tv [untitled] January 3, 2014 12:00pm-12:31pm PST
12:00 pm
and direction from this commission. we just had a groundbreaking at transbay block 6 about approximately 400 market rate units golub, chicago director he, this is their first investment in san francisco and i believe they've done it right upped your review and direction. it combines 70 units of affordable housing on block 6. [speaker not understood] truly sustainable mixed say stainable. [speaker not understood], mercy housing will be developing another 77 units of housing. so, really thank you for your efforts and the efforts of the community to make that happen. i think that's really emblematic of the work do you here and the work we do with the hard working staff. so, that's one. two, just to draw your attention, there is an informational memorandum in your packet about -- as required under state law. and just good prudence. we do have an independent auditor's report that reviews our year-end financials.
12:01 pm
no material weaknesses were found. we certainly are managing our funds appropriately and we can also provide you additional details in the new year in 2014 through the budget process, which we will be kicking off rather soon in february, actually, in term of reports of our balances, how we've been doing over the course of the last year so we can look forward to that in the new year. and then lastly, i'm really pleased as we're wrapping up all the significant accomplishments. i think it's almost a year to the date or so that this commission has been installed and we're moving at quite a fast clip here. and i am pleased to announce another advancement. in the shipyard, the developer there, lennar, has informed us that they are proceeding with construction. they've secured outside lender financing for block 53 and 54 which you provided a design review
12:02 pm
approval, the vertical dba approval for those blocks, include 54 townhomes, 105 flats and they are expected to be complete in april 2015. we'll have again a more detailed report for you in 2014, early 2014, but i wanted to let you know that your work and your leadership are resulting in new homes on the shipyard, in total approximately now it will be 250 homes under construction. housing, really housing for all working families, working san franciscans. so, that's quite exciting. and then i did want to draw your attention, just as a personal point of privilege, to share a communication that i received from the hunters point developer, lennar. i have received notice that cheryl smith, who is the director of their community affairs, many of you know her from her deep work. she comes from the bayview.
12:03 pm
her tireless work of the last six years. certainly she will be missed. she's created a deep bench there in order to carry on her work. but really, i think the shipyard, it stands where it does today in large part to her personal commitment and her work on behalf of her neighborhood bayview and all san franciscans. she certainly will be missed and we wish her well. but they certainly do have a deep bench to carry it on. but i did want to draw your attention to that. that concludes my director's report. >> thank you very much. we will be sad to see cheryl go, yes, she will definitely be missed. not that she's like, you know, not in the community any more, but not lennar. madam secretary, please call the next item. >> the next order of business is item 9, commissioners' questions and matters. madam chair. >> thank you. any questions or matters? no? excellent. next item. >> the next order of business
12:04 pm
is item 10, closed session. >> thank you very much. we will be adjourning for just a moment to clear the room of anyone who is not involved in this closed session's item. >> please call the next item. >> the next item of business is adjournment. madam chair. >> thank you very much. we are adjourned at 2:53. [gavel]
12:06 pm
12:07 pm
>> item number 2 is approval of the minutes for the september 27th 2013 regular meeting. >> i see no comments -- let's open this up for public comment is there anyone from the public who would like to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> miss miller please call item number 3. >> the cleanpowersf program and the california public utilities commission and cleanpowersf energy efficiency and facilities and local jobs patrols strategies and. >> maybe thank you mr. chair typically we start the status with the status of the puc and
12:08 pm
barbara hail is here to provide that to you. >> thank you. most of our activities recently on the cca front for in puc proceedings where pg and e's green tariff option has continued to move forward. developing a green rate the statute requires a commission decision by july so we are expecting that the commission will need to issue at least a proposed decision in the april time frame in order to meet that statute requirement at this point we would expect pg and e's projected green tariff rate to be initially
12:09 pm
offered at 12.3 cents a kill owatt hour and that rate is forecast to increase to 9.4 cents a kilowatt hour in january so pg and e's basic service energy component of basic service rates is increasing come january to 9.4 cents and their current proposal before the cpuc under the green tariff option would be to offer the one hundred percent green power at 12.3 cents a kilowatt hour again that's just a proposal. we're expecting more activity probably around april. turn then to energy efficiency issues at the cpuc as it
12:10 pm
relates to -- >> can i ask a question? >> absolutely. >> so since pg and e is in control of the power throughout the city owe on -- owe will they issue letters to ask people on opt in? >> i don't know what method they would use to communicate with the customers but customers would need to somehow elect to join the program. >> thank you. >> your welcome. >> so then on the energy efficiency front we do have a proposed decision issued by an alj administrative law judge there on plan implementation for community choice
12:11 pm
aggregation entities where funds are awards that are collected from pg and e customers currently receiving funding from both electric and gas funds collected from pg and e rate pairs and pairs and the proposal will eliminate funding from -- we're keeping an eye on. other operating cca's and cca advocates have argued at the cpuc that that's not a good approach certainly for san francisco where you know green house gas reduction is a key focus, we would want to be able to you know, comarket electric saving and gas saves at the same time and reduce the operating costs of having those programs by keeping it combined
12:12 pm
even if the other program offerings were just for electricity so we're keeping an eye on that proceeding and the actual energy -- where they are having the rates adopted by the cpuc on how much the generation costs will be that they can recover as i mentioned that rate is going up to 9.4 cents a kilowatt hour and pge currently forecasting the rates to increase this january and they have also proposed significant increase in revenues that would result in higher rates by 2015 so they are proposing different ranges and proceedings there and my staff keeps an eye on the proceedings and tries to forecast out what the rates
12:13 pm
will be just as san francisco's representatives in those proceedings trying to keep the costs down so we're keeping an eye on that. . >> commissioner breed? >> would you mind providing us with a chart? specifically with the can you current rates for pg and e as well as what we are proposing from cca just to have a bit of a comparison to understand you know the differences. >> sure and i'll do that focussed on residential customers? >> great. >> thank you. >> actually i'd say roll out that green tariff program to knowing what their outreach will be and how many rate pairs
12:14 pm
go to the product will be helpful. >> i can tell you what pg and e has presented in the public setting what their roll out plan is i know they had forecast the level of participation they were anticipating but when they submitted that information it was for different program characteristics so i'm not sure if that's current so i'll do some research and get back to you on that. >> energy storage the california puc recently issued a decision that requires community choice aggregation providers to include energy storage as part of the supply portfolio so that's a new blags obligation on providers and
12:15 pm
the power cost and difference of adjustment and the pcia we used to talk quite a bit about a number of parties filed at the puc asking us to open up a proceeding and look at this issue how much of the utilities program cost -- the cpuc designed to open a new standalone proceeding they said they are addressing this issue in a number of other proceedings so it takes more resources to follow them all but they are conducting some workshops so that should help focus some attention on that topic and give us a venue to talk about our concerns on that together with other interested community choice aggregation advocates. >> so that's the run down on things happening in the
12:16 pm
regulatory arena in terms of other programs i just want to give you an update the sonoma clean power program recently announced that they have made a deal with some suppliers for their program and they are now in contract with cal pine for geo thermal power and they also have a contract with constellation to provide the balance of their power supply needs they are estimating that at sixty mega was watts and a one hundred percent deep green kind of offering one hundred percent renewable and the start clean program 33 percent renewables and the balance of power is ghg free so they are
12:17 pm
moving along and marin energy authority is looking at the study work associated with including napa the county of napa in their program and they have already successfully integrated richmond into their program so those are the other sort of cca activities that i thought you would be interested in hearing about today. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> miss miller. >> thank you miss hail for that report this information is very helpful and i know that we're looking at the possibly of the california puc setting rates for the green tariff for pg and e and while they are proposing a hundred percent i know that part of what our program did was to also propose a hundred percent and today what we're looking at is the possible rfp
12:18 pm
that we may be able to potentially release that put togethers more of a comprehensive plan. how do you think -- with the way this seems to be playing itself out -- how do you think we'll be able to compete based on where pg and e is now in its plan to implement this? how are we going to be able to compete i guess is what my question is. >> i think the real challenge in competing with the pg and e program is that it allows to the extent the cpuc adopts it as proposed it allows pg and e to use existing resources that are in part being paid for through things like the pcia to
12:19 pm
qualify as part of a portfolio to reach the one hundred percent commitment to that customer group so we are concerned that there is some subsidization from non participating pg and e customers to make the green tariff option appear more cost effective than it would be if you were able to truly segment those costs between non participating customers and participating customers. that's an advantage that pg and e would have in the marketplace that would not be an advantage to other competitors so that customers interested in green services, would have available to them. >> because they are proposing an increase in their generates. >> uh-huh. >> as well but -- will they go to the california puc at the same time?
12:20 pm
>> they are -- they are at the california puc at the same time in different venues and proceedings and so we are expecting the rate increase that i mentioned but the generation component to increase, which helps anyone who's trying to implement a cca program, but when you look at it from the green tariff option perspective, the way pg and e is proposing to build that rate is irrespective of the actual cost of providing the full service. >> miss miller. >> you asked us at the last meeting to check on potential alternatives given what has not happened at the commission in terms of setting rates so your
12:21 pm
staff spend sometime -- we looked at the marin energy authority there's 2 different programs one for if if affiliate members and the city of richmond recently joined the city and county of san francisco would be a special consideration member that requires a different set of considerations by them but they were and both of us talked to their staff -- they are willing to talk to san francisco about expanding their program. jason will go into more detail. a study and recommendation by the staff we also talked to sonoma and they are a new program and they just signed their contract
12:22 pm
so they are not really in a position at this point in time of entertaining real discussions with us not like marin would be but they are of course interested in helping whatever activity they could provide us. i just want to say one thing about the alternative is that we had looked at the issue about whether or not the commission actually had to set rates in such a situation of joining the program and my determination i wouldn't believe they did. it would actually be a separate and independent entity but i do believe that the city attorney disagreed with that and given that whether or not that's a true avenue for us to explore -- i'm not really sure so i want you to be kind of aware of that while jason goes through the
12:23 pm
particulars of joining another program. >> jason lafco staff as in the memo shows i looked at a variety of different ways to figure out how do we get a cca program launched i kind of didn't pay attention to as much of those it would be something to be done at the ballot box and i felt was outside of what we're looking for. there's 3 different options you can have under the jpa one is joining marin or sonoma and having a seat at the table with them or to form a brand new jpa there's about a dozen different communities out there in california that are looking at potentially looking at trying to form a program. most are
12:24 pm
not close to pulling the trigger or moving forward one that's close has actually said we want to join marin is the un incorporated parts of napa have said they are interested in joining them so that would have been one potential option but they are looking to go to marin for that and i came up with a hybrid of those 2 options i call option 3 perhaps using something like marin and form a new jpa with the city and county of san francisco where we can take the program that the sppuc put together and we would have control over having our own program and it would actually be a lot easier in some ways we wouldn't have to have an impact and having. we
12:25 pm
wouldn't be able to separate out the 2 programs they can have their program and we can have our program and as miss miller mentioned there might be some legal issues so there would need to be some information at the city and county level that would need to be done because the city doesn't represent lafco so the commissioner says supervisors you can do that at the board level. >> thank you. >> miss miller. >> yeah so i just wanted to say that gets us to the third item which is because of the difficulty we've had with the sfpuc setting rates the idea of trying to join another entity where we have the city attorney saying we still got to go back
12:26 pm
down the same path we might want to do in the interim try to do some activities that promote our effort but be mindful of the fact we have timing issues in terms of getting the program started and that gets us to the third item on the agenda to develop an rsp to try to do some of the studies on some of the initial programs so what's unique about ours is obviously the local build out so the idea is to concentrate with that so that we are implementation program is even that much farther down the line. >> thank you. commissioner mar. >> i was going to say that before we get into that the local build out and an rsp for
12:27 pm
that which i strongly support i want to go back to option number 3 the hybrid plan as proposed. it sounds like marin clean energy is interested in allowing us to develop or join into their program but you are saying this option 3 may be easier because it protects their autonomy and also our differences as a much larger population to have more autonomy for us to have some kind of joint hybrid like that. >> right. the -- how marin would do it is through a separate jpa agreement and so mr. freed's option 3 is not where we want to go they would want the liability and a lot of those issues to remain separate for this current program so they would want to have a
12:28 pm
separate and that's why they put it in a special consideration category it would have a separate agreement and assets and liabilities would be separate because we dwarf them. >> i appreciate all the work you have all done to try to get us to this point and i know it's been a challenge and frustrating from our standpoint because this is something we all care about and we all want to see move forward and our efforts are being hindered at this time by appointed members of the puc so i think we have to think differently to dispel some of the myths about this program and what i wanted to propose and i appreciate the opportunity to discuss it, but
12:29 pm
one of the things i think that's important is that although we have various layers to this plan and various goals that we're trying to obtain, i want us to develop more of a comprehensive plan that allows us the opportunity to address, not only some of the push back for the plan, for example, when we talk about local build out, there are folks that are concerned that there aren't real local jobs and union jobs and so understanding exactly where the locations possibly are as it relates to local build out and understanding the long-term impact so the initial possibilities and increase in job opportunities that could exist and the various layers of experts in those particular jobs what does it mean long-term with regards to job
12:30 pm
with regards to the local build out and what are we looking at in terms of how the funds are generated through bonds and having a more comprehensive plan that connects the dots that leads us to the direction we want to get to not necessarily over night of course but a 10 year plan realistic plan that's a competitive plan also a clear communications plan because i truly believe one of the challenges during the bart strike for example, the message of what was happening with the bart strike was determined by the bart officials they went out there with their message and had their communication plan and sadly the workers were not on top of what they needed to do in terms of theiss
55 Views
IN COLLECTIONS
SFGTV: San Francisco Government Television Television Archive Television Archive News Search ServiceUploaded by TV Archive on