After experiencing a string of break-ins over the past year, West University Place police department officials announced Feb. 18 that they plan to add more virtual cameras within city limits and launch an app where residents can track police activity.

The action taken: The app is called Patrol Finder and allows users to track where officers are patrolling and if they have been on their street or not.

“I want every street covered at least four times within 24 hours,” West U Police Chief Gary Ratliff said at the Feb. 18 public safety meeting. “So you should see a patrol car in front of your home at some point in time just for the sake of covering the community.”

Ratliff said the cameras that will be added are part of the existing virtual gate cameras, which are cameras that provide complete coverage of 24/7 footage of West U’s perimeter. The new cameras will be placed inside the perimeter, he said. These cameras will also have license plate readers.

A major new natural gas power project in east Houston just cleared another state milestone, pushing a planned 455-megawatt plant closer to reality as Texas races to add generation amid rising demand.

What this means: Gov. Greg Abbott announced the new unit planned at the existing Greens Bayou facility has been designated a qualified project under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation program, according to a Feb. 17 news release. The plant represents $617 million in capital investment and is expected to start producing electricity for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas region in 2028, according to the governor’s office.

The project is intended to strengthen grid reliability and create jobs, crediting state leaders and local partners for helping move the plan ahead, per the release.

What’s next: According to the release, with the JETI designation now in place, the focus shifts to the buildout and timeline leading up to the planned 2028 start date—when the additional capacity is expected to begin feeding electricity into the ERCOT grid.

Houston City Council approved the extension of the use of its current Records Management System, or RMS, for the Houston Police Department, a system that some council members say needs to be upgraded.

RMS is the system that the HPD uses for any and all data that the department has, including when officers take reports on the scene, when investigators pull information, crime statistics and analyses. 

Some context: The current RMS is antiquated, council member Abbie Kamin said, and she supports the extension, but would like to know when it will switch over to a newer, updated system.

“We continue to see additional extensions put on for large sums of money,” Kamin said during the meeting. “So a projection of how much longer we think this is going to take and how much this will cost ... the cost continues to grow, so having a full picture of what we’re looking at will be very helpful.”

Mayor John Whitmire said that the extension is to get the city through the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

During an arctic blast last month, the Texas power grid remained stable throughout the storm and the state came away largely unscathed. The Lone Star State has not seen widespread blackouts since February 2021, when millions of Texans lost power and nearly 250 people died.

The response: In Uri’s wake, state lawmakers and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas made changes to restructure ERCOT’s governing board, mandate earlier public alerts during tight grid conditions and require that energy providers “weatherize” their facilities to withstand extremely hot or cold temperatures.

Roughly 40,000 megawatts of power—enough to serve about 10 million residential customers—have been added to the grid since 2021 and the state’s energy supply has become more diverse.

Looking ahead: State leaders have expressed confidence that the grid would hold up during “a storm similar to Uri.” Yet some energy analysts caution that rapidly rising electric demand, driven by the construction of new data centers throughout Texas, means challenges may still lie ahead.