But--but I did stay--I did stay with tennis during
college. I got a B.B.A. degree from U.T. in 1937 with highest honors. I
guess I can say that now. I used to be too embarrassed.
DT: Nothing to be ashamed of.
SF: And, I did--I did win
some--we did win some intramural titles in tennis--my partner and I,
and--and that--you know, that's as far as women's sports went then,
which was probably a blessing for me.
DT: Well, did you have, during
your childhood or in school, any--any mentors or friends who were
interested in nature that--that might've contributed ...
SF: We had a wonderful--we had a
wonderful teacher, Esther Anderson, a single lady, and she was--she
taught science, and--but a whole lot more, and also Spanish. And after I
left home, she--at one time she rented a little house behind--you know,
that belonged to my parents, a little--little house--it had been
converted into a house during--during World War II when Camp Swift was
there. There were as many as 40 to 60,000 soldiers stationed at Camp
Swift, which was between Bastrop and Paige, on--you know, on the road to
Elgin, during World War II, and--people in Bastrop--they converted
anything in the world to housing for families of the soldiers and--and
it was--they weren't gouging. It was all rent-controlled and--but Mother
had one Sergeant family that--he took our two-car garage that was on a
side street, you know, facing away from the house, and converted it into
a home for the--you know, put in the kitchen and the bathroom and
everything and lived there. He's--I think he--he stayed several years
and he lived there several years. They were--became family friends, you
know, for my parents' lifetime. And then there was another one--we
called it the chicken house but--[laughs]--that was converted into
a--you know, one-bedroom thing, and that's where the science teacher
lived. But I had wonderful teachers. You have to remember that
back--see, I graduated from high school in '33, and women at that time
had very few career choices. You could be a teacher, or a nurse, or a
secretary, or a clerk. And, you know, that's about all, and--Daddy was
president of the School Board or in--on the School Board and president
for a long time and I--I don't know what the division of administrative
authority was but I know he helped interview teacher prospects and we
had, you know, top graduates out of--I 'member my Latin--I took two
years of Latin in Bastrop High School. [Laughs.] They--they recently
reinstituted Latin and they said for the first time, and I wrote the
Bastrop paper and I said, "No, it wasn't the first time." And I took--I
took Algebra, trigonometry, geometry, chemistry, and Latin, and--two
years of Latin. And--and that was when we only had 11 years of--you
know, I--school is now 12 years but there was only 11 then. But my
teachers were just wonderful, and they were top people. I can still see
my seventh-grade teacher standing at the blackboard, diagramming
sentences. And she made--you know, we learned--I mean, I'm just--I'm a
stickler for grammar and I just get appalled at--everybody misuses words
these days, and it just ...
DT: Whose and who and whom and
...
SF: Oh, and my--the one that
kills me is myself. [Laughs.]
DT: [Laughs.]
SF: Instead of saying, "me,"
they say "myself." But--and they--you know, they get all the pronouns
wrong, the wrong--you know, when it's supposed to be an object instead
of the subject or whatever. But anyway, I did--I suffer silently. I call
myself a compulsive editor. I--I can write--I can say what I want to
writing if--but I do it--it takes me about five or six drafts but I'm
a--when I'm reading something somebody else does I--I call myself a
compulsive editor because I just keep fixing it, you know. They didn't
do this one the best way. [Laughs.]
DT: Well, was Ms. Anderson a
compulsive editor, too, or ...
SF: No, she ...
DT: Um-hmm.
SF: ... but she was a--she--she
was into nature and food, nutrition and--you know--'course we had no
chemicals. You know, I was raised--there weren't any chemicals in
agriculture then, and so, you know, I wasn't exposed to any pesticides
and whatever's--I don't ...
DT: Well, did Ms. Anderson take
you on a field trip so ...
SF: Yeah. We went on--we went--I
wouldn't call 'em field trips. Like, we'd go to the--she'd take a group
to the state park. And--I know after I left home, she came--she had some
family in the Rio Grande Valley and I have some photos of--after most of
us had left home, well, my mother and Ms. Anderson took a car trip down
to the Rio Grande Valley. They just wanted to see the winter garden, you
know. And, it was--I had a younger brother and sister that were still at
home. And she died too young. I don't know what happened. I lost track
of her, I don't--after she retired she didn't live too long, too many
years.
DT: Well, I guess shortly after
that you moved to Austin? Is that correct?
SF: Well, I came--when I--you
know, I graduated and I came to U.T. and I got--you know, I lived at
Littlefield dormitory two years and a sorority house three years.
DT: Um-hmm.
SF: I actually stay--I went to
school five years but the reason--I got my degree in four but I had
fallen in love with my future husband, ...
DT: Oh.
SF: ... and he was in school and
I didn't want to get out in the cold, cruel world. So, I stayed another
year and took some--I didn't get a Master's but I took some courses.
DT: ***.
SF: I even took cooking,
thinking I'd learn how to cook but I--it wasn't much of a success.
DT: [Laughs.]
SF: I knew I was gonna get
married and--but ...
DT: Well, I guess your husband
was Creekmore Fath.
SF: No, Conrad.
DT: Conrad.
SF: Conrad Fath.
DT: I'm sorry.
SF: They're brothers, uh-huh.
DT: O.K.
SF: And he was--we were ...
DT: Could you tell a little bit
about him?
SF: Oh, yeah. I'll have to give
you his--his obituary, which I wrote, but he was a--a real outdoors
person. He was a fisherman and a hunter and a--he had a--had an Evinrude Marine dealership, you know, he knew--and he was big in the United
States Power Squadron. He learned all about boating safety and
education, he believed in education. He was a musician, he was a fencer,
he was a singer. You know, he was the most diverse person--and besides
that he was a lot of fun. [Laughs.] Had a great sense of humor. He was
the kind that his--he had all these wide interests and he'd get
interested in--I mean, looking back--he'd get interested in a subject
and he would stay and study that subject till he mastered it, you know.
And then, a few years later he'd be off on something else. But he--he
always--he could--he could do trick casting--you know, trick casting
with a rod and reel. He'd put on exhibitions, he'd--he could do the
funniest things you ever saw. You know, flick the ashes off your
cigarette or bounce a practice lure--you know, one with--a practice plug
without hooks and bounce it up--I don't know, how'd it do? Somebody'd
hold a plate--tin plate down here in front of 'em and he'd go over their
head and around 'em and come out and bong that plate in front of 'em
where he couldn't even see it.
DT: ***.
SF: I don't know how he did it
all.
DT: Well, he--did he spend a lot
of time outdoors?
SF: Oh, yeah. We both did.
DT: Um-hmm.
SF: We--I like to swim, and
that's how I got hung up with Barton Springs 'cause--all the time I was
in U.T. and then for years thereafter, I'd--every time I got a chance I
went swimming at Barton Springs. And I have a dark skin, and 'course
that was in the days before ultra--what is it, the rays that--you know,
you're not supposed to do that. Anyway, I used to proudly get the
blackest suntan in town. [Laughs.]
DT: [Laughs.]
SF: I worked on it. And, my
dermatologist profits from it. About twice a year I have to go to the
dermatologist and get something burned off my face, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
SF: ... or my back or whatever.
Don't do it, young people. [Laughs.]
DT: Well, when ...
SF: Anyway, then he was into
fishing and he made a fisherman out of me. I'd go with--we had a canoe.
He fished out of a canoe. We had lots of canoes, one after another. And
I'd go along and paddle for him, you know, just to get the sun and be on
the water, and--and he'd--he'd gently--he'd hand me a rod and reel and
gently encourage me to--you know, well, cast it out there, and--so
anyway, after you catch a few fish you're hooked, and so I became a
pretty good fisherman. I never could catch as many as he could--he did,
but I knew how to do it. And I--my--my comment is the
difference--it's--a lot of it, in my view, seriously, is attitude. He
expected to catch a fish every time he cast.
DT: [Laughs.]
SF: If--you know, think
positive. [Laughs.]
DT: [Laughs.]
SF: And I was surprised if I
ever got a fish. [Laughs.]
DT: Well, did you have some
favorite spots that you would go to?
SF: Oh, we went everywhere.
My--you know, mostly--well, just mostly day trips, although we did--we
did camp. We didn't have camping equipment, but we did occasionally
spend the night out. This--I guess I shouldn't even tell this, but I--in
today's world it doesn't matter but I used to silently laugh to myself
about the night I spent the--the night I spent the night with five men,
[laughs], ...
DT: Ugh!
SF: ... because we had--Connie
and I'd gone up with our canoe on top of the car, and he had buddies--I
guess it was either three or four of 'em--who had a--one of those
fold-out camp trailers? And we were just gonna sleep with a tarp off the
side of our car and this--the--we were upon Lake Travis. And this
terrible storm came up--rain storm and 'course we crawled in the back of
the car, and one of his friends--there's Ralph Campbell and Taylor Glass
and somebody named [Raymond] Picot and I think Walter Guttman. He wrote some
stories about them that I need to--that I need to get printed and
distributed. Wonderful tales, 'cause they used to play jokes on each
other. Anyway, they called--they came over and said--told Connie--said,
"Why don't y'all come over and get in our tent?" What he had was one of
these fold-out things and there was a--there was a platform here and
then you step down and, see, there were two sleeping over here and two
sleeping over here so we put our--quilt or whatever we were sleeping on,
down in the walking space, and spent the rest of the night--and this was
in the 19--let's see, we married in '38. This was in the late '30's or
early '40's, and I was so embarrassed. Taylor Glass was Mayor of Austin,
and I said, you know, "The night I slept with the Mayor and five other
men." [Laughs.]
DT: [Laughs.] Well, said there
were--there were a whole group of people who were interested in going
out and camping and enjoying the outdoors and ...
SF: Yeah, yeah. And I didn't--my
husband made lots of trips with them. They would take--they would do
expeditions. They--they would--they did a lot of fishing in Mexico.
Tampico, San Blas--San Blas was one of their favorite places,
and--some of the lakes closer here. I did fish one time at my--oh,
shoot, I can't remember the name of it--one popular lake. One time we
made a trip--let's see, to Monterrey, and on the way back we stopped at
this lake. We were with another couple. This was actually during the end
of World War II. But he--he made lots of fishing trips and hunting
trips.
DT: And he was--he was pretty
active in political life in Austin, wasn't he and ...?
SF: Yeah. We--well, we kind of
both are. I worked at Texas Employment Commission for 42 and a half
years. [Laughs.] And because--because the money that paid unemployment
compensation benefits--the money was--you know, it was taxes from
employers but it went up to Washington. Some of it went up to Washington
and came back and because of that federal connection, we were under the
Hatch Act, the--against political activity, and most of the years I
worked it was very severe. They finally relaxed it a little bit where
you could--you could put a bumper sticker on your car and you could be a
delegate to a precinct convention or a county convention or something
but you couldn't do anything to--try to influence other people or
to--certainly not to solicit money or--you know, contributions, anything
like that. So, my activity--I was always interested in it but mine was
pretty quiet but Connie was the elected Democratic Precinct Chair from
our home precinct, Zilker--where we vote at
Zilker School, close in
southwest. It--well, in fact, it's right--it adjoins Barton Springs and
Barton Creek. And he was the elected precinct--Democratic Precinct judge
for either 10 or 12 years, and I always took a day off from work and
worked as an election clerk when--when he was doing elections.
XX: [Unidentified]: Hi, can I interrupt
you for a second?
SF: Sure.
......
SF: This is gonna go on a long
time. We haven't gotten very far in my life. [Laughs.]
DT: We're moving right along,
and resuming.
SF: All right.
DT: We were talking about Conrad
Fath's work in politics before.
SF: Yeah. And so--and see, he
was a small businessman. He had a marine dealership. First he started
out with custom--he built custom fishing rods and--and sold bait. He had
an interest in a minnow-raising farm at one time and then he got
into--right after World War II, Martin Motors came out, and he was a
Martin dealer, and then he switched over to Evinrude, which of course
was a bigger plum. The--they decided to let a second
Evinrude dealer do
business in Austin. The first dealer was--was named Billy Disch, and he
was the son of the legendary U.T. baseball coach, Billy Disch. But--and
they were friendly competitors. One of 'em was north and one was south.
DT: What were his interests in
politics, in this area?
SF: Well, we just were always
active, you know, we--we always went to the Precinct Convention. He
wanted--I was a delegate to the county convention once and he went once
to the state convention. This was back in the Democrat--you know, when
everything was so--everybody supposedly was a Democrat, only there were
two kinds, you know, [laughs], the conservatives and the progressives,
and--they had this terrible thing called the Unit Rule. They didn't have
proportional voting, and if the precinct--I've got a paper that
we--that--in my files, which are in storage, that my daughter wrote when
she was in high school about early Democratic politics, and it was--it
was brutal. You had the Unit Rule, and so whichever side won--the
conservatives versus us--got all the votes. In other words, they got all
the votes to the county convention and from the county to the state and
everything. And it was so bad, I--this Eric Mitchell race that just
ended? He just doesn't know how bad it used to be. One time we had a
county convention, and there were some blacks from East Austin who were
actually threatened with their jobs and their bank notes and things like
that if they didn't go along. I--these--our opponents--we called 'em
Shivercrats, their--after Allen Shivers, you know. He finally--you know,
he--he supported Eisenhower, I think, during that election, and--anyway,
you had to kowtow to the power structure, on economic grounds, and it
was true. [Laughs.] So they finally--John Henry Faulk was also in our
precinct and he was finally the leader--I'm trying to think--the first
County Chair that was gonna let the minority speak. I don't mean
minority race, I mean minority--the people that were in the minority
position by voting strength--and they let John Henry make a speech.
Everybody knew that his side didn't have the votes to win the county but
they actually let him speak, and this was considered a supreme victory.
[Laughs.] 'Course now we have proportional representation, and, you
know, everybody can do their thing, and then 'course finally the
majority wins but you--you send proportional or representative delegates
to the county and to the state and to the national, I guess. Connie went
one time to the State Convention, in Dallas, and he came home pretty
disgusted. That was back under the Unit Rule days, and--at the--he was
pretty disgusted. My daddy was active--my parents always voted. I went
to a Senate--Paul Sadler's Taxing Committee hearings. I went early this
year in March and shot my--shot off my mouth about something,
and--remembered that my daddy was a delegate to the State
Convention--now this would be from Bastrop, when--in Fort Worth. It was
a infamous convention when they actually locked out the legal Travis
County delegates, and Daddy was legal from Bastrop County, but this was
when it was Ralph Yarborough versus L.B.J. You know, L.B.J. switched
positions. [Laughs.] He always found out where the crowd was going and
got around in front of 'em. We're way off on the subject, aren't we?
[Laughs.]
DT: No, this is all interesting
and real valuable and ...
SF: But I have--I have a--I'm a
paper pack rat and--all these files I have, and I've told my daughter,
you know, they go either to the Bastrop library or the Austin History
Center, but I've got all kind of papers about a lot of this stuff.
DT: Well, did any of this
political activity lead to interest in environmental things, or was that
much earlier?
SF: The environment--we were
always--no, what I say about--our environmental problems today are the
fault of my generation. We--you know, there weren't many people here and
Connie and I went outdoors every weekend, you know, the weather
permitted, doing something, and you were free to go almost anywhere. And
he was--he also liked to hunt birds, and back then--I guess I'm
ashamed--I ought to be ashamed to say that now but--you know, Russell
Lee was one of his buddies, his buddy for 40 years, and they liked to
hunt doves, and you could--back in those days, you could go knock on the
door at a farmer's house and ask him if he'd mind if you hunted. See,
doves are migratory. They didn't belong--it's not like quail, where
they'd stay on the land and--and the hunters didn't abuse the privileges
and the hunters brought this--all these restrictions on themselves by,
you know, shooting cows and thinking they were deer and leaving the
gates open so the cattle got out and--and, you know, leaving messes on
the ground and everything. But, anyway, the land in the Barton Creek
watershed was nothing but cedar choppers and--and stone masons and
bootleggers, very sparsely settled, and it sold for $4 and five--four to
$5 an acre. And if my generation had been far-sighted, the city of
Austin could've floated a bond issue and bought, you know, tons of
watershed. And it just never occurred to us that it wasn't always gonna
be this way, ...
[Tape 1, Side B.]
SF: ... you know, where you
could go anywhere and there wasn't--see, when we were fishing, there
wasn't--when I was fishing actively, there wasn't any water-skiing.
There were hardly any boats on Lake--we fished in Lake Austin a whole
lot. You couldn't do that now unless you got up at four A.M., you know,
to beat the jet skis and the water skis and whatever--all they have.
And--just--well, we fished a lot at Lake Travis, sometimes at Buchanan.
And you--his--one of his complaints was there weren't enough public
docks, there weren't enough--you know, the Colorado lakes were all these
miles and miles of lakes, but there were not too many places where the
public had access. It was privately owned land. Well, now that has been
corrected to a large extent. You know, the city has bought some--has put
in some docks, the L.C.R.A.--and the county has put in some, and the
L.C.R.A. has done a good job of giving public access to the water. You
know, the people own the water. The people of Texas own the water. But
when all the land was privately owned, we couldn't drive down and dump
our canoe off the car and--one of our favorite places to go fishing was
35th Street, you know, right by Laguna Gloria? Thirty-fifth Street went
right to the edge of Lake Austin, and there was a little--board--I would
guess you'd call 'em, like landscape timbers or something. There was a
little wooden edge to the water--to the edge of the water there, and we
could drive right up to that, take our canoe off the car and slide it
in, and--and go fishing, you know, ten minutes after we left work.
[Laughs.] We carried our canoe on top of the car, and we lived in
apartments right near the University, and that road is blocked now. You
can't drive to the--out--you can't drive to the water's edge at the end
of 35th Street, and I don't know when and how that happened. But that
was one of--our favorite place. That was good fishing water all along
there. The edges of the--of the lake and you can get up into--what is
it, Taylor Slough I think is up in there. And he had a--finally a
two-and-a-half horse--it was a two-and-a-half horse motor that he put on
a side-mounted bracket on the back of the canoe--that was before you had
square-sterned canoes--and he rigged up--he rigged up foot pedals to it.
He worked--he was 4-F with asthma. He wasn't in military service, you
know, during the--World War II, because of asthma, but he worked at
Bergstrom field during the war. And--[pause]--you know, I guess what I
really am is--I think a populist is probably the best definition of what
I really am. And the way I got interested in the electric utility--see,
I got a B.B.A. Degree, and so I--when Connie had his business--you know,
the marine dealership and everything, boats and whatever--I always kept
the books and, you know, wrote the checks and did our tax returns and
everything. And when--when air-conditioning came in--his store was where
Eats Cafe is now, on Barton Springs Road, and that was in--started in
1951. And when air-conditioning came in in the middle '50's,
businesses--you know, you had to put in air-conditioning to be
competitive because people weren't gonna go in a hot store if there was
a cool one, so--and 'course the first units were big and inefficient and
expensive and blah blah blah--and so I was writing the checks. Our
utility bills just started going--sky-rocketing, which was--to me
sky-rocketing. I can't remember, probably went from 20 to 50 or
something. But, I began another--paying these--writing checks for these
high bills and so one time I called the city and I wanted to ask--and I
asked about rates. You know, what is this rate? And what are the classes
and so forth, and what so offended me--I found out that--that bigger
users in town were in something called the industrial class--and it
wasn't industry. It was things like Scarbrough's department store and
the Stephen F. Austin Hotel. It wasn't what they did, it was just how
much they used, and they named 'em the industrial class. And 'course we
were a small business, and the--you know, I said, "Well, Lord, the same
wires go by our shop that go on down there, and they pay--get a cheaper
rate." And they even had--way back until the energy crisis they had what
they call promotional rates. The cheaper you--the more you used, the
cheaper it got. You know, they had declining rate blocks. Well, that got
me interested in electric rates, and I got just--I just sort of went off
on a tangent, and back then all I could think about was, well, we ought
to have a flat rate. It ought to be the same rate for everybody, and
that was our big kick for a long time. That was before our--we got
sophisticated enough to know about inverted rates, which gives--you
know, what we have now in Austin, things that, you know, my people
worked on. The first 500 kilowatt/hours are cheaper, for residentials.
DT: So that's like a lifeline
rate.
SF: It's a lifeline, but we've
got the best one in the state. And it's--and if--so if you don't
use--you know, in--in the summer we also have this summer surcharge. The
people that use air-conditioning--in other words, if you have high
consumption--say, above--about, say, a thousand kilowatt/hours, you get
into a--you're paying higher, and the theory behind--that's good
economic theory. The people that create the summer peak pay for it,
in--and, you know, including me, when I use air-conditioning in my home.
But anyway--so we started talking--and there's an ACORN organization.
It's active now and--then it kind of dwindled away but it--back then it
was active. ACORN--it's a national organization, and there was an active
legal aid office here, and we got on this kick of electric rates, and it
all started from way back. This was in the--the late '70's and the early
'80's, but it all started--with me it all started back from the 1950's,
when I found out that--what I called unfair rates, that if you were big
you got a cheaper rate than Connie did at his store. [Laughs.] And we
...
DT: Well, can you explain a
little bit--I was poking around and found that, in Texas, industry rates
are the 37th highest in the U.S., but residential rates are the 22nd
highest, so industry gets a much better deal.
SF: Yeah. Right here in Austin,
...
DT: Yet there still seems to be
this industry pressure for ...
SF: Oh, yeah. Well, ...
DT: ... discounts firmly in
Austin. Can you explain some of the politics?
SF: ... they're not--just take
it from--take it from me, they'll never be satisfied.
DT: Oh.
SF: No matter what you--right
now, before they did these industrial rate contracts that I've opposed
and that--that the council passed, you know, in February, I think?
Industry here in town--and now industrial really is industrial. They
call it "Large Primary
Service" but they really are--you know, it's the
high-tech companies, mostly. They were paying four and a half cents a
kilowatt/hour on the average and you and I were paying seven and a half
cents a kilowatt/hour, so it's still way out of line. And the only
thing--the only thing we've--probably accomplished for residentials is
getting that inverted block rate, where the first--the lifeline--the
first 500, which will supply the--the needs of a--of a typical home
without air-conditioning and without an electric water heater. If you
have either one of those, it's gonna get higher. Now I haven't--I've
lost more than I've won, in the electric utility area, but I console
myself--if we hadn't been fighting it would've been worse.
DT: Well, can you tell us a
little bit about some of the victories that you think were important and
some of the things that were frustrating?
SF: Yeah. Well, the interesting
thing--it was probably one of the best political campaigns that ever
went on in Austin and nobody knows it. In 1980, we got on this kick for
a flat rate. And it was ACORN and--Teresa Reel out of Legal Aid, a man
named Jack Jackson out of ACORN, and some more people, and my husband
and I and Larry Deuser. Do you know who he is? He's with Tracor, but he
was--he eventually became a city council member and he's been on the
Water and Waste Water Commission, he's been on the Electric Utility
Commission--and Peck Young--Peck Young, the political consultant. And we
would meet--that's when Carole McClellan was Mayor and we knew we did not
have the votes on the Council to win, but the--and I wasn't the brains
of this. This was the--some of those other people. But the idea was to
make electric rates a political issue, and so in summer and fall of
1980, we met every Sunday. We sat around a little metal table in the
ACORN office on West Mary in south Austin, and they plotted things. And
we would have--they would have press conferences, and we'd--we finally
got a public hearing under the McClellan council. It was in the fall of
'80, and I took two weeks vacation--late summer, early fall. And we
got--because of the Electric Utility Commission, we--we asked for these
different studies by the staff. We had Proposal 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 A, B,
and C, and things like that--and finally the one that we liked was
Proposal 7. And I can't now tell you what it was, but it was the
most--we thought it was the most fair rate, and so we began this--to
develop a groundswell for Proposal 7. and we'd have press conferences
and finally we had this big public hearing, and I got--I think it was
sixty-something organizations to endorse Proposal 7, and my husband was
Chair. We called ourselves the RATERS Coalition. RATERS means
Reform
Austin's Terrible
Electric Rate
Structure. And this RATERS Coalition got
endorsements--I've got all these papers in my file but I think it was
60--50 or 60 something organizations, and my husband was Chair of the
RATERS Coalition. He was a good speaker and had a sense of
humor and a lot
of presence and he never got rattled and he didn't get nervous, you
know. And so they had this big public hearing and they even hired buses
to bring in people from east Austin and the Council chambers were filled
to the brim, and all of these people were speaking and we knew we were gonna lose. When they voted, we knew we were gonna lose, four to three.
And, so finally it was Connie's turn to speak, and he got up and was
telling--he was reading the names, one by one, of all these
organizations that had endorsed Proposal 7, and every time he read a
name, everybody would clap and holler, and McClellan was just having a
hissy fit and--couldn't do anything about it and--you know, it was a
show 'cause we knew we were gonna lose when they voted. But the crowd
was on our side, and one of my favorite stories--Frank McBee--do you
know who he is? He was one of the founders of Tracor, and he's a native
Austinite. His daddy was Justice of Peace south of the river. They--we
live on Bluebonnet, and they used to live a block south of us and he was
a big boater--a sailboater, and he was a friend of Connie's. He would
drop in just--Connie always kept a pot of coffee going at the shop, and
if the football games were on he'd have a TV on and so he had these
drop-in friends, and Frank would drop by there and they'd talk boating
or whatever, and--so they were not close friends but friend friends,
and--long-time friends and neighbors. And Frank McBee was head--I think
he was head but he was on AARO, which is that big--it's an existing
corporation in--not--organization in Austin, Austin
Area
Research
Organization. It's the umbrella group for the business community here in
Austin. Always the publisher of the American-Statesman's on it, the
bankers and so forth, and Frank McBee was on it because of Tracor. And
he was at this public hearing, and see, they were speaking--they were
all speaking, too, and the business community was against Proposal 7 and
the people were for it. And Connie said--you know, the labyrinth at City
Hall, all those little--you go down those corridors and you wind
around--where the Council is now, and after Connie's speech--and I guess
they didn't enforce the Three-Minute Rule efficiently then because--like
I said, Connie read all of these names and there was always this
applause. And Connie said after that, he was walking down this hall and
he came face to face with Frank McBee and Frank looked at him and he
said, "I wish to hell you'd stick to fishin'."
DT: [Laughs.] Well, ...
SF: [Laughs.] And--but anyway,
what happened, we had another organization going called the River City
Coordinating Council that met at our house once a month, and it was
representatives from organizations in--in all different areas--energy,
social services, growth, you know, plan--development--real active for
several years, and--for the spring Council elections in spring of '81,
all the candidates that endorsed Proposal 7 won, except we didn't defeat
Carole McClellan. She beat Bob Binder. But we elected six out of seven
Council members in the spring of '81, one of whom was Larry Deuser, one
of whom was Roger Duncan, and John--yeah, Roger Duncan used to be on the
Council. John Trevinio was, I believe, the first Hispanic--you know, the
so-called gentleman's agreement which we never were any part of.
[Laughs.] And--but anyway, he and Dr. Charles Urdy both endorsed
Proposal 7. And let's see, who would the other one have been? There was
somebody else. Anyway, that was--and I remember one time, during
this--1980's and early '81 before the Council election when we were
still trying to build Proposal 7 as an issue--my cousin is married to an
economics--who was then an economics professor at U.T., Dr. Forest Hill. He's retired now, and they're both still here. But, we got him
involved in this Proposal 7 on the grounds of economic theory and he got
two colleagues involved, and they had--the three economics professors
had a press conference supporting Proposal 7. And I remember going to--I
was--we were sitting at the press conference and after it was
over--these young reporters were there, and one of 'em said, "Gosh, even
the U.T. professors are endorsing it," and nobody ever knew that all of
this came out of that little group that sat around a table at the ACORN
office on Sunday afternoons. [Laughs.] It was--to my knowledge is the
best--except for SOS, it was the best campaign that--that I was ever
involved in in Austin. And nobody ever knew where it--where it all came
from. See, Peck Young--you know, he's kind of--he's controversial now
but he was--he was on the Electric Utility Commission with me and was
Chair of it and we--we mostly agreed. They've kind of gone off into--you
know, he and--it's Emory and Young Political Consultants. And--well, he
worked for--who, Manny Zuniga this last election, but he--they got
the--he came on board late. I'm glad--he's good. I'm glad he didn't come
on board early. But Peck was good on--on building political awareness
and--you know, we had smart people that were good on the
technicals--technicalities of it. They even one time--Betty Himmelblau
was on the Council, and try to--to try to divert us, they--she proposed
some special rates for senior citizens. And I remember we had a press
conference--I've got the thing. It was--back then we didn't know how to
do sound bites and we'd have too many lines--too many single-spaced
lines on too much pages but we just demolished her theory and I
remember--we were having this press conference in one of the rooms at
City Hall, and her aide was standing in the door shaking her head at us,
you know. [Laughs.] Anyway, we had fun.
DT: Well, can you talk a little
bit about the--this whole issue of ...
SF: Conservation?
DT: ... equity and ...
SF: Well, it ...
DT: ... and efficiency because
it seems like ...
SF: Yeah.
DT: ... there's a big debate
right now between how do you--you know, protect the senior citizens or
...
SF: Um-hmm.
DT: ... protect the low income
or invest in low-income weatherization or--or ...
SF: When we've done a ...
DT: ... how do you provide the
Lifeline rates and ...
SF: Yeah.
DT: ... then on the other hand,
I guess there're all the folks who're pushing for efficiency and market
solutions.
SF: Yeah. And I must--I must
admit that--that this last year--the last time we voted on rates, Neal Kocurek, who's my--he and I both on--on the Electric Utility Commission
since the beginning. He was pro-nuke, I was anti-nuke. He was against
Proposal 7 and I was for it and everything. And this last time, he
voted--much to my surprise, he voted for that inverted rate. And then I
found out later--well, he was smarter than I was because they have
watered it down to where it's not--it's not as good as it used to be.
And they did it by putting in--they've--there's a customer charge on
your bill that used to be, I think, $3 and then it went to four and now
it's up to six. And when they increased the customer charge, which you
have to pay regardless of whether you have any consumption, it makes--it
makes those average cents per kilowatt/hour in that first block higher.
DT: Oh, I see.
SF: And it's just--it's just not
as good as it used to be. And it--the staff--and it kind of slipped by
me. You know, we fought--Merle Moden was my best friend on the Electric
Utility Commission. He could do costs of service studies on his own
computer. I can only talk about--but we opposed increasing the customer
charge but we lost. And so, I was so shocked when Neal voted with us,
all--you know, a unanimous vote in favor of the inverted rate block and
I--when I looked at the schedules later, I saw why it's not as good as
it used to be, [laughs], see. And this thing about the industrials, you
know--they just never quit. You--you can't give them enough to--for them
to ever say, "We're O.K." I was opposed to these long-term contracts,
you know, that they've just done. And, you know, what--all we ever--all
we ever said was, "Wait until the Legislature goes home and find out
whether they did anything about deregulation, and then you'll know more
what you're talking about." You know, this--they're making a long-term
commitment but they're getting a lower rate. So--and, you know, I
opposed my friend, Jackie Goodman, on that. She was a swing vote, and
what I tell people is that six years from now--about six years from now,
people will know which one of us was right, 'cause you don't--you don't
know what's gonna happen. The Federals could deregulate it--and this
bill they finally--that finally died in the Legislature wasn't gonna
hurt Austin. It exempted municipally owned utilities. The big issue in
utility deregulation is what are they gonna do about stranded
investment. And stranded investment is--is unpaid bond debt for
things--mostly generators, mostly generation plants--that are no longer
efficient because, you know, there's--natural gas is not as high as
everybody thought it was gonna be, and in Austin, our whole stranded
investment is a big part of the South Texas Nuclear Project. And if
this--and that bill that died even said that the investor-owned
utilities could recover their stranded investment. So, see, what that
would mean, if that ever becomes law and--say, I.B.M. or Texas
Instruments or Motorola or Advanced Micro Devices--decided to leave our
system, they would have to pay their share of--well, however they define
stranded investment. It has to be defined, and then it has to be
granted, you know, in whole or in part. And so it's--nobody knows what's
gonna--what the raw--the utility's doing a good job now.
They've--they've hired this consultant, and that's--I have to admit to
making errors sometimes. [Laughs.] We all do. But I voted against that
Metzler contract, thinking that we can be more efficient our--do it
ourselves by hiring a facilitator and, you know, let the employees
themselves have a voice in--in how--how they shape up, and just
guarantee that none of 'em will lose out but--you know, if they--and my
favorite was a Wall Street Journal article that--some business
that--they guaranteed nobody would lose their job. And this woman worked
out a deal where she eliminated her job, and so they gave her another
one and she worked out a process to eliminate that job, so they promoted
her into management, and I thought, the utility could do that. I now
believe--and I've heard Beverly Griffith say the same thing--as
expensive as this Metzler contract is, I think it was necessary. I voted
against it, the Council voted for it and they were right. They're
doing--they're good and they're--they're going in and they're--it's
gonna be a two-year contract. They haven't voted a second year but--they
not only design the ideas but they stay for the implementation. And,
like, I've heard 'em talk about they're gonna do customer service
better, the billing better. The purchasing deal--they've reduced it down
from--I don't know, 60 days to a 30-day process and so forth. And so
the--you tell the ...
DT: This is where the city is
farming out some of their retailing services?
SF: They've hired these
consultants to--and by the way, some of 'em are--I think they're all
living here in this building. [Laughs.] They're from Chicago.
DT: I see.
SF: And they're--they come down
here--they're gonna shape up the utility competitively in all
areas--from generation to billing to, you know, purchasing to
whatever--and I think they're doing a good job. And I thought it was
gonna be highly political and I was wrong about that, so ...
DT: Well, can we go back a ways?
You mentioned the South Texas Nuclear Project as ...
SF: Um-hmm.
DT: ... being one of the--the
large stranded costs for Austin.
SF: That's exactly ...
DT: Can you tell a little bit
about the story of how Austin got involved in that and ...
SF: Well, now, you know, I--one
of my favorite sayings when--I want to say something like "I told you
so." If the city of Austin had listened--if the voters of Austin had
listened to people like my husband and myself--and me, ...
DT: [Laughs.]
SF: ... and-and our little
group, this city would be--what is it, two billion or something better
off, because, see, we--the anti-nukes won the first election. In the
early years--let's see, it started in, what, '70--in the '70's. It
started when the OPEC oil embargo came on in the early seven--no, first
it started with Oscar Wyatt abrogating his natural gas contract with the
city of Austin, and he just kept charging us more. He'd promised to sell
it for 18 cents for X number of years and he just said, "King's X, I'm
not gonna do it." And so he--the price just kept going up and up and up.
And then, along about that time, the OPEC oil
embargo hit, when cars
were lined up at filling stations trying to get a tank of gas, and so
they called this election on getting in the nuke, and--and it barely
lost. And the--probably the biggest reason it lost was 'cause L.C.R.A.
dropped out of being a partner about a week before. They decided it was gonna be too long and too costly, mainly too long, to build. And
so, then, I guess about a year later they brought it back up for a vote,
and--I was wrong. They brought it back up right after the OPEC Oil
Embargo. And, you know, they were talking about, "Oh, we gotta have fuel
diversity," and blah blah blah and "It'll be too cheap to meter," and
"It's only $160 million," and--[laughs]--and it just barely passed. Just
by a few--you know, a small percent, and then we had, I think, a couple
of elections trying to get authorization to sell. Roger Duncan led--he
was a staffer for Margret Hofmann before he became our City Council
member, and he led one of these election efforts trying to vote to sell
our interest, and it failed, and we finally won the election--that 1981
watershed City Council election I was talking about? The first thing
they did--I think--the first two things they did--and I can't remember
which was first and second--they--instituted Proposal 7 electric rates,
and then they called another election to authorize the sale of the nuke.
And that was a--well, that was probably one of the best political
campaigns. I wasn't big-time involved in it but--who's the guy that
raises money for Bruce Todd and Kirk Watson? Well, anyway, that's the
first time I met him. He was anti-nuke. I'll think of his name in a
minute [Alfred Stanley]. Anyway, he headed up this thing and we raised a--he raised a big
60-something thousand dollars, which was a lot of money in 1981, to put
on this campaign to authorize sale of the nuke. And--Connie always took
the Wall Street Journal and I still take it and--the funny thing is the
first signs of anti-nuke on economic grounds were in the Wall Street
Journal, and they used some of my clippings. We had a good PR guy named
Gary Witt, who was also head of that River City Coordinating Council,
and he used some of my Wall Street Journal clippings to get the voters
to vote to sell the nuke. Well, of course what happened was that we
got--finally got authorization to sell, in the--probably October
of--sometime of '81, late '81--and by that time nobody wanted to buy it.
[Laughs.] If we had won an election--there was another earlier election.
It was just a few days after the Three Mile Island thing, and if we had
won that, I think we could have sold it. I think Houston might've bought
us out to shut us ...
[Tape 2 of two, Side A.]
SF: ... I think Houston might've
bought us out to shut us up. That--of course that's my opinion, and we
lost that election because of my dear friend, Carole McClellan, you know,
who's now Rylander. She got on TV--and I even have a copy of the ad.
The--"I'm a mother," and--you know, the--but her ad says, "The only
way--I repeat, the only way you'll have cheaper electric rates is to
vote to stay in the South Texas Nuclear Project," and they just barely
won that election in '79. And, 'course now, at least 40 cents out of
every dollar you pay on an electric bill is due to the South Texas
Nuclear Project, even though it's a much smaller percentage of our total
generating capacity. So this is one of those big "I told you so's."
[Laughs.] "You should've listened." But, living--see, I'm 81 years old,
and the--if you live as long as I do, you see--you see where fringe or
minority groups surface with an idea that loses, and--but as it
gradually gets more into the public approval area, it gets adopted by
the--the group that's in power because they want to stay in power. And
that's things like--I guess Social Security is one of the big ones, you
know, and--you know, and probably Medicare and--I don't know,
different--you know, now Proposal 7 even, although like I say, they've
watered it down. But--so you should--people that are--have minority
opinions, you know, I--I say power to 'em and keep it up, because that's
how you progress.
DT: Tell me something about some
of the other alternative fuel sources that I think would have been
promoted and--pretty successfully in Austin, some of the ...
SF: Yeah. We--at ...
DT: ... waste-to-energy and solar
and ...
SF: Well, not waste-to-energy.
I--I--that's another one of my mistakes. I voted--I supported that and
it failed and I'm glad it failed, because those plants are not proving
to be economical. And, you know, boy, we talked--we beat that around for
several years, and on paper it looked so good, but it is not good, it's
not a good thing. I'll take my hats off to the people that beat us on
it. You know, they were talking about--was it PCB's? Not that, it was
something else. What's the thing that comes out of the smoke?
DT: Furans and dioxins?
SF: Dioxins. Yeah. And they were
right and I was wrong. But--no, we nearly got into that, and it would've
been a disaster.
DT: What about the solar program
***?
SF: Well, we have a good solar
program, but it's--you know, it's too small. Except last--last night at
our Electric Utility Commission, there's a--there's a new solar program
coming on by the city. They've got a grant--it's small. But what they're
gonna do, they're gonna build--eventually build 10 solar panels on
different--you know, different--scattered around town. Now remember, the
kilowatts and the dollars are small. But it's gonna be--they got a grant
from the Department of Energy, 700 and something thousand dollars, and
they're gonna raise the rest of the money, a couple of million, by
volunteers who will let $7 be added to their monthly electric bill to
pay their share of one--of these ten solar--it's photovoltaics.
It's--you know, it's not solar. It's photovoltaics. And--well, that's
solar, too, but--and they say that they need, I don't know, 200 or
something--no, let's see, how many do they need? Anyway, they already
have 50 people that have told 'em, "You--sure, you put $7 on my monthly
electric bill," and your bill won't go down. That--you're paying a $7
surcharge but you're helping pay for part of these solar panels that're
gonna be scattered around town that'll just go into our grid and
it'll--you know, that'll be that much so-called free electricity 'cause
there's--you know, there's no energy charge. The sun's free. But
that--so that's a small--and we also have an interest in some wind
generators in--with L.C.R.A. in west Texas, and what else do we have? I
guess our conservation programs are the things we can be proudest of
because, you know, we're way in the forefront of that, and I don't know
how much of that's gonna survive in this coming era of competition.
Roger Duncan is in charge of that now, you know, the former City Council
member. He's head of that--used to be E.C.S.D., and now
it's--has--Planning. Now it's Planning and E.C.S.D. But anyway, working
with Metzler, they're gonna try to make--they're gonna try to make that
where it's loans--let's see, what do they call it? Shared savings. They
go into a business and do energy conservation measures, and--the
business will have lower future bills, and part of that lower bill
becomes a repayment to the city, and so it'll end up being kind of a
revolving--instead of, you know, 15 million or so just grants every
year, which we may not can afford to do with competition, who knows? I
know--I know I've got some good friends that think we--that we must
continue it and I don't know how the finances are gonna work out. But if
they can get into this shared savings where--and there--there are--now
today there are private businesses that do that in the business world.
You know, they'll make a contract with a company to--to finance these
energy conservation measures and then, it--they get repaid out of shared
savings.
DT: Well, what do you think of
the sharing, through public investments in private equipment and
service, and whereas you're ...
SF: Well, that's kind of the ...
DT: ... taking public dollars
and in a--in a sense investing in a private corporation?
SF: Well, that's--see, that's
what we've essentially been doing ...
DT: Um-hmm.
SF: ... in these past years.
We've been giving rebates to people for, you know, installing
higher-efficiency things and, you know, more lighting. Believe it or
not, in the business world, lighting is one of the big areas where you
can save because lights produce heat, and the--and then you have to have
air-conditioning to overcome that heat. And so if they can put in
efficient lighting, and, you know, higher-efficiency air conditioners
and everything, they can save a lot of money. But, the business world,
it--you know, it's--that's another one of those things where minority
people have to promote it. The business world is--has become a whole lot
more aware of that just on economic grounds, that--you know, they can
afford to invest in something and save money on utility bills from here
on.
DT: Um-hmm.
SF: So a lot of 'em--a lot of
'em are doing it more voluntarily, on economic grounds.
DT: Well, looking down the road,
whether it's solar energy or wind energy or conservation investments,
how do you think the city of Austin's gonna manage to promote these
green sources of power when, from what I've heard, there's about 30%
surplus power in the state grid?
SF: Um-hmm. Um-hmm. It's gonna
be hard. And, you know, what they hope--the people that are working on
that are people like Public Citizen's Tom Smith, and Jim Marston with
the Environmental Defense Fund, and what's his buddy's name that used to
be on the PUC?
DT: Karl? Karl Robago?
SF: Yeah, Karl Robago. The
saving way to do that was--would be for it to be mandated in the
legislation, whatever legislation brings about deregulation. That's the
most hopeful way to do it, if--legislatively--legally they're mandated
to do some certain amount. And it--you know, I hope that's the way it is
because there's a long-term payback on it. And 'course even
photovoltaics--they're getting more competitive all the time, and the
more people that buy 'em--you know, like these ten things I talked about
the city's gonna be putting in? The more people that buy 'em, well, the
cheaper it'll--they'll finally get because of mass production--you know,
economies of scale. So I think the best hope is to include it in the
legislation and that's not gonna be easy, 'cause you know what kind of
lobby you're up against. [Laughs.]
DT: Well, speaking of lobbies,
I'm--I guess Austin has one of the smaller utilities in the state, and
I'm curious how you see Austin's niche being played out, where I think
it's the--the three largest utilities control about three-quarters of
the power ...
SF: Um-hmm.
DT: ... in the state. Is there a
niche for a smaller utility?
SF: My--my hope and prayer is
that we can remain publicly owned. I wouldn't object to a partnership
with, you know, other publicly owned--we--and I've written about this
and--I probably should've brought it. We enjoy tax exemptions that are
just incredible, and I should give you a paper that I just recently
wrote. Robena Jackson of the Chamber of Commerce--they're doing an
issues paper on the electric utility, and the Electric Utility
Department is doing an issues paper. And we're--we're going out
into--talking to organizations about various options, but here's
what-all we don't have to pay, as publicly owned: we don't have to pay
sales taxes, federal income taxes, state franchise taxes, local gross
receipts taxes which are about--you know, the phone company and the gas
company pays the city. There's a state gross receipts tax that I think
helps finance PUC, I'm kind of unclear about that. As I said, federal
income taxes--and then our bonds are tax-exempt municipal bonds and we
pay lower interest rates--and I think I've left out something. But, what
I say--you know, when the Mayor was trying to put out RFP-I'm talking
about Mayor Todd, [laughs], not the Mayor-elect - put out the RFPs last
year to--to get proposals to sell? I just don't think they realized the
advantages in--but--of our tax exemptions, and what I say is--'course
they're worried about the general fund transfer. You know, the utility's
gonna have to cut it down, and taxes may go up or our government
services go down. But, if somebody that was wanting to buy us--if they
paid enough money to pay off all our utility debt and then set up this
great big trust fund from which--the revenues from which would replace
the general fund transfer--if they--if we sold it for enough money, I
think the city of Austin could come out all right financially. But see,
my bottom line is, whoever buys us--I'm talking about investor-owned
utilities--has to charge rates high enough to pay all those taxes that
Austin doesn't--doesn't now pay. And I just don't think we're--you know,
we may've been inefficient but we really have a well-run utility. And it
may've been inefficient to some extent--maybe two layers of
management--and this Metzler consultant is gonna take care of, I think,
nearly all of that. And so, we got a well-run, publicly-owned utility
with--that enjoys all these tax exemptions, and we should be able to
compete against anybody. Now I don't think we'll ever build another
generator--another power plant, because, with the new technologies--you
know, the--what do they call it where they produce industrial heat and
...
DT: Co-generation?
SF: Yeah, co-generation.
There--there's a lot of co-generation on the Gulf, especially--the Gulf
Coast and the power's available--and then these new gas plants. What do
they call 'em, combined cycle? Something.
DT: Um-hmm.
SF: These are more efficient
natural gas plants, and--I think any time we begin to need more power
than we have, we can--we can buy power. We can buy electricity from
general--independent power producers. We're not gonna have to build
another power plant.
DT: Well, mentioning all
these--the co-generators and the big investor-owned utilities, and I
guess there are other independent ...
SF: Um-hmm.
DT: ... producers and large
consumers and--where do you think the citizens fit into this whole ...
SF: Well, ...
DT: ... play, especially once
the regulators become less important in the market? And so, ...
SF: Yeah. Well, to me, we have
to become preachers. We have to educate the people of Austin on the
benefits of supporting our local utility, and we have not done that job
at all, and that's part of what these efforts are. The Chamber of
Commerce is studying it, but the electric utility--I'm on a
subcommittee--we've been working on our materials. I know we're--and
actually--Jim O'Connell and I actually appeared before
the--[pause]--Austin Neighborhoods Council last week to lay out--not
with an advocacy air but the pros and cons of different kind of
ownership and--you know, public or--you can sell it, you can partner
with another publicly owned utility. You can have--in governance, we can
have a partial powers governing board like San Antonio has or we can go
to the Legislature and try to get permission to have a totally
independent governing board. You know, a lot of people think that the
City Council has so many things on its plate, with all the different
issues they have to deal with, that they're not able to give enough
attention to the electric utility. And I--I tend to agree with that,
even though some of my friends on the Council don't agree with it,
because, oh--see, I've been on the Electric Utility Commission since
1977, and there are high-profile times, where the Council--their
attention is high-profile, devoted to, you know, say, a rate change, or
a bond election on--back when we used to have bond elections on the nuke
and--and other electric utility revenue bonds. And--and like this
industrial electric rate that was high-profile--see, when it's a
high-profile issue, they pay big attention to that, but what I want is
something that can get in there more on a day-to-day basis, like a--more
like a--investor-owned utility--I mean, an investor-owned corporation
board. And, see, the Electric Utility Commission that I'm on, we're
strictly advisory. We don't have any sovereign powers, and all we get
is--when the Department proposes something to the Council, it goes
through us on the way, and we can just make a recommendation. And what I
think they need is to get an outside group--kind of like the Electric
Utility Commission but probably broader based with different
requirements of different backgrounds--you know, get some university
people involved. That's one of the reasons I was so thrilled about Bill
Spelman winning, because all my years, I've thought that the city of
Austin doesn't get the benefit of the knowledge that's out at U.T.,
because it's kind of like a--two separate domains and it doesn't--the
twain don't meet very often. And--but anyway, if we had an independent
board that got involved with the utility prior to their staff
proposals--in other words, into their decision-making process--and
that'll probably never happen. But I--that's what I think would help,
and send--the only kind of board we can have now is the--that existing
state law allows, something like San Antonio has--they call it a partial
powers board. They cannot do rates or debt or eminent domain but they
do all the rest of it. And if we wanted a truly independent board--and
see, the bottom line is, who's gonna select those people and who're they
gonna be, and if it turns out to be just a bunch of industrial--you
know, pro-industrial customers, it would be terrible. And the little the
Electric Utility Commission has done all these years--you know, we've at
least served to air some issues before the Council gets to vote on 'em.
So--I don't know what I think about that, and it--like I keep saying, it
depends on who the people are.
DT: Well, I guess it's hard to
say and it's things yet to come. But ...
SF: Yeah.
DT: I was wondering if we could
look back just briefly--I had two questions about how we got to this
point. One has to do with the whole legacy of electric co-ops--the rural
co-ops and L.B.J.'s contribution, ...
SF: Um-hmm. Um-hmm.
DT: ... and why does Austin have
a municipally owned utility?
SF: it's ...
DT: And, you know, what is
this--is there some populist sort of ground to that or ...
SF: No, I don't think so. The
utility celebrated its hundredth anniversary--I believe it was last
year. IT was founded in the late 1890's, 1896 or somewhere along in
there--really by default, because this town was so small that no
utility, you know, wanted to--they didn't--they didn't think they could
make any money off of serving it, and so the city--I don't know who the
people were. But the city forefathers did it themselves, and 'course
they were producing hydroelectricity, you know. We had a dam on Lake
Austin, and then the powerhouse was down there. So--Walter Richter's the
one that knows a lot about the rural electric co-ops, because that was
an L.B.J. program, and 'course I'm old enough--I remember when you'd go
visit my grandma--my grandparents on the Sabinal River in--11 miles out
from Sabinal in Uvalde County. You know, they had oil lamps--I mean,
they had lamps at night--there wasn't any electricity. So I don't know
who was smart enough--but I think Austin, on the whole, has had
progressive civic leaders apparently forever. I don't know, I mean, it
ebbs and flows, obviously, but--that they--they were--and 'course the
first thing--the main thing back then was for lighting. You know, they
didn't have--I guess they had someone--eventually--I don't know when
electric motors started but mainly it was for lighting homes and the
streets and everything. Well, you know, our moonlight towers came from
that.
DT: I had a question about
things--less on the municipal level and also more on the state level. I
read once that Texas was the last state to create a Public Utility
Commission, in 1975, ...
SF: Um-hmm. That's right.
DT: ... and I'm wondering if you
know some of the history of why things took so long to happen here.
SF: Well, the big boys didn't
want a PUC. And once they got one--and I can't keep up with the ebbs and
flows on the state level, but once they got one, they've worked real
hard to be sure they dominated it through appointments. But, you know,
it--it is better. We do have some general laws that protect the public.
I don't--the thing that troubles me about what I call the big boys in
the business community--it's like these industrial electric rate payers.
They've been paying four and a half cents and you and I've been paying
seven and a half and that's not good enough. And so they want these
long-term contracts at a discounted rate, which will cost the city about
$21 million loss of revenue over the years that it's in effect and I
can't remember exactly when it--when it ends. And it--it worries me that
there're so many--that apparently the majority of the people never think
they have enough. [Laughs.] They're not satisfied. Don't stop to--in
the--what is it, stop and smell the roses?
DT: Um-hmm.
SF: It becomes a game--you know,
acquiring wealth.
DT: Well, ...
SF: But they don't have much
social conscience, and the social conscience has to come from
legislation. And that's--you know, that's why you hope that some
progressive legislation happens every once in a while at any
level--city, state, county, national. But ...
DT: But you've made an effort to
inject a little social conscience over the years, ...
SF: [Laughs.]
DT: ... from the River City
Coordinating Council.
SF: Yeah. That thing kind of ...
DT: Uh-huh.
SF: ... dwindled away. That's so
funny. You see thing--we were--we were kind of a powerhouse.
We'd--we--the people that met--and I've got a folder on that--they
couldn't commit their organization. It was a--basically a communication
vehicle but we would come together and have speakers and talk about our
different areas and it was so they could take messages--they could take
information back to their organization. And I don't know, there
were--there was a whole page full of organizations that sent
representatives, and we took what we called straw votes, which didn't
mind an organization. But Gary Witt--this is back, you know, in those
'81 and so forth days. Gary Witt was so good--he doesn't live in Austin
anymore and that was a big loss. He was a Ph.D. in some kind of
communications and he was connected with A.C.C., I think. But he
knew--he had a way of going down--we'd take a straw vote on some hot
issue, and he had a way of going down and letting our Council members
know what the RC--the RC3, we called it--RC3, River City Coordinating
Council--how they had voted, and it--it had some influence. We actually
held a bond issue hostage one time. Capital recovery fees? Way back
before I ever got involved in local politics--way back, the city used to
pay developers to put in infrastructure. They--what did they call it?
Refunding bonds or something--and they finally quit doing that. But we
were always providing utility infrastructure free, and so, what we were
saying is growth ought to at least partially pay for itself, and so we
were advocating capital recovery fees. And they were having--this was
back in the early '80's. There was gonna be a bond issue, something
about water and wastewater, and Gary Witt put out the word that none
of us were gonna vote for it unless they've--unless they instituted
capital recovery fees, and they did. Now I think they've been dwindled
down to some extent since then. [Laughs.] And we even had--in the
utility area we had hookup fees that were--they were not--that's all
right. And, we've had to abandon those because of forthcoming
competition because no other utility has--we--they just abandoned those
early this year, and as much as I worked to get 'em passed, I have to
agree that--that we--you know. We've got Texas utilities and the co-ops
and everything surrounding us, and if somebody's gonna build in a place
where there's--electricity competition is allowed, they're not gonna
take it from somebody that says you gotta pay $400 for a--to get a
meter, you know, when the others would put it up free. So--and my--one
of my favorite stories about subsidizing growth--when Connie and I first
married in 1938 we lived in a garage apartment, and--I think I'm right
about this--our total utility bills were about $12 a month. That was
water, wastewater--well, there wasn't a wastewater charge. It was
water, gas, and--and telephone. I think the telephone was about two and
a half. So, you know, if we were paying $12 and a half--$12.50 or
something on the average in 1938 and '39 and '40, and now our bills are,
you know, just through the roof. How much growth have we subsidized,
beyond inflation?
DT: Well, speaking of growth and
its effect on Austin, can you talk a little bit about the role of
developers in city government here?
SF: Yeah. What's the word,
nefarious? [Laughs.]
DT: [Laughs.]
SF: They're some more of these
selfish people, and--I'm not a no-growther. I mean, I know we're gonna
have to have growth, but we should have responsible growth, you know,
with environmental--I mean, now they say, "Oh, we can build anywhere
because technology'll let us protect the water quality," and, you know,
that's hogwash. I think even the Texas Highway Department--I don't know
the details, but I've heard about it at Save Barton Creek Association.
They--they've built different kind of detention ponds and so forth up
and down the roads here in Austin, and I think they all admit they don't
work. And is--have you ever heard anything--something like that, that
they--they don't know how to build anything that works. And yet, you
hear people like--well, Eric Mitchell is one, that--"You can build
anything anywhere, and we have the technology to prevent pollution," and
that's just not true, as far as I've heard.
DT: I've also seen over recent
years that it's becoming--more complicated to be an environmentalist and
there are environmentalists of different stripes, ...
SF: Oh, yeah, yeah.
DT: ... and I'm curious if you
can comment a little bit about some of the painful schisms between
environmentalists--for example, the one--I guess a number of years ago,
'91 I think it was, between Jackie Goodman and Mark Tschurr.
SF: Yeah, that was--that was
sad. That was--I don't know that that was so much on an
environment--'course I'm sure Mark Tschurr, being coached by Helen
Ballew and Bill Bunch, probably would've been a more purist
environmentalist. But my part in that was Jackie was so far ahead, and
she'd been endorsed by Jim Steed, who was the second runner. My--my
involvement was based on the grounds that she was almost guaranteed to
win, and why go through this expensive campaign, splitting the
environmental community? In other words, if--if Mark Tschurr had done a
Ronnie Reynolds, it would've been a benevolent thing for the environmentalists. And--'course I know Jackie didn't--you know, she's
voted some--she's cast some votes that, you know, we didn't agree with,
environmentally, on developments and everything. But then on the other
hand--now I don't even know Mark Tschurr when I see him. I guess he's
still around but he's--to my knowledge, he's not involved in local
issues, is he?
DT: He moved out of state.
SF: Oh, I didn't know that.
DT: Yeah.
SF: What--when did he leave?
DT: Oh, about nine months ago?
SF: I didn't know that.
DT: Yeah.
SF: But you know, he was a--he
had wonderful TV commercials in that race, and--very attractive. But I
never had seen him at City Council before that, and I hadn't seen
him--didn't see him afterwards, so I--I know he would've been a good
Council member 'cause he had the advisors that would've, you know,
educated him on ...
[Tape 2, Side B.]
SF: ... 'cause he had the
advisers that would've, you know, educated him on the issues. And, ...
DT: Well, ...
SF: ... it was one of those old
things. Jackie had the--you--the term is, she's paid her dues? Jackie
had paid her dues through voluntary work in different neighborhood and
environmental organizations. And--'course I think Mary Arnold paid her
dues, too, and she got beat. But it wasn't on account of--it was on
account of Prop 22.
DT: Um-hmm.
SF: Just think, if she'd won
that, we wouldn't've had Ronnie Reynolds for what, four years?
DT: Well, speaking of these
campaigns, do you have any thoughts about city campaign finances and how
...
SF: Oh, yeah.
DT: ... those are run and how
they should be run?
SF: It's--it's terrible. You
know, we--this thing about single-member districts, I've--I laughed
about that. My people--my kind of people have supported single-member
districts forever, to--for one thing, to reduce the cost of a campaign,
and to get it more back to grassroots, and it was always opposed by the
business community, and I--I even left a message on Susan Richards'
phone--answering machine yesterday. You know, she's--editorializes
about--you know who I'm talking about? And I said--I said, "My files're
in storage, but go back and look. The paper is now saying they're in
favor of single-member districts." We've had at least four elections on
that issue and we've always lost big-time and the paper editorialized
against it--I think every time, and it's possible I'm wrong about the
last election but I don't think I am. And, you know, they--we all gripe
about the paper but they never admit they changed their mind or they
made an error. [Laughs.] But see, what has happened--and I heard one of
the--our modern political consultants say that--see, back in the early
days we were for single-member districts--one reason, we couldn't beat
the money on a city-wide basis. Now I think our former opponents are for
single-member districts, 'cause they can't beat our person power on a
city-wide basis. You know, we can turn--we've turned out the votes. The
percentage--you know, the percentage turnout's bad but we've been able
to get our--ever since SOS. SOS election politicized a lot of people,
and Kirk Mitchell--I told him this recent--last time I saw him. I give
Kirk Mitchell credit for reviving and maintaining the SOS name in the
political arena, 'cause when Bruce Todd beat Darrell Slusher for
Mayor--would that be three years ago?--the old SOS coalition split on
that race, and the SOS coalition kind of dwindled away. And--I mean, I
supported--I never did vote for Bruce Todd, and he knows it. [Laughs.]
But, I--I voted for Barnstone and Slusher. But--the SOS coalition kind
of dwindled away and then there wasn't any big issue going but Kirk
Mitchell--and I give him full credit--was--he just said, "That's too
valuable a logo and has too much name ID to lose, and he just kind of
single-handedly said, "We gotta keep a political action committee, you
know, that's--that's SOS.&quo
