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Urgent Alert: SMUD Board Votes on Annexation of Yolo County on May 19!
Please contact your SMUD board members to urge them to annex Yolo County - and counter PG&E's campaign to keep Yolo and its profits within their monopoly.
HELP SMUD GROW AND MAKE IT STRONGER
Act Now! The SMUD Board votes on annexation of Yolo County on Thursday, May 19 at 9 am (SMUD Auditorium - 6201 S Street). PG&E just placed a full-page ad in the Bee urging people to call the SMUD Board members in opposition. Supporters for growing SMUD need to speak up now to counter their campaign to keep Yolo and its profits within their monopoly. Here is the contact information in PG&E©ˆs ad. Use it for the greater good.
SMUD Board of Directors (916) 732-6155, Voice mail (916) 732-5350
Director Linda Davis <caron> blowry [at] smud.org
Director Susan Patterson <caron> smudsusan [at] smud.org
Director Howard Posner <caron> hposner [at] aol.com
Director Genevieve Shiroma <caron> gshiroma4 [at] aol.com
Director Peter Keat <caron> keatdavis [at] aol.com
Director Larry Carr <caron> carrward6 [at] aol.com
Director Bill Slaton <caron> bslaton [at] smud.org
Please pass this on today. Thank you. Every call will make a difference, especially from constituents.
Kevin Wolf
530-758-4211
*********
The analysis of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District©ˆs consultants and staff shows that annexing the area in Yolo County adjacent to Sacramento County which contains the cities of West Sacramento, Woodland and Davis would be good for present ratepayers in Sacramento and for PG&E©ˆs customers in the adjacent area of Yolo County.
Annexing the adjacent part of Yolo County would be good for SMUD ratepayers because:
1. Economies of scale will improve. Administrative costs would be shared over 85,000 more customers. Purchases of resources will be cheaper with a larger customer base. While the electric load increases by 13 percent, the work force would increase only by about 6 percent.
2. These Yolo County cities have a better ©¯load factor©˜ than Sacramento. This means that more of the power SMUD produces at off times will be purchased by their new customers at a better price.
3. Yolo County customers will expand SMUD©ˆs renewable energy program. PG&E provides little help to its customers to use renewables. For example, the wind resources SMUD owns in Solano County will be better utilized. More photovoltaic purchases will lower everyone©ˆs costs.
4. All costs of annexation--such as the costs of buying PG&E's system and the legal costs associated with eminent domain -- will be paid exclusively by Yolo County customers through a surcharge on their rates.
5. Due to municipal ownership, the savings would increase over time as net income from new customers is reinvested in SMUD equipment and facilities instead of being paid out to shareholders
Existing and new SMUD customers could share $180 million in savings over the next 20 years.
PG&E doesn©ˆt like losing Yolo customers to SMUD for the same reasons these customers will benefit SMUD. Elected officials in Yolo County have unanimously voted to support SMUD annexation because its residents are expected to save 8% and get better services and greener energy by joining one of the best utility districts in the nation
PG&E has already begun an expensive effort to convince the public and elected officials to oppose the proposal. The monopoly corporation is not making much progress in Yolo County as the three cities and the Yolo Board of Supervisors all voted unanimously to join SMUD. Therefore PG&E has begun an expensive campaign to convince existing SMUD customers to oppose the annexation. The best way to protect ourselves from PG&E©ˆs coming campaign is to help get a unanimous vote of support by the SMUD board of director when they vote on May 19. You can help by sending them a post card, calling or meeting with them, or best, attending an upcoming hearing on the proposal and speaking in favor of it. For more details on these, see the other side of this flyer. Thank you for helping SMUD grow economically and environmentally stronger.
An important document supporting this information is the SMUD Staff Assessment and Recommendations, Yolo Annexation Feasibility Study (April 6, 2005, 18 pp). For a copy, go to http://www.smud.org or call 916-732-6252
SMUD Customers for the Power to do More (SCPM)
For more information and to RSVP, contact:
Judy Ashley, 916-444-9806 jotrip2 [at] aol.com
John Burton, 916-920-2356 johnwb [at] netzero.net
Send contributions to: SCPM, 820 Alhambra Blvd, Sacramento, CA 95816
For other information see http://www.publicpowernow.org/.
Act Now! The SMUD Board votes on annexation of Yolo County on Thursday, May 19 at 9 am (SMUD Auditorium - 6201 S Street). PG&E just placed a full-page ad in the Bee urging people to call the SMUD Board members in opposition. Supporters for growing SMUD need to speak up now to counter their campaign to keep Yolo and its profits within their monopoly. Here is the contact information in PG&E©ˆs ad. Use it for the greater good.
SMUD Board of Directors (916) 732-6155, Voice mail (916) 732-5350
Director Linda Davis <caron> blowry [at] smud.org
Director Susan Patterson <caron> smudsusan [at] smud.org
Director Howard Posner <caron> hposner [at] aol.com
Director Genevieve Shiroma <caron> gshiroma4 [at] aol.com
Director Peter Keat <caron> keatdavis [at] aol.com
Director Larry Carr <caron> carrward6 [at] aol.com
Director Bill Slaton <caron> bslaton [at] smud.org
Please pass this on today. Thank you. Every call will make a difference, especially from constituents.
Kevin Wolf
530-758-4211
*********
The analysis of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District©ˆs consultants and staff shows that annexing the area in Yolo County adjacent to Sacramento County which contains the cities of West Sacramento, Woodland and Davis would be good for present ratepayers in Sacramento and for PG&E©ˆs customers in the adjacent area of Yolo County.
Annexing the adjacent part of Yolo County would be good for SMUD ratepayers because:
1. Economies of scale will improve. Administrative costs would be shared over 85,000 more customers. Purchases of resources will be cheaper with a larger customer base. While the electric load increases by 13 percent, the work force would increase only by about 6 percent.
2. These Yolo County cities have a better ©¯load factor©˜ than Sacramento. This means that more of the power SMUD produces at off times will be purchased by their new customers at a better price.
3. Yolo County customers will expand SMUD©ˆs renewable energy program. PG&E provides little help to its customers to use renewables. For example, the wind resources SMUD owns in Solano County will be better utilized. More photovoltaic purchases will lower everyone©ˆs costs.
4. All costs of annexation--such as the costs of buying PG&E's system and the legal costs associated with eminent domain -- will be paid exclusively by Yolo County customers through a surcharge on their rates.
5. Due to municipal ownership, the savings would increase over time as net income from new customers is reinvested in SMUD equipment and facilities instead of being paid out to shareholders
Existing and new SMUD customers could share $180 million in savings over the next 20 years.
PG&E doesn©ˆt like losing Yolo customers to SMUD for the same reasons these customers will benefit SMUD. Elected officials in Yolo County have unanimously voted to support SMUD annexation because its residents are expected to save 8% and get better services and greener energy by joining one of the best utility districts in the nation
PG&E has already begun an expensive effort to convince the public and elected officials to oppose the proposal. The monopoly corporation is not making much progress in Yolo County as the three cities and the Yolo Board of Supervisors all voted unanimously to join SMUD. Therefore PG&E has begun an expensive campaign to convince existing SMUD customers to oppose the annexation. The best way to protect ourselves from PG&E©ˆs coming campaign is to help get a unanimous vote of support by the SMUD board of director when they vote on May 19. You can help by sending them a post card, calling or meeting with them, or best, attending an upcoming hearing on the proposal and speaking in favor of it. For more details on these, see the other side of this flyer. Thank you for helping SMUD grow economically and environmentally stronger.
An important document supporting this information is the SMUD Staff Assessment and Recommendations, Yolo Annexation Feasibility Study (April 6, 2005, 18 pp). For a copy, go to http://www.smud.org or call 916-732-6252
SMUD Customers for the Power to do More (SCPM)
For more information and to RSVP, contact:
Judy Ashley, 916-444-9806 jotrip2 [at] aol.com
John Burton, 916-920-2356 johnwb [at] netzero.net
Send contributions to: SCPM, 820 Alhambra Blvd, Sacramento, CA 95816
For other information see http://www.publicpowernow.org/.
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Annexing PG&E for locally supported SMUD is another way people can show that PG&E's destructive and racist polluting in Hunter's Point/Bayview is not acceptable to the people of Yolo county..
Seems like PG&E is another sinking corporate ship (like benefactor Halliburton), the Bayview power plant's dependency on liquified natural gas (?from Bolivia?) is one example. The power giants aren't going down easily, PG&E continues to operate inefficient LNG plants at taxpayer expense with support from natural gas importers (?Pacific LNG Consortium, Calpine?). Despite public outcry from Bayview residents and the greater SF community, PG&E stubbornly refused to cease pumping CO2, SOx, NOx, particulates and other pollutants shown to cause asthma into the air near (across the street) Bayview resident housing. The sheltering effect of SF Bay causes clouds of pollution from PG&E's natural gas combustion to hover over the neighborhood..
Pacific LNG consortium info;
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=8828
SMUD has chosen solar energy instead of petroleum dependency. In the upcoming peak oil event, communities already switched to solar will have an easier transition from petroleum consumption to alternative/sustainable energy..
Even SMUD needs close monitoring by the public, but this local energy group is more concerned with community opinion than the corporate callousness of PG&E..
Unpolluted air with oxygen has no price tag..
Seems like PG&E is another sinking corporate ship (like benefactor Halliburton), the Bayview power plant's dependency on liquified natural gas (?from Bolivia?) is one example. The power giants aren't going down easily, PG&E continues to operate inefficient LNG plants at taxpayer expense with support from natural gas importers (?Pacific LNG Consortium, Calpine?). Despite public outcry from Bayview residents and the greater SF community, PG&E stubbornly refused to cease pumping CO2, SOx, NOx, particulates and other pollutants shown to cause asthma into the air near (across the street) Bayview resident housing. The sheltering effect of SF Bay causes clouds of pollution from PG&E's natural gas combustion to hover over the neighborhood..
Pacific LNG consortium info;
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=8828
SMUD has chosen solar energy instead of petroleum dependency. In the upcoming peak oil event, communities already switched to solar will have an easier transition from petroleum consumption to alternative/sustainable energy..
Even SMUD needs close monitoring by the public, but this local energy group is more concerned with community opinion than the corporate callousness of PG&E..
Unpolluted air with oxygen has no price tag..
is also actively recruiting dairy farmers to produce electricity with methane from their animals, while PG&E, of course, tries to avoid complying with the law that requires it to buy power from them:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/27/BAG0T7D1FU1.DTL
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/27/BAG0T7D1FU1.DTL
I am gaurdedly optimistic about this development.
Could some of the energy (no-pun intended) from this campaign (if successful) be channeled into public power for San Francisco?
Could some of the energy (no-pun intended) from this campaign (if successful) be channeled into public power for San Francisco?
Rejecting PG&E
City plan to sell power wins a key vote
By Matthew Hirsch
A proposal for San Francisco to compete with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and provide local electric service won a key recommendation from the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) May 13.
The vote came as Mayor Gavin Newsom expressed strong interest in the plan. It now goes to the Board of Supervisors.
Under the plan, called community-choice aggregation (CCA), the city would buy wholesale electricity and sell it over PG&E's distribution system to San Francisco residents and businesses. That would give the city more control over the cost and reliability of electric service and more say over how much renewable energy is included in the city's mix.
The Local Agency Formation Commission gave the nod to citizen activist Paul Fenn's CCA proposal after weighing separate reports from Fenn and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. LAFCo chair and city supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who for weeks had been trying to merge the two reports, blasted the SFPUC for leaving out specific details about how to achieve energy goals the supervisors have already settled on, such as aggressive development of solar and wind power.
"The proposal that you put forward I look at as not a plan but a study, and I feel like you're now asking the Board of Supervisors to fill in the blanks on the study," Mirkarimi told SFPUC energy chief Barbara Hale.
And in a May 10 letter to SFPUC general manager Susan Leal, Newsom also indicated that the SFPUC appears to be striding too slowly on CCA. He asked Leal for "an expedited analysis of CCA by the SFPUC."
"I urge that this analysis be completed in a timely manner, and if CCA is determined to be a fiscally responsible, consumer-oriented policy, I urge that it be implemented," Newsom wrote.
Before voting on Fenn's plan, LAFCo added a series of amendments to address issues raised by the SFPUC. The amendments include commitments to use long-term savings from CCA to offset the start-up costs, to limit the solar-building requirement if too many customers stay with PG&E, and to switch over to full-blown public power if it's approved by the voters.
With those assurances, Sups. Tom Ammiano, Jake McGoldrick, and Mirkarimi voted to move CCA forward with a positive recommendation. LAFCo commissioner Hope Schmeltzer voted no.
But the split was more over the level of urgency than anybody's desire to abandon the move toward CCA. Schmeltzer said she was concerned about the financial risk of filing a plan with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) without a guarantee that the city can procure power from an entity other than PG&E.
That was one of the issues raised by Hale, who said filing a CCA plan doesn't guarantee lower exit fees, especially because PG&E, thanks to CCA, is already planning to buy less power.
The exit fees are charges CCA customers will have to pay when they leave PG&E service, to offset the cost of power PG&E already purchased for those customers. The exit fees, which are set by the CPUC, are expected to increase as soon as PG&E signs new long-term energy contracts.
It's unclear exactly when PG&E will sign those contracts, but activists hope the city will have its CCA plan in place before then so it's not assessed higher exit fees. Higher exit fees could ruin CCA: if enough customers opt out of CCA service to stick with PG&E, energy costs would go up for everybody else.
"I don't want to sabotage this plan [and] make it less sellable simply because we think the longer we wait, the more polished of a plan we get," Mirkarimi said. "Why wait if we can move something in now? My concern is [that by waiting], we are gambling with a higher cost that makes community-choice aggregation very untenable."
The next LAFCo hearing, including a discussion of the PG&E franchise fee, which was held over from the May 13 meeting, is scheduled for June 10, and as of press time the Board of Supervisors had not yet scheduled a hearing for community-choice aggregation.
E-mail Matthew Hirsch
City plan to sell power wins a key vote
By Matthew Hirsch
A proposal for San Francisco to compete with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and provide local electric service won a key recommendation from the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) May 13.
The vote came as Mayor Gavin Newsom expressed strong interest in the plan. It now goes to the Board of Supervisors.
Under the plan, called community-choice aggregation (CCA), the city would buy wholesale electricity and sell it over PG&E's distribution system to San Francisco residents and businesses. That would give the city more control over the cost and reliability of electric service and more say over how much renewable energy is included in the city's mix.
The Local Agency Formation Commission gave the nod to citizen activist Paul Fenn's CCA proposal after weighing separate reports from Fenn and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. LAFCo chair and city supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who for weeks had been trying to merge the two reports, blasted the SFPUC for leaving out specific details about how to achieve energy goals the supervisors have already settled on, such as aggressive development of solar and wind power.
"The proposal that you put forward I look at as not a plan but a study, and I feel like you're now asking the Board of Supervisors to fill in the blanks on the study," Mirkarimi told SFPUC energy chief Barbara Hale.
And in a May 10 letter to SFPUC general manager Susan Leal, Newsom also indicated that the SFPUC appears to be striding too slowly on CCA. He asked Leal for "an expedited analysis of CCA by the SFPUC."
"I urge that this analysis be completed in a timely manner, and if CCA is determined to be a fiscally responsible, consumer-oriented policy, I urge that it be implemented," Newsom wrote.
Before voting on Fenn's plan, LAFCo added a series of amendments to address issues raised by the SFPUC. The amendments include commitments to use long-term savings from CCA to offset the start-up costs, to limit the solar-building requirement if too many customers stay with PG&E, and to switch over to full-blown public power if it's approved by the voters.
With those assurances, Sups. Tom Ammiano, Jake McGoldrick, and Mirkarimi voted to move CCA forward with a positive recommendation. LAFCo commissioner Hope Schmeltzer voted no.
But the split was more over the level of urgency than anybody's desire to abandon the move toward CCA. Schmeltzer said she was concerned about the financial risk of filing a plan with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) without a guarantee that the city can procure power from an entity other than PG&E.
That was one of the issues raised by Hale, who said filing a CCA plan doesn't guarantee lower exit fees, especially because PG&E, thanks to CCA, is already planning to buy less power.
The exit fees are charges CCA customers will have to pay when they leave PG&E service, to offset the cost of power PG&E already purchased for those customers. The exit fees, which are set by the CPUC, are expected to increase as soon as PG&E signs new long-term energy contracts.
It's unclear exactly when PG&E will sign those contracts, but activists hope the city will have its CCA plan in place before then so it's not assessed higher exit fees. Higher exit fees could ruin CCA: if enough customers opt out of CCA service to stick with PG&E, energy costs would go up for everybody else.
"I don't want to sabotage this plan [and] make it less sellable simply because we think the longer we wait, the more polished of a plan we get," Mirkarimi said. "Why wait if we can move something in now? My concern is [that by waiting], we are gambling with a higher cost that makes community-choice aggregation very untenable."
The next LAFCo hearing, including a discussion of the PG&E franchise fee, which was held over from the May 13 meeting, is scheduled for June 10, and as of press time the Board of Supervisors had not yet scheduled a hearing for community-choice aggregation.
E-mail Matthew Hirsch
For more information:
http://www.sfbg.com/39/33/news_pge.html
SMUD board votes to move forward with planned Yolo County annexation
By Pamela Martineau -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 1:03 pm PDT Thursday, May 19, 2005
Get weekday updates of Sacramento Bee headlines and breaking news. Sign up here.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District Board of Directors voted 5-2 Thursday morning to move forward with annexing 70,000 Yolo County PG&E customers into the public utility.
Saying they are responding to Yolo County officials' and residents' requests to enter SMUD, directors who voted for the annexation said they believed it would benefit Yolo and Sacramento county residents.
Directors Larry Carr and Howard Posner voted against the annexation, saying they believed it involved too much risk.
SMUD staff will spend the next two months preparing a formal application for annexation to submit to the Sacramento Area Local Formation Commission. LAFCO is expected to take from nine to 12 months to analyze the proposal. If LAFCO approves the application, Yolo voters will likely vote on the measure in November 2006.
For more details, see Friday's Bee.
By Pamela Martineau -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 1:03 pm PDT Thursday, May 19, 2005
Get weekday updates of Sacramento Bee headlines and breaking news. Sign up here.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District Board of Directors voted 5-2 Thursday morning to move forward with annexing 70,000 Yolo County PG&E customers into the public utility.
Saying they are responding to Yolo County officials' and residents' requests to enter SMUD, directors who voted for the annexation said they believed it would benefit Yolo and Sacramento county residents.
Directors Larry Carr and Howard Posner voted against the annexation, saying they believed it involved too much risk.
SMUD staff will spend the next two months preparing a formal application for annexation to submit to the Sacramento Area Local Formation Commission. LAFCO is expected to take from nine to 12 months to analyze the proposal. If LAFCO approves the application, Yolo voters will likely vote on the measure in November 2006.
For more details, see Friday's Bee.
For more information:
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/1...
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