Sugar Land mayor pushes back on election misinformation, clarifies city positions on power plant, gondola, taxes and surface-water treatment
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Summary
Mayor Zimmerman opened the May 20 council meeting by urging an end to what he described as misinformation in the community and clarifying city positions on several contested topics, including a proposed power plant, a gondola feasibility application, the tax rate and surface-water treatment requirements.
Mayor Zimmerman opened the meeting with a request that misinformation circulating during the current election cycle stop and provided specific clarifications about several topics residents had raised.
On the proposed power plant, Zimmerman said the project was terminated in March of this year and that “there’s no other plan for a power plant, not gonna be a power plant,” urging people to stop circulating claims that a plant would be built. On tax rates and bonds, the mayor said the council had unanimously approved the tax rate and reminded listeners that two bond referendums were previously approved by council (a 2019 referendum for $91,000,000 and a November referendum for $350,000,000), and that tax-rate adjustments are adopted in concert with the annual budget and CIP process.
Zimmerman also addressed a widely discussed gondola proposal, saying the project under discussion was merely “an application to federal funding to see if a preliminary feasibility study could be done” and that no capital funds had been committed and the idea is not on the capital-improvement plan. On surface-water treatment expansion, the mayor said staff (including Chris Stubing), he and Greg Wine — who sits on the subsidence district board — reviewed available data and found insufficient justification for an immediate 30 percent expansion requirement. He said the Fort Bend County mayors’ association, under Charlie Jessup’s leadership, asked the subsidence district to suspend that 30 percent requirement, and the district agreed.
The mayor prefaced the council’s business by saying he would call out individuals at future meetings if misinformation continued. He also reminded the public that the meeting was livestreamed and that everyone would have access to the record of the discussion. These remarks were delivered as the meeting opened and were not a formal council action; they were presented by the mayor as clarifications of fact and context for items on the public record.
