URGENT NEED for your help regarding impacts of winter storms!​

Hello friend of Texas communities and planning,

We need your help today in sharing your experience of last week with the Texas legislature.

Like you, the American Planning Association, Texas Chapter (APATX) is working hard to overcome the impacts on our families, neighbors, businesses and communities from last week’s storms.  We realize many electric-related problems led to even more water, health and other issues.  We believe our state can and should do a better job of making this state resilient.  The first part of that is communication about actual impacts.

The Texas House State Affairs and Energy Resources committees are holding a joint hearing tomorrow (Thursday, February 25th) to review what happened and best practices going forward. The only invited testimony will be from the PUC & ERCOT. Other public testimony can be submitted online.  APATX believes it’s important for the committee members to understand the real-world effects of the system that exists now and that they move forward to address these problems.

APATX will be offering the expertise of our members - community leaders, city planning professionals, private developers, and local officials – to help solve these problems.  But we know how many individual communities and families have specific stories to share.  So we ask you to submit testimony – either as an individual or on behalf of your city, county or organization. Note that the testimony can only be 3,000 characters long!   We are attaching a template for testimony, in case you want to use it as a starting point.  The sections in yellow should be tailored to your situation.  We think it’s crucial for the Legislature to hear the statistics about local impact as well as anecdotes about people and businesses.

Upload the letter to: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ee-HHx33xv2u5-6u0Hw8c3dF9kOCAVGovGE2C8YlU6Q/edit?usp=sharing

The hearing begins at 9:00 tomorrow morning.  Online testimony can be submitted until the hearing ends.  Of course, we don’t know when that will be.  But we are guessing that if you submit something by noon, it will probably be included.

If you submit testimony, please forward APATX a copy at: info@apatexas.org.  Thanks so much!

Photo courtesy of Heather Nick, AICP