The room at Denis LeHane's Lazy. L Ranch that he calls a study and where he
hosts late-night poker games is filled with photos of famous people living and ...
Weekend September 22-23, 2012
$1.50 Volume 102, Issue 167
TEXAS MANAGING EDITORS NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR
Did the Warriors stay undefeated? Tourin’ the USA The Ingram Warriors went into Friday night’s game against San Antonio St. Anthony with a 3-0 record. Find out how they fared. 1B
Ingram native hits the road, driving cross country on a mission to discover America’s humanity. 1C ³Life & Times
³Sports
After 27 years of stunts and acting, man returns home to Kerrville
STATE | HEALTH
Efforts to stop hospital privatization continue
Local reps ask commissioner to reject proposal now By Beth Elderkin Staff Writer
[email protected]
Tom Holden/Times Photo Editor,
[email protected]
Kerrville resident Denis LeHane points to some of the many photos he collected of actors he once worked with in Hollywood. LeHane moved to California after a short career in the military and performed stunt work and acted in many television shows and films.
How Hollywood
was won
with his family to Kerrville when he was young. He said one of his first jobs was as a paperboy for The Kerrville Daily Times before he joined the Navy as a combat medic in 1970. A Purple Heart and two years later, LeHane headed to Hollywood where his Texas background landed him a job as a horse wrangler at Universal Pictures. He spent three years there working with the animals used in television shows and movies before he got his first break working as a stuntman on “Gunsmoke.” “That’s where I met the guys that got me out of shoveling horse shit to falling off horses and motorcycles,” LeHane said. “They said $1,000 per day, and I said, ‘Where do I sign?’” LeHane’s days of riding in Texas made him a natural stuntman falling off horses on westerns such as “How the West Was Won” or riding motorcycles on “CHiPS.” “After you do it a time or two, you either get good at it or you quit,” LaHane said. “The trick is to fall on the motorcycle, not under it.” LeHane worked as a stuntman on shows
By Mark J. Armstrong Assistant Managing Editor
T
[email protected]
he room at Denis LeHane’s Lazy L Ranch that he calls a study and where he hosts late-night poker games is filled with photos of famous people living and dead. Almost all of the framed pictures are signed, and many include LeHane from his younger days smiling next to Sam Elliot, Tom Selleck or Gregory Hines. But these aren’t photos and autographs LeHane got while standing outside Hollywood movie studios or behind the velvet rope at premieres. These pictures are from a career that spanned 27 years working as a stuntman and actor on television shows, including “The Fall Guy” and “CHiPS” and movies such as “The Young Riders.” “I saw Bob Hope do a show when I was in Vietnam. I figured if he could do it, so could I,” LeHane said. “Little did I know how hard it was.” LeHane was born in San Antonio but moved
KPUB approves rate increase for commercial customers By Sean Batura Staff Writer
[email protected] The Kerrville Public Utility Board approved a commercial rate increase on Thursday of 4 to 8 percent. The increase on a typical commercial customer’s bill, effective Oct. 1, will be $23.86 or 6.1 percent, from $390.58 per month to $414.45, according to KPUB officials. For customers who are interested, KPUB can provide individual estimates tailored to their historical consumption, demand and load factor. Customers who would like a tailored estimate may contact KPUB’s Customer Service Department at 257-3050. The calculation of the average increase is based on the consumption and demand of a typical commercial customer, who uses 4,300 kilowatts per month and has a peak demand of 12 kilowatts in the summer months.
Classifieds ......................4-8C Nation ................................. 2A Obituaries ......................... 5A Sports ..............................1-4B
INGRAM | EDUCATION
Superintendent search down to 6 candidates By Beth Elderkin Staff Writer
[email protected]
Ingram Independent School District has narrowed the list of potential superintendents down to six candidates, Ingram ISD’s board of trustees announced at a special meeting this week. Ingram ISD’s school board president Jennifer Wootton said Tuesday the board selected six candidates out of more than 40 who applied. The primary application process was done online through the Texas Association of School Boards, and Wootton said the next step is to interview each candidate in person, starting Monday.
See Stuntman, page 3A
See Ingram, page 9A
Christian Assistance Ministry seeks help stocking pantry shelves as need grows
Linda Cota, volunteer at the Christian Assistance Ministry, points to bare shelves at the food pantry Friday afternoon. Officials at the food bank said the ministry experienced record demand in August.
By Mark J. Armstrong Assistant Managing Editor
[email protected] Last year the local nonprofit Christian Assistance Ministry helped feed more than 22,000 area residents, but the need hasn’t stopped there. Neva Pratt, CAM’s vice president of public relations, said the cupboards are nearly bare at the Barnett Street food pantry, but that hasn’t slowed down the families coming in.
Tom Holden/
Times Photo Editor, photo@dailytimes. com
See CAM, page 9A
³Dow Television ........................10A Weather ............................. 5A Comics..........................Inside Crosswords .................Inside
See Hospital, page 3A
Food bank reports busiest month
See KPUB, page 3A
³Index
As GEO Care’s proposal to privatize Kerrville State Hospital reaches the final stages of review before being sent to the Legislative Budget Board, those who oppose the bill make efforts to convince the state agency’s commissioner to reject it first. “I think it’s significant that there’s quite a large amount of opposition to what is happening,” Grassroots Leadership executive director Bob Libal said. According to Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, the privatization bid has been through a series of revisions during the past few weeks, and Department of State Health Services commissioner David Lakey is expected to go forward with his recommendation or rejection of the bid by the end of next week.
Close: 13,579 Change: -17 More on page 2A
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Sunny with a SW wind 5 to 10 mph becoming east in the afternoon.
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Weekend, September 22-23, 2012
Managing Editor, Carlina Villalpando, 257-0337,
[email protected] Kerrville resident Denis LeHane holds a check he received from the Screen Actors Guild for nine cents. LeHane spent 27 years working as an actor and stuntman in Hollywood. Tom Holden/ Times Photo Editor, photo@ dailytimes.com
Stuntman | continued from page 1A including “Starsky and Hutch,” “Baretta” and “Knight Rider.” He said stunt work was hard and that stuntmen would often hide injuries, even a broken bone, since there were always people willing to take their place. But LeHane went to California to be an actor, not a stuntman, and he got his first major role playing Cpl. Ross in “Pony Express Rider,” a role that would bring him back home. “After going all the way to Hollywood to act, my first gig was right here in Kerrville,” LeHane said. The movie about a man’s plot to seek revenge after his father’s murder was filmed in the Texas
Hospital | continued from page 1A If Lakey rejects the proposal, the budget board likely will not approve it. Hilderbran, who is a member of the budget board, sent a letter to the commissioner on Thursday expressing his opposition to privatization. “Privatizing the hospital will have a significant impact on Kerrville,” he wrote. “I have serious concerns that privatizing the hospital will result in a dramatic, harmful reduction in the quality of (patient) service.” The Kerrville Economic Development Corporation also sent a letter to the commissioner and the budget board on Wednesday, stating its opposition to the proposal. In the letter, KEDC executive director Jonas Titas addressed the organization’s concerns about what effect privatization would have on local employment. “It would be naive to assume that GEO would cut operations only 10 percent,” he wrote. “GEO will impose greater cuts that will entail more job losses as they seek to maximize their profit margins.” GEO Care and its parent company GEO Group have faced accusations of mismanagement — something the organization’s letter addressed at great length. According to Libal, opposition to the bid is as much about GEO Care as it is about privatization. “I think that people have a lot of concerns about quality of care,” Libal said. “Multiple people (are discussing) GEO’s history of providing inadequate care.”
Hill Country. LeHane also would return to Kerrville for a part in the movie “Where’s Willie.” LeHane spent 27 years working in Hollywood, first behind the scenes falling off horses and eventually in front of the camera. He said he “got lucky” and was able to work because the people who made the decisions liked him. “If you’re an actor and you don’t have a (famous) name, you’ll go to audition after audition, and you’ll starve to death,” LeHane said. “They took a liking to me, and I worked hard and busted my ass every week.” Now 61, LeHane is retired and living on a small ranch south of Kerrville. He came home in 2008 to attend to his mother who was
suffering from cancer. She died in May. Since then, LeHane said he hunts, fishes, plays cards with friends and eats whatever he wants now that he doesn’t have to stay thin for the camera. His last job was working as the stunt coordinator during filming of “Baghdad Texas” in 2009. He said he still visits California but doesn’t miss it, and many of the people he worked with — the people in the photos with a younger LeHane — have also passed away. “Growing up and watching those people on TV and then getting to stay at their house or them spending time at mine was unbelievable,” LeHane said. “The only thing I regret is I had no idea the 27 years would go by so fast.”
GEO Care’s Montgomery County medical facility, which former Kerrville State Hospital superintendent and current GEO Group corporate employee Stephan Anfinson supervised between April 2011 and January, faces more than $107,000 in state fines for regulatory deficiencies. GEO Group’s vice president of communications Pablo Paez said those fines were related to administrative and paperwork-related errors that are common when opening a new facility. The Austin American-Statesman recently reported that a patient seriously injured himself and ate fecal matter during his time at the Montgomery facility in June 2011. Another report mentioned how staff members were afraid to enter a room and retrain an isolated patient who was hurling himself against a wall and threatening physical assault on others. Libal, along with representatives from five other organizations, at-
tended a budget board meeting on Thursday that addressed several aspects of DSHS’s budget — including the privatization bid. Hilderbran was not present. During the meeting, Lakey mentioned the privatization bid but did not offer any further updates on its progress. After the meeting was opened to public comments, Libal and other representatives voiced their opposition to GEO Care’s privatization proposal, saying the 10 percent in cuts required by the DSHS’s request for proposals likely will have a negative impact on the hospital’s staff and services. “Every speaker who addressed (the proposal) asked the LBB ... to really think carefully about this, because there were some real concerns as to what could happen,” Libal said. “If you’re going to cut more than 10 percent out of the hospital, where are those cuts going to come from?”
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KPUB | continued from page 1A Whether a commercial customer’s rate increase beginning Oct. 1 is 4 to 8 percent in a given month will depend on demand, consumption and load factor. Load factor is the ratio of the average amount of electricity supplied during a designated period to the peak or maximum amount supplied in that period. Kerrville City Council members voted on first reading last week to approve a KPUB rate increase of 1.8 percent, or about $2.05 per month on the average residential customer. The increase takes effect Oct. 1. KPUB officials have said the rate increases have nothing to do with the cost of power on the wholesale market or KPUB’s recent decision to terminate its contract with LCRA and enter into a new agreement with CPS Energy. Switching from LCRA to CPS will save customers more than the cost of the current rate increase, and save millions for the utility between mid September and May 2013, according to KPUB officials The power cost component of customers’ bills — which is about 70 percent — has not changed and remains a pass-through from KPUB’s generation suppliers. “The cost we pay for power — that changes, literally, in the state of Texas, every 15 minutes,” said KPUB General Manager Tracy McCuan earlier this month. McCuan said the cost for power typically fluctuates from $5 to $10 on customers’ monthly bills, is more expensive in the summer and cheaper in the fall and spring. KPUB expects an estimated $377,000 more operating revenue in the next fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The new revenue primarily will go to increases in labor, insurance, benefits, equipment and materials. Total budgeted payroll for this year is $3.6 million. Total budgeted payroll for next year is $3.8 million. Next year’s budget includes a 1.6 percent cost of living adjustment for non-management positions and a 1 percent merit adjustment available for management positions. Next year’s budget will also includes one new position, an engineering technician whose responsibilities will primarily include energy efficiency projects, and an additional $50,000 for standby pay for the field employees who are on standby for after hours emergencies and outage restoration efforts. A small portion of the increased revenue is allocated to four large substation projects, which will cost an estimated $6.3 million over several years paid for through a combination of operating revenue and debt. “The rate increase is most needed because of the inflationary increase in day-to-day expenses since
| Local 3A
“The rate increase is most needed because of the inflationary increase in day-today expenses since 2000.” Tracy McCuan, General Manager,
2000,” McCuan said. The consumer price index, which represents changes in prices of all goods and services purchased for consumption by urban households, increased 3.1 percent in 2011 and 1.4 percent in 2010, decreased by 0.1 percent in 2009 and increased 4.3 percent in 2008. “Whereas our basic fee to pay for everything — to pay for materials and everything except power, hasn’t changed,” McCuan said. “There hasn’t been a strong need to change. Now, we have watched over the last couple of years as our financial strength has been diminishing slightly every month — I’d say it has for the last three years.” KPUB intends to keep a reserve equal to four months operating costs. The utility had 118 days worth saved up in June, and is projected to have 114 days worth by the end of September. Without a rate increase, KPUB will have 90.3 days of reserves at the close of next fiscal year. With the rate increase, KPUB will have 107.2 days of reserves by Sept. 30, 2013. Although KPUB’s contract with LCRA was set to expire in 2016, the utility sent a notice of termination letter to LCRA in August following a breach of contract notice filed in June. The entities are engaged in litigation over the matter. KPUB officials say the cost of litigation has nothing to do with the rate increase, as sufficient funds are budgeted for legal fees. KPUB officials have said their lawsuit with LCRA may eventually cost $217,000. KPUB officials have declined to say how much KPUB will pay for energy in the new CPS contract. The city council and KPUB each passed resolutions mirroring a state law that allows publicly-owned utilities to keep energy contracts confidential. KPUB last increased rates 1 percent in 2000 and shortly after the utility was formed and acquired by the city of Kerrville in 1987. Residential customers served by KPUB numbered 17,680 in fiscal year 2008-09, 17,791 in 2009-10, 17,876 in 2010-11 and 17,927 in 2011-12. Commercial customers numbered 3,691 in 2008-09, 3,699 in 2009-10, 3,736 in 2010-11 and 3,724 in 2011-12. Electricity usage in KPUB’s service area was 471,572,994 kilowatt hours in 2008-09, 495,882,332 kWh in 2009-10, 494,571,058 kWh in 2010-11 and 451,399,430 in 2011-12.
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