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Austin City Council members have fired City Manager Spencer Cronk, the city’s chief executive. The vote Wednesday followed criticism of his leadership during an ice storm that left hundreds of thousands without power earlier this month.

The vote was 10-1, with Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison voting against. Council members agreed to a severance package totaling $463,000, which includes one year of the city manager's salary, plus health care and vacation payouts.

While it is unusual for a city manager to be fired, the vote didn't come as a surprise. Last week, Austin City Council members expressed in a closed-door meeting unanimous support for a new city manager. In Austin, the city manager serves as the city's chief executive, overseeing day-to-day operations.

The move to oust Cronk comes just two weeks after Austinites hunkered down as an ice storm pummeled the city, bringing down electric lines and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power for days.

At the city’s first press conference about the storm, elected officials criticized how staff had communicated to residents.

“I’ve been frustrated and disappointed in the communication that I feel should have been better with the people in the city,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.

Initially, Austin Energy told residents to expect power back within 24 hours — a timeline they later pushed back by several days and then again by more than a week.

“If … it’s going to be 100 hours or more without electricity, people will make different choices. But we have to let them know so that they can prepare for themselves and their families, and we did not do that," Council Member Chito Vela, who represents parts of North Austin, told KUT last week. "I’m very disappointed.”

Austin City Council members have fired City Manager Spencer Cronk, the city’s chief executive. The vote Wednesday followed criticism of his leadership during an ice storm that left hundreds of thousands without power earlier this month.

The vote was 10-1, with Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison voting against. Council members agreed to a severance package totaling $463,000, which includes one year of the city manager's salary, plus health care and vacation payouts.

While it is unusual for a city manager to be fired, the vote didn't come as a surprise. Last week, Austin City Council members expressed in a closed-door meeting unanimous support for a new city manager. In Austin, the city manager serves as the city's chief executive, overseeing day-to-day operations.

The move to oust Cronk comes just two weeks after Austinites hunkered down as an ice storm pummeled the city, bringing down electric lines and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power for days.

At the city’s first press conference about the storm, elected officials criticized how staff had communicated to residents.

“I’ve been frustrated and disappointed in the communication that I feel should have been better with the people in the city,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.

Initially, Austin Energy told residents to expect power back within 24 hours — a timeline they later pushed back by several days and then again by more than a week.

“If … it’s going to be 100 hours or more without electricity, people will make different choices. But we have to let them know so that they can prepare for themselves and their families, and we did not do that," Council Member Chito Vela, who represents parts of North Austin, told KUT last week. "I’m very disappointed.”

Bwahahaha.  Scapegoating the City Manager, when it's actually the city council, and the citizens of Austin, that keep on voting to spend scores of millions of dollars on bike lanes and light rail that nobody uses, rather than maintaining critical infrastructure, is just such classic Austin behavior.

I don't live in the city of Austin and I don't rely on Austin utilities.  Guess who didn't come close to losing power for the entire event, nor the one back in 2021?

it's all the cause of too many folks (from Cali) moving to Austin

Absolutely true, but there are plenty of homegrown loonies here, too.

Keep Austin Weird comes to mind.

Yup.  I guess they'd rather be weird, than warm, in the winter.

Having proven the effectiveness of its carbon-emission-free generator technology at a prototype plant in La Porte, Texas, NET Power has taken the next step of developing commercial-size natural gas-powered generators in the United States and Europe. According to Forbes, one of those plants, to be located in Odessa, Texas, will have two beneficial side effects besides generating electricity.

The NET Power technology uses Allam Cycle technology that, instead of belching carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, uses it to turn the generator before sequestering it underground. The technology provides the promise of emission-free fossil fuels.

The Odessa plant will run on cheap natural gas extracted from the nearby Permian Basin oil fields. It will then inject the carbon dioxide it creates back into the same oil fields to coax out oil and gas. The carbon dioxide will remain permanently locked away underground, which will garner another revenue stream, thanks to subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act.

The power plant will run machinery designed to extract carbon dioxide from the air.

On the whole, the NET Power solution to human-caused climate change seems entirely more sensible than other proposed approaches. It uses sound engineering principles, builds on rather than replaces an energy economy built on fossil fuels, and avoids the economic dislocation involved in going full-tilt to renewables.

Recycling rather than expending carbon dioxide also avoids some of the policy prescriptions advanced by some governments that range from annoying to costly. A proposal banning gas stoves, for example, has sparked a revolt from chefs who believe that cooking with gas makes food taste better. The ban makes no sense since electric stoves are still likely to be powered by natural gas or coal-fired power plants.

Then, one has to consider the grandiose (and quite mad) proposal made by a group of scientists from the University of Utah and Harvard to mine the moon for dust and shoot it into orbit around the Earth to block the sun, thus impeding or even reversing global warming. The scientists have not run a cost-benefit analysis for their proposal or an examination of the risks involved. For example, too much moon dust could throw the Earth into a runaway ice age. The proposal would also ruin Earth-based astronomy.

That won't work at all, because the moon is made of cheese.

What's the forecast for July?