By CASSIE MCKEE, Four Points News

When Antoinette Griffin and her family went out of town over the Christmas holiday, some of their family and friends mailed packages to their River Place address while they were gone. When the family returned home, the packages were gone.

Antoinette Griffin, of River Place, says that too many times her mail has been stolen, and she wants to raise awareness.

“We thought it was something with the post office, that they didn’t deliver them,” Griffin said. “But when we called them, they said they didn’t have them.”

The same thing happened in April when the family went out of town for a few days and then again over Memorial weekend. When the family returned, they had catalogs in their mailbox but no regular mail. Upon further inspection, they realized that the catalogs weren’t even for them… they were for neighbors down the street.

“We were like, ‘Ok this is really strange,’” she said.

Griffin started asking her neighbors if any of them had experienced anything similar. She discovered that one of her neighbors had the same thing happen when he went out of town for a week. He had put a hold on his mail through the post office while he was gone, but the first day the mail was delivered, it was all taken.

“He got back and he had no mail, a week’s worth of mail,” Griffin said. “That’s how we knew it was being stolen.”

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By LYNETTE HAALAND, SCOTT W. COLEMAN

A Steiner Ranch woman who failed to deposit several thousand dollars of funds following the River Ridge Elementary PTA book fair last fall was arrested on theft, a state jail felony, on June 9.

Trisha Greenway is out on bond after being arrested on June 9 for theft. The affidavit states she failed to deposit thousands of dollars of River Ridge Elementary PTA book fair funds after the fall fundraiser.

Patricia “Trisha” Greenway, 47, is out on bond. The Travis County affidavit states that bond was set at $5,000.

Greenway said that she was arrested, is out on bond and that she cannot comment.

Attorney Aaron Mueller, of Austin law firm Granger, Mueller & Wood, is representing Greenway.

The Travis County affidavit states that Vince Mancuso, RRE PTA treasurer, provided information that led to Greenway’s arrest.

The affidavit states that Gretchen Raftalis, PTA board member, delivered money with an itemized receipt to Greenway’s Steiner Ranch home each day after the RRE book fair, which ran from November 11 – 15.

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By CASSIE MCKEE, Four Points News

The board of the Lower Colorado River Authority, which provides water for more than a million people in Central Texas, will vote next week on a proposed rate increase for firm water customers, including the City of Austin and Water Control & Improvement District 17, which includes Steiner Ranch.

LCRA staff is recommending that the rate for firm-water customers be increased from $151 an acre-foot to $175.46 an acre-foot, beginning in January 2015, and increase an average of 3 percent a year from 2016-2019, according to information on the LCRA website. The board will consider the item at its June 18 board meeting.

John Hofmann is the executive vice president for water for the LCRA.

John Hofmann, executive vice president for water for the LCRA, said the new rate would be considered a “drought rate” and is necessary to make up for the loss in revenue from no longer selling water to downstream agricultural users.

“In the absence of any of that water being sold downstream, that leaves us at a deficit,” Hofmann said.

As a raw water provider, LCRA does not set rates for individual residents or businesses that receive treated water from their local supplier and so can’t speak to how each provider would deal with new rates. The cities of Cedar Park and Leander are both firm water customers of LCRA.

“We want to reserve comment until the public process is complete,” said Jennie Huerta, communications manager for the city of Cedar Park.

​David Steed is president of Water Control & Improvement District 17​.

David Steed, president of WCID 17 in Travis County, said his water district would hold off on increasing rates for as long as possible for customers. WCID currently has more than 13,000 accounts covering a population that is approaching 40,000 people.

“We’re going to try to hang on without doing any radical changes for as long as we can, maybe as much as a year,” Steed said. “If we have to go to court with (the LCRA) over the water management plan or price increases, we’re going to have to raise prices to cover our legal fees. That can get expensive quickly.”

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