Watching Now:

• Property Rights Attack - Important next meeting, Thursday August 4, 2015. Two P& Z commissioners will present the details of the zoning ordinance overhaul to two City Council members. This meeting will discuss changes to livestock, chickens, goats, and horses in Llano. The Planning & Zoning Commission & Llano City Council have begun a "complete overhaul" of the Zoning Ordinance with an emphasis on "Best Use". They seem to feel that it is their responsibility to decide how your property is best used because they know better. They meet the third Thursday of the month at 5:30 at City Hall. See articles  here, here, here, here, here, and here.
• Riley Mountain Secondary Water Source - The city has signed a 50 year contract to lease land that some experts say has a 99% chance of failing. The entire project will cost over %8,000,000. See articles here and here.
• Wireless Water and Electrical Meters - The City Council approved the new wireless water and electrical meters. The project is over budget and late. We are watching for a detailed analysis of the promised benefits.
• Radioactive drinking water - The City Council has commissioned engineers to study spending over $7 million dollars drilling wells in the Hickory Aquifer to add to our water supply. This water contains radium beyond EPA and TCEQ limits. Citizen desired water supply extensions (low-river crossing/dam and dredging for example) are being misrepresented and ignored. See article. The Bryan Miiler, Todd Keller, and Allen Hopsen then voted to spend $1 million dollars to drill 2 wells on Riley Mt for similarly contaminated water with a 99.75% chance of failure. We are watching to see how that $1 Million dollars will be spent and how much more it will take to get the water to Llano.
• Fountains in the river at the dam - City Council approved a $480K contract to install fountains at the dam to allow more water to be recovered during a serious drought. Citizens and City Council had over 30 questions to the engineers, Hejl, Lee, which the said they would answer but haven't. Basic questions like "will it work" were answered with "I don't know." Continuing costs question was another question. Construction starts soon. Will we get answers? Hejl, Lee will be paid $70K for this project so there should be sufficient funds to get answers. The city manager, Brenton Lewis says that, because of a grant,  the city will only pay $90K so it is worth the chance that it will work. Ask the rest of Texas who will be paying $370K if it is worth it?
  The fountains are installed and we are now watching to see a report on the benefits.
• Sewer Plant upgrade - 5 years ago the city spent about $4 million dollars to upgrade the sewer plant. This was very controversial at the time. A 3-2 vote in Council decided to upgrade an obsolete design instead of installing a modern GE MBR system for the same cost. Now we are faced with another major upgrade and the City Council just voted to use the same engineering company, that was wrong 5 years ago, to lead another upgrade. Had we gone with the modern GE system, we wouldn't even be discussing more $3 million upgrades. And this is only Phase 2. LlanoWatchers will be researching and reporting on this issue. See article.
• Open Government - Our city mayor and city government say they are open but citizens say and know they are secretive. An article in is progress on the latest "openness" and LlanoWatch will continue to document and support a Citizens' Bill of Rights to ensure openness.

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