8 December 21 - 27, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents “While the Candlewood Suites property has been converted to a family shelter and has an excellent operator in Family Gateway, delays and snafus by several city depart- ments have added well over $1M of avoid- able cost to the city and taxed the financial resources and management time of our val- ued partner, Family Gateway,” the council members’ memo said. Like the Miramar project, the hospital and Townhouse Suites projects lack com- plete plans, they said. Additionally, the hos- pital project has struggled to gain support from adjacent neighborhoods. For these rea- sons, the council members asked that proj- ect management for the three sites be “re-examined for adequacy relative to pri- vate-sector alternatives” and that no other properties be purchased to house the home- less until then. The city has been consider- ing purchasing the former Elegante Hotel in northwest Dallas, also for housing purposes. Since sending the memo, Blackmon said she still hasn’t gotten much of an explanation for the delays. “We’ve spent a lot of money, and we have a lot of need,” she told the Ob- server. “It makes me hesitant to bring part- ners in to work on finding solutions that help our community when we’re having trouble just doing basic ones that we’ve set out with in the past few years, especially around homelessness.” Blackmon is hoping to get answers about the projects soon in a briefing. “Let’s just be honest,” she said. “Is it cost delays? Is it that it was a lot more than what we anticipated as far as how to get things moving off center? Is it the will of the community that we need to keep working with? Let’s just have an honest conversation about why we aren’t moving as fast as we need to or thought we would move.” Dallas’ Housing and Homelessness Solu- tions Committee will get an update on the Hotel Miramar project at its meeting today. The update was outlined in a memo this month from Deputy City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert. According to the memo, city staff is work- ing to draft the contract for the design work to support the second phase of the project. The City Council will have to approve the spending for the design work, which is ex- pected to happen on Jan. 10. This month, city staff will host feedback sessions with private- sector supportive housing developers and op- erators to determine how best to structure the notice of funding availability for the proj- ect. The city will start looking for a public/ private partnership starting on Dec. 31. In October, members of the city’s Hous- ing and Homelessness Solutions Committee were told by city staff that the Miramar proj- ect could be complete by September 2024. West, who sits on the committee, expressed some frustration about the project at the time, according to the local real estate news site Candy’s Dirt. “This is a project that, every time it comes up in my district, it generates an emotional response from people who are either sup- portive of it and frustrated that they can’t do anything to help it or people who were against it from the very beginning and are like, ‘I told you so. The city will never get this done,’” West said. ▼ WEATHER FOR GRID’S SAKE LET’S PRAY ANOTHER WINTER STORM URI DOESN’T HIT SOON. BY SIMONE CARTER J ust mouthing the word “ERCOT” will elicit a Pavlovian-sweat response for many Texans who lived through Winter Storm Uri. The February 2021 ex- treme weather event ruined the reputation of the state’s power grid operator in the eyes of many. Pipes burst. Hundreds of Texans died and millions shivered in darkened homes. Many Texans are now wondering what’s in store this winter. Could we be weeks away from another punishing cold snap? Gov. Greg Abbott wrote in an X post re- cently that the state is taking “key steps” to ready our grid ahead of the chilly months. “@ERCOT_ISO will immediately deploy new weatherization inspectors to ensure the Texas power grid remains reliable and resil- ient,” he said. This comes after remarks from Pablo Ve- gas, president and CEO of the Electric Reli- ability Council of Texas, casting doubt on the whole “reliability” factor of the organi- zation. Vegas told WFAA’s Y’all-itics podcast last month that the state “probably won’t” have the needed 3,000 megawatts in reserve in case of emergency this winter. And in other less-than-stellar power news, ERCOT’s grid readiness report for this coming January indicates a 16.77% chance of entering emergency conditions should another severe storm strike next month. Of note: The chance would only be that steep amid conditions akin to 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott and just between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. That 60-minute span is considered a wintertime weak spot for the Texas grid. Around 8 a.m., production of wind turbine power drops, and solar panels don’t kick in to help out until a little later on, according to KENS 5 in San Antonio. The nearly 16.8% chance of having to or- der controlled outages is pretty high, Tom Overbye, director of the Texas A&M Univer- sity Smart Grid Center, wrote via email. How- ever, that percentage is “based on a severe assumption that is most likely not going to oc- cur, and is also only for one hour (8 to 9 am).” For a typical winter that sees cold but not record-setting days, ERCOT predicts a 6.7% chance of needing to go to such outages, again just within that hour-long time frame, Overbye said, adding: “So I think it is highly likely that the ERCOT grid will be fine through the entire winter.”But Doug Lewin, president of Stoic Energy Consulting, notes that these estimates are based on the as- sumption that we’ll face another Elliott- esque storm. Enduring a Winter Storm Uri sequel? That’d be a different ballgame. “A perfect storm would be much, much higher than 17%,” Lewin said. “If we had something like Uri, or let’s say exactly the same as Uri, those chances would be very, very high. … I would imagine the odds of outages in a Uri-like condition would be pretty close to 100%.” Not all outages are created equal, though. Lewin noted that the February 2021 storm’s blackouts lasted for days and struck more than 4 million households. Supposing Uri 2.0 were to strike today, Lewin thinks that the outages’ duration and magnitude would be much less. Another factor: This year was met with a strong El Niño, the climate pattern that de- scribes warmer-than-usual surface waters in the eastern Pacific. Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon told the Observer in September that a “strong El Niño pretty much takes off the table the chance of having a super cold air outbreak during the wintertime.” Regardless, Lewin advises folks to pre- pare for rolling outages: Stock up on canned goods and bottled water and check with medically vulnerable family members to make sure they have a plan. An expanding body of evidence suggests that climate change is weakening the jet stream, prompting short-yet-powerful cold blasts, Lewin said. Average winter days will be warmer overall, “but when you do get a cold snap, look out.” Unfair Park from p6 Unsplash Nearly three years later, Winter Storm Uri still strikes fear in the hearts of Texans.
