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HomeMy WebLinkAboutGary Halter Follow-Up TranscriptionCity of College Station Heritage Programs Oral History Interviewee: Gary Halter Interviewer: Unknown Place: College Station, Texas Project: Mayors and City Council Transcriber: Brooke Linsenbardt Interviewer: Okay. Mayor Halter, in the administration previous to yours, (North Fradinack? Bardell?), who was mayor, champion in (ethics?) ordinance and was able to get that passed, it then subsequently was repealed and we’d like very much for you to comment from your perspective, not only as a political scientist, but also as a mayor, what you think about (ethic’s?) ordinances? Do they work? Do they not work? 00:42: Gary Halter (GH): Well sometimes they reduce the number of people that are going to run for city council in smaller communities because people don’t want to reveal that information about themselves, particularly to competitors or others so, that, that’s a downside of that you know. And, and you know, the, the, the situations that, that when I was on the city council, particularly (Tony Jones?) the home builder, and Tony would always recuse himself from, get up and leave the chamber you know, not even participate in the discussion. Definitely not a vote. And I think a lot of that was, was you know, we, we didn’t have a need I think in some respects for those kinds of things. You have honest people you know, on the city council. And, Lorence I think wrote another one later (and?), on after that one was repelled. And for whatever reason, the council didn’t adopt it. He got very upset about all the work he put into it and then the council decided not to, to adopt the thing. That was when Lynn was mayor. I: I want to move on now to the topic of city services and the matter of, of College Station becoming independent from Bryan in terms of water and sewage and electricity and so forth. One question that has come to our attention is that whether or not there was a water well drilled at the Riverside campus that was eventually given to the city of Bryan. 02:19: GH: No. I: No. 02:20: GH: There was a water well drilled on out on that. The city of Bryan when we decided to leave on electrical, you know, they, they started playing games with water and how much water they had available and things like that. And it’s gonna take us a while to get that line built you know, and all the work going way out (Sandy Point Road?). And there was an oil company, and I can’t remember the name and I tried to think of it today, that drilled wells for municipalities and somehow got a tax write-off on it. I don’t recall the details of it. But we contracted with them to drill that well out on the Riverside campus property. And then the city of Bryan, the, the Texas A&M university, we transported the water into College Station in the university line and there was a charge for transporting it and that’s how the university bought the well. So it, it wasn’t, Bryan wasn’t, it was a way of getting away from Bryan you know. And the systems that we’re all connected together—the university and A&M and Bryan. I don’t know whether that’s still the case. I know at one point, one guy, one member of Bryan city council said he wanted a lock put on the valve between Bryan and College Station which is somewhere along 29th Street and he wanted to have the only key you know. And then he said you know, when we get through with you, they’ll be begging for us to consolidate with us. Which made me, I said, “I don’t want this guy you know, on my city council” you know, he was. I can’t recall his name. But you know one time we had a meeting with him and, and they, they all played the good old boy game you know. “I, I’m just an old country boy” you know, “you’re going to have to explain to me” you know. Somebody starts saying that, I always get a little you know, concerned. I: You sit on your wallet a little bit more firmly. 04:03: GH: Feel your wallet, yeah make sure your wallet’s okay. And there was so many of them, at one meeting I suggested we started an F.A. chapter you know. I thought that would have been helpful. [chuckle] But they just you know, they, they always play these games you know. And there was just, I got the impression that somehow university professors, in party because they have never met a payroll you know, were inferior to, to them who have, of, meeting the payroll was a sign of great virtue apparently. I: Was it, did it make any difference whether you were talking about water or electricity? Was the, the response was the same. 04:43: GH: Yeah. Well they, they thought they could, they kept trying to raise the price of electricity so they could force consolidation that’s what it was all about. And College Station decided they didn’t want to do that. And that was back when electrical rights were going up anyway. And if you compare what they wanted to charge us with what you know, was the standard of the state, it was much higher. And so we you know, decided to go on our own and we approached a, two companies. One (I really met?) at that it was called Texas Power and Light, it’s the big one in Dallas. And, and I, I can’t remember the name of it. Went up to visit with them about supplying electricity and for various reasons they said they, they couldn’t do it. But what was interesting we were getting ready to leave the guy in, one, one of the people said, “Well we think you’ve made the decision of getting away from Bryan on electrical energy.” And we said, “Why do you say that?” Well (he?) said, “They built that (Damsby?) plant and they don’t have any contract for natural gas.” They built it without, you know, it didn’t even have a line to the place you know. He said, “Secondly.” He said, “We looked at that you know, (word?) the Carlos site years ago and it doesn’t have a high enough V.T. value to generate electrical energy with.” He said, “You’re good to get away from them. That’s, that’s what I would do.” And of course they are no longer burning anthracite, they burned anthracite coal they bring in from trains from Wyoming. And then like I said, that was, that, this is kind of, the, the resolve is there to get away from these people. And that whole (Dansby?) plant has been a real problem. Not (Dansby?), I mean the, the, the Carlos plant has been a lot of problems, They had problems with the ash removal wasn’t sufficient to, to remove the, the coal ash out you know, in time. And so they had problems with backing up. Coal isn’t burned in, in like a. It’s actually ground into fine powder and they have nozzles that they blow it into the, into the, and it burns almost instantly. Well you have this ash that has to be removed because otherwise it’s gonna build-up in the system. They, they had to redesign that and there were lots of problems with it, really were. So we, I think we made the right decision to get away. And then after that, they went back to Bryan and got into a lawsuit with them. You know, if you didn’t learn anything. [chuckle] That was after I. I: That was because there was nothing else available? 07:11: GH: I have no idea why they did it. I: (word?) 07:13: GH: Yeah, they, they got into a big battle with the them and there was lawsuits and everything like that. Like the landfill you know. The city of College Station, I’m not sure it’s legal, they gave Bryan half ownership of the landfill. I don’t think that’s legal, I don’t think you can do that. And of course they paid nothing for it you know. And then they sued us over the new, new landfill site and on and on and on and you know. I mean you know, every time you deal with them you come back and see if you have all your fingers left. I: Where did you finally get the electricity? 07:45: GH: We got it from Gulf States. I: And did you have, you, you didn’t, you had no problems? 07:49: GH: No they had a line that ran right through it. Still there. If you go out to Highway 30 you know. It runs parallel to Carter Creek. The, the line’s still there you know. And we got a really good deal with them for a long time because they had long term contracts for cheap, natural gas. I: So that helped keep our service cost down. 08:09: GH: Yeah. Yup. (Helped our?). Yeah, right. Hmm-hmm. See there was a time in the, in the seventies, eighties, when they were trying to force everybody to get off natural gas. They passed what called the (Boiler Field Act?) and you couldn’t build anymore, in fact the (Dansby?) plant at that time, everybody said it was going to be one of the last ever built because they, we’re running out of natural gas. No of course we found, we aren’t running out of natural gas. You know, and Texas had tre-tremendous number of gas fired plants because you know, natural gas was sort of a left-over from production of oil you know. And so you had all this gas that the state developed, or the industry that the state developed. And we prob, and then of course, you know they, they were going to force people to go to the nuclear power plants. And then you have the, the Three-Mile Island deal and then nuclear goes out. And then they’re going to do coal-fired plants and now that’s bad. Article in the paper this morning about, about the amount of pollution that all the coal-fire plants in Texas puts out you know. Yeah. I: Oh. Is there anything else that you think we ought to get on the record relative to College Station and utilities during your tenure? 09:29: GH: No, not during my tenure. We, like I said we, we moved away from, from Bryan. We went to the Gulf States. We built, you know, we had not have any, any transformer stations in the city of College Station. They, the ones that were there were all owned by Bryan so we had to build new transformer stations and new lines and new connections and things of that type. One of the things we didn’t do because was to get certification to serve for, serve area outside of College Station. We should have asked for dual certification. And we didn’t simply because. I: Ex-explain dual certification. 10:02: GH: Dual certification. Cert-, in order to serve an area, you have to get from the Public Utility Commission a, a certificate of, of convenience and necessity. It’s called to, to be able to sell electricity in an area. Well College Station the, the, well we didn’t think the initial aspects of the Public Utility Regulatory Act did not apply to municipal (???) electrical companies. And we didn’t think that that was going to be a problem. Well later on what happened was that all these rural electrication things—and Bryan had an R.E.A. at one point, it, it, it no longer called that—but all these rural electrication systems that had area outside of city, convinced the Public Utility Commission that it would somehow be a big blow to them to do that you know. And, and so they, they, the P.U.C., Public Utility Commission, started denying certificates of, of convenience and necessity to cities so these co-ops were, were all doing it. That’s why the Texas Public Power Association was created. And College Station was the, the leader in creating that organization. It represents electric-owned, municipal-owned utility electrical companies in the state of Texas. And I was the first president of it and it’s really you know, become a, a, a large organization in terms of looking after those interests. Initially the big companies, big cities—San Antonio and Austin—didn’t join and some within the Bryan system and I think that was the Texas Municipal Power Authority, T.M.P.A., which is Bryan, Garland, Greenville, and Denton, didn’t come into it and. But Brownsville and Lubbock and several other big things did. But now I think most every city is in there because the realization was that you had, you had investor-owned that had an organization for years and you have the co-ops that go back to the thirties you know. And one, one legislature when we talked to him about passing a bill that would give cities the right to get it, he, he said, “Well I’ve just had too many chicken dinners at co-op and things in my district and I can’t vote for that” you know. So, so these guys have been politicking these, these. I: For years. 12:13: GH: You know, yeah, members of the legislature for years you know. And I, I, I, one time they really got upset. I gave testimony before a senate committee about the intention of the federal government in creating the rural electrication systems. And I quoted (Sam Rayburn?). You know he, he was not speaker at that time but, but and he, he was the one who pushed the bill through because (brought?) great benefit to Texas. I remember when you know, used to go to my grandad’s farm. They didn’t have electricity until after World War II. I: Wow. 12:45: GH: Wow. You bet a wa-, windmill to pump water, you know, had kerosene lamps and you know things like that. I: (That was the way you go?). 12:52: GH: That, that was. There wasn’t any electricity out in the country you know. But anyway, (Sam Rayburn?) made, made this big point about, “It is our, not our intention to take electrical energy away from any city government.” You know, and they just went into orbit, you could see them. [laughs] I: [laughs] 13:08: GH: I really enjoyed it. [laughs] I: I think you enjoyed everything that you do. Oh, that’s great. Thank you for taking the time to come in and give us this extra piece. 13:17: GH: Oh you’re welcome. Yup. Okay. I: We’re grateful to you. 13:21: GH: Glad to do it. I: Thank you very.