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tv   Government Access Programming  SFGTV  February 22, 2019 12:00pm-1:01pm PST

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portfolio and making a fee to the following year and that in theory can go either direction. it can cause it to go up or down depending on market conditions. another item is, they'll be considering prepayment of the pcia. so the idea is that a community could pay sort of in a lump sum advance the community's pcia's obligations as a way to fix and create certainty going forward for customers and for program planning. the california commission will also be examining the pg & e and other investor-owned utility's management practices to see if there are opportunities to reduce costs and to manage that portfolio in a more efficient manner for all rate repairs.
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not just to affect the pcie and exit fee but any customers in the territory. and then finally, the commission will be examining potential allocation of pg & e contracts and resources to ccas and new sales mechanisms, like an auction, to sell off any excess offers that they may have to third-party purchasers like ccas. so i think the key thing is that pg & e is a result of ccas forming in california are long. they have excess power resources and in this next phase the california puc will address new ways to address liquidating those excess resources. resources. >> i have a quick question and i don't see a good place to ask this question except here.
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i saw last week they submitted saying the pg & e should get out of the retail electricity business and become a wire's only utility. is there a reason why clean power sf didn't sign on to this letter with the other seven ccas? >> hi, i'm the assistant general manager for power and i just wanted to help out on the answer on that one. cal cca, as an association did not make a filing, so just to be clear, there was a filing that was made by a collection of ccas and then there were filings separately made by ccas. san francisco submitted its own filing. >> separate from those? >> correct. so san jose filed its on, san
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francisco filed its on and then there were, i think, five or seven ccas that jointly work together with an attorney that they had hired to prepare their filings. and that was this the commission safety oii. >> can you suc summarize what sanfrancisco's position was. >> mr. heims was about to do that. >> thank you so much. >> thanks, barbara. so good segway because this final slide here, which includes a number of proceedings that werwe're active in -- >> excuse me. >> please go ahead. >> i just had a few questions about the pcia. since i'm new to this commission, maybe you've covered this in the past. so i just want to make sure i understand this because this has been -- this is really important
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and contentious. so the pcia or exit fee that was already -- from was already initial decision by the california puc about the amount that would be charged to clean power sf in phase one? >> yes. to be a little more specific, what the phase one decision did is adopted changes to a methodology that the california puc adopted to calculate the pcia on an annual basis and assign what are intended to be the above-market costs of commitments that pg & e and other utilities made forming. so the decision itself doesn't set any values. it sets a methodology and
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framework and the utilities at the staff puc calculate that in a proceeding every year that then gets adopted. >> thank you. and then based on that new methodology, what was the amount that pg & e charged in the exit fees to clean power sf? >> are you looking for an aggregate dollar amount? >> yes, so this is added to the rate payer's bill. >> that's exactly right. the pcia is a charge that shows up on the pg & e side of the electricity bill. so this is an pg & e fee shows up when a expert is participating in a program like this. it's a per kilowatt rate.
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so it in perspective, so the pcia is paid by all pg & e customers. it's embedded in the generation rate. so if you're a customer that doesn't live or do business in a community that has the program, you're paying the same costs but it's embedded in the pg & e generation rate. when a community forms a cca and you move to participate in that cca, a new charge shows up to recover a portion of pg & es costs, which have been deemed to be above market and that's where the pcia comes into play. to put into perspective for a residential customer, the pcia in pg & e's service territory is on the order of 30 to 40% of the generation supply cost. >> that's the amount that
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customers continue to pay even as a cca. >> thank you. do you have an aggregate amount? i'm just wanting to understand what we're talking about here. >> i think probably what would be best would be for me to direct a number through the executive officer. it's on the order of $80 million, i would say, per year, somewhere in there. but we'll bring those numbers back. >> great. my final question is around the phase two process that's happening right now for these rates. what is your expectation or do you have any expectation of what is going to happen? will that be additional costs added? or will it be a reduction, possibly? >> well, i'm hopeful that what
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we'll see are improvements that not just benefit the pcia but that can benefit all rate payers of pg & e. there are reforms considered in the next phase that can really be beneficial state-wide regardless of whether your community has elected to run a cca or not. and, for example, the portfolio management work that i was mentioning earlier has the potential to reduce costs for all rate payers and that would affect the pcia as well. i think the other thing that's really important that i'm cautiously optimistic about is that the california puc will do more to recognize that we have a new landscape in california, a much more competitive market and because the investor and utilities like pg & e have been for the main buyer in the
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market, they now have more resources than they need and those resources should be made available to all rate payers. they were commitments entered into and they should be made available to the market in an efficient way. so i think reforms potentially like a new auction process that makes those access resources available on a regular basis could result in cost savings for all market participants. so i'm hopeful that those things will be considered. in terms of timing, we're probably looking at something that's about a year out in terms of a decision. given these are fairly complex issues. >> thank you so much.
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>> so we were going to talk about the safety investigation. so the california puc opened this proceeding which is addressing pg & e's current corporate governance structure and operations to determine in the utility is positioned to provide safe and electrical gas service in california. as miss hail mentioned earlier, the city and county of san franciscole filed comments, the puc worked with the city attorney's office and those were filed last week on the 13th of february. and those comments included that voicing a concern that pg & e has not organized its business in a manner to provide safe service to its rate payers with observation that corporate culture promoting the company's
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image and financial performance over substantive focus on safety matters. the comments highlighted pg & e's increasingly poor record when it comes to providing safe and reliable service here in san francisco. but of course throughout the entire service area. the comments made clear the city's view that public ownership of some or all of pg & e's system is a viable alternative to the status quo. and the comments also encouraged the commission to recognize that public ownership and local control of utility service has traditionally offered safe and reliable service with greater transparency, accountability and fiscal and social responsibility. oftentimes, typically, at lower costs than service from the investor and utilities and we see examples in california with other public utilities.
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>> will the puc's thoughts on this be included in the report that you provide to the mayor? >> on the general question of public service, yes, absolutely. i think that's at the heart of that study, definitely. so we're pretty early in the process of this proceeding. these comments filed were comments on the order instituting the rule-making so that's really the very first step. so this is something that's just kicking off. the california puc laid out a large number of questions for parties to address and i think one thing that's positive is the sort of breadth issues they're considering, including public
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ownership. so we will be very involved in that and that's probably part of the reason, too, we filed our own comments in this case. i think we have significant interest in the issues being addressed here. >> does the puc see clean power sf as an entity that can request the bankruptcy proceedings be moved to another judge? has that been a part of the discussion at all? >> so i'm assistant general manager for power and the city's participation in the bankruptcy court is really directed through the city attorney's office and so i don't believe we're in a position to respond to that question. >> ok, thank you. >> thank you. >> any other questions on that first item? so the next three items here can
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be grouped together because they address issues related to managing and mitigating the impacts of wildfires and dangerous conditions that may lead to wildfires in the future as required by senate bill 901. the first, the deenergyization of power lines addresses the issue of utilities pro actively deenergizing the powerlines to limit the potential impact of powerline related fire. of course, this has impacts on the community as being served. so this is focused on guidelines for utilities to follow. the proceeding has impacts on our head chief facilities and, of course, to the county of san francisco to the extent that large pieces of the system are deinedeeng erb rized and they wl
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prepare and submit wildfire litigation plans that describe the plans to prevent combat and respond to wildfires affecting their service territories. that requirement is being taken up in the wildfire mitigation's plan proceeding. and the city afinally the califs opened up wildfire cost recovery to consider and adopt criteria for use by the puc in future applications from the utilities for cost recovery of wildfire costs. on this one, we've filed comments in this proceeding and consistent with the board of supervisor's resolution, 4419, the city attorney's office argued that to the california puc that state legislators and regulators should not charge utility rate payers for the costs of wildfire damage caused
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by pg & e. and that successfully confronting this challenge will require a comprehensive policy and operational changes and engagement of all sectors including public entities, insurancers,ensurers and develo. we filed comments on the general scope of the proceeding. i think the issues here are complex and in our comments, we argue that this will require expert testimony hearing. so this will probably be a six to eight-month type of timeline. the next two proceedings, disconnections and access to affordability, i also grouped together here. the first would set rules for disconnections of rate payers,
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including san francisco pg & e customers and provides a good forum for the sf puc in the city to participate and discuss dis-agency andisconnection and y issues that seek to balance equity, public health and safety and the need to operate a financially sound business. and to be clear, typically these disconnectses are for lacdisconf payment. the second proceeding here, the afford abilitability is focusinn developing methods and processes to assess the impact of affor affordability on individual puc and decisions. the california puc is developing methods to assess and determine
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the impacts its decisions will have on the important goal of affordability for rate payers. and as i indicated we'll be very involved in these proceedings. the last one, building decarbonization, this was a proceeding that was initiated at the beginning of february, so again very new. and this is going to be focused on identifying any alternatives that could lead to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions associated with under use and buildings. i'm personally excited about this one. i think we absolutely plan to be involved. i think significantly reducing building use of fossil fuels like national gas is required if san francisco and california are to meet our climate change
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mitigation goals. and we think that this proceeding could be very informative in creating a forum with multiple stakeholders to discuss what those alternatives could be. so i'll pause here if there are any other questions. no, ok. i'm going to turn the remainder of the presentation to suzanne merkleson to our government affair's team and she'll provide an update on state legislative activities. >> hello, commissioners and thank you for having us today. my name is suzanne and i work for the policy and government affair's team at the sf fuc and i focus on state policy for the power enterprise, including for clean power sf. as you can imagine, we have a pretty busy year ahead of us in the california legislature with ongoing fall-out from the pg & e bankruptcy, the need to deal
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with past and future wildfires and recurring issues that we seem to see every year, including procurement. and we're looking forward to ongoing work with lafco with this legislative session. so just to provide quick context, as you're probably aware, a new two-year session began in the legislature. democrats increased the super majorities in both the assembly and senate and we now have gavin newsome as our governor and we're still assessing petitions on energy and we'll continue monitoring that as the session progresses. one of the first major challenges will be the response to pg & e's bankruptcy and the devastating wildfires of the past several years. you may have seen that the governor specifically called out ccas in his state of the state address, which signals that ccas are playing an increasingly important role in state's energy use and creating an pg & e
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strike force including bankruptcy experts among others. the strike force is really an internal staff task force that the governor set up within his office and they've been tasked with developing a road ma roadmo address payer liability. the governor appointed genev geneveve sherona. she's served at the sac sacrameo utilitity district. i would like to talk about ca cal ucca's and our team works closely with them on legislative efforts. ccca has been working on a state bill proposal intended t
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toameliorate some of the past. we're working with them to make sure they push the right bill forward art the right time, given that things will be changing quite quickly with pg & e's bankruptcy. cal cca and we're working out to sort details of the bill and strategizing on bill content. so we want to make sure we're addressing the right issues as the bankruptcy moves forward a and the legislature looks for potential solutions to the bankruptcy and to larger wildfire issues. the basic principles cal include affordability, which costs can be levied on rate payers, so looking to lower electricity costs for all rate payers, via cost minimization and generally
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a proficient procurement which is a general concern. >> before we move on, could you tell us who is sponsoring the bill? >> it could be cal cca? >> it was -- should was the legislator putting the bill forward. >> we're still in conversation with several. we're still in conversation and we would be happy to update you on that as we get more information in the future. >> do you think it will be a one or two-year bill. >> i don't know at this time. >> ok, thank you. >> so then just larger issues of bill analysis and advocacy, the pga team works closely with the power enterprise, with -- next slide, sorry. with trade associations and lobbying team in sac sacramentod
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it could impact clean power sf, including any updates to sb 901, regionalization, procurement mandates which seem to surface every year and grid access and transparency issues. we are happy to work with you and we would like -- we always appreciate lafco's involvement and look forward to keeping you updated as the session progresses, thank you. >> any other questions i could answer. >> before i open this up to the colleagues, in the past we've asked for a spreadsheet of your watchlist. last june we got a word doc with eight bills on its and i just wanted to see if we could have a more thorough listing. you could highlight the ones that are specific to clean power sf, but we would like to know what's out there in terms of the landscape, not just that
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handful. >> sure. >> bills are still being introduced. so we don't have the full spectrum of what will be -- >> but you will be by february 22? >> yes, that's today. >> and this is the deadline. >> today is the deadline but you see gut and amends and spot bills and so on. so we should be able to get you that information and i'll work with my colleagues on that. >> great. if you could give it to our executive officer and he can submit it to all of the commissioners, thank you. >> ok. >> opening this up to any of my colleagues have any questions or comments for miss merkelson. >> no, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> so that concludes our report and happy to take any other questions you might have. >> let's open this up for a
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public comment. are there any members of the public who would like to comment on item number three? >> good afternoon commissioners, california for energy choice which is a state-wide coalition operating since 2010 to promote and expand community choice programs like clean power sf. also with san francisco clean energy working for the last 15 years to get clean power sf and local clean energy and move that bill forward and i'm one of many people in a new coalition called no pg & e bail-out working to deal with all of this pg & e stuff. i want to point out that chapter 11 is not bankruptcy. it's bankruptcy protection. it's protection from bankruptcy. and that -- what it means
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they're trying to avoid having to pay victims of the fires and having to avoid paying for things like clean energy costs, if it can and maybe the bankers that it just got a $6 billion capacity to do loans with. , the first ones that get their share of the money. it's important to understand that the so-called emergency hearing they called with five day's notice was not an emergency. pg & e has $20 billion positive in its bank account and so they have the capacity to pay for these things and pg & e would not have been able to file chapter 11 bankruptcy protection without the cpuc doing that and literally on midnight, 12:01 after the day the cpc passed this, that's when pg & e declare chapter 11. what we need to do and need
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lafco to push for is for the current credit tere creditors te chapter 11 deal so that it's lickkliquidates. >> thank you. >> i listened to the report specifically on the outreach and i want to keep encouraging outreach to be done to the black community because often that's not the case and also, to go through some of the community-based organizations because facebook isn't always a person's resources and different social media an e-mails and some people don't even have wi-fi. noso i want to keep that on the front on outreach and if some of the literature could be more in layman terms.
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sometimes it's very complicated and i'm trying to follow myself and it's kind of complicated sometimes to the public. thank you and have a nice day. >> thank you. >> public comment is now closed. no action needs to be taken for the commission on this matter, but madam clerk, could you call item number 4. >> presentation on steps of energy services and implications for lafco clean power and sf.
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>> so i'm going to provide a brief overview of the process of municipalizing energy given that i know that is the matter of great interest to lafco and to the city of san francisco right now. so under the california constitution, any city can municipalize utilities, including energy, water, et cetera. and, in fact, san francisco already has a municipal utility which you're aware of. and when i say you have a municipal utility, not only do they procure the power, in this case through the hedge dam but distributes the power and owns
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infrastructure within the city of san francisco for that distribution. and i'm sure that i that cpuc fy be able to speak up if you have any questions about the facilities. so i want to run over some important terms that we hear frequently in this area and one is what is a municipal utility? a municipal electric utility is operated by the municipality and operated by the municipality. another term is municipal utility district and the reason the san francisco lafco was originally performed was because of a proposal to create a district. a municipal utility district is a separate governmental agency that provides fe utilities beyod the boundaries of one municipality or county and the proposed municipality district
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that lead to the formation of san francisco lafco would include the county of san francisco and the city of brisbane and operate out of city boundaries. another term we use is community choice aggregator or cca program. that is a statutory program that is authorized to procure power which would then be distributed through the investor-owned utility infrastructure. so a cca under the statute doesn't exist in the absence of an investor-owned utility and would not order near overlap with a municipality or municipality utility district and we use iou or investor owned utility to describe pg & e or edison or san diego gas and electric. so in order to form a municipal electric utility and again, we
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have in san francisco, any municipal corporation or city can distribute that under the california constitution. municipal are not regulated by the california puc. the san francisco charter includes express provisions allowing san francisco to procure and distribute power and also allows the city to expand its municipal utilities if it chooses. so it could be an oversight role for the lafco. as distinguished from the municipal utility, a municipal
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utility district requires voter approval in california. it creates a whole separate governmental agency that usually has five board members who would then oversee the utility and again, that utility would provide power, not just to the city and county of san francisco, but outside of the boundaries, as well. and there, there's a very specific statutory role for lafco. lafco reviews the creation of districts within their boundaries and can approve or condition, modify or reject entirely a proposal to create a municipal utility district. lafco would serve as a lead agency under cequa and after a number of public hearing, assuming the lafco supports that, they would ask the county to it on the ballot and the electors could finally decide to create the separate district.
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so that's a brief overview of the difference between a municipal utility district and municipal utility and any questions before i move on, please speak up. >> what does sacramento have? they have a municipal utility district. >> they do. do they have an oversight commission? you know how they're set up? >> i am not familiar with the structure of smud. i know they serve well outside of the municipal boundaries. do any of you know? what examples are there of a municipal utility for a single city? >> city of alameda, has its own municipal utility.
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trying to think. >> reading, los angelos. >> thank you. >> quite a few. >> 25% of california's electric customers are served by municipal utilities in the state. they range in size from the largest municipal utility in the state is lawp down to very small cities that run their own electric departments and municipal departments like heelsburg. >> any comparable size to san francisco? >> so today, our current sizes us about the 15th largest public owned utility in the state. were san francisco to expand the expanding service, we would be the third largest in the state. we would be behind lawp and
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smud. >> maybe you answered the question already, but what's the oversight to, like, l.a. >> so it varies across the state. we already talked a little bit about smud where they are a district and have an elected board. lawp is more akin to our type of structure in that their general manager reports to their city council. so it's a structure that's more like ours. we're a county structure in terms of our board of supervisors, but it's a similar relationship. similarly it's their electric utility is a department of the city. same thing with santa clara, silicon valley power. so it varies. >> thank you.
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>> thank you very much, barbara. yes, with a municipal utility, it can be structured in a number of ways and depends on the size of the department, so some of them have their own commission that oversees them and others act more just like a city department. so one issue with a municipal object is how to acquire or construct the infrastructure that's needed to actually distribute power. and the options for that are fairly straightforward. you can construct your open. you could negotiate a sale or transfer with the owner of the infrastructure, in this case, pg & e. or you could go through a condemnation process. it's worth noting while pg & e is under the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court, the options may be limited entirely while they're looking to avoid loss of
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any assets. so briefly, in a municipal utility, the board of supervisors would be the one authorizing any eminent domain and for the district it would be the district's board of directors. >> so you say that it might be constrained or prohibited all together. that's completely within the decision-making power of the judge? >> right. once you're in the bankruptcy court, the bankruptcy court can prevent anyone from suing the subject of the bankruptcy. so since eminent demain and condemn authentication aration , that would be on pause until the bankruptcy was resolved. >> we don't know, a bankruptcy might allow that. >> that's right. i'm not a bankruptcy attorney. it's simply an observation that at this point in time, it may be difficult to acquire infrastructure from pg & e
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because those would be viewed as valuable assets in the bankruptcy process. so there are, of course, constitutional limits and statutory limits on eminent doe main, including facilities have to be used for a public use and pay just compensation. the governing body would have to make a resolution of necessity with very specific findings and that's a two-third's vote. some considerations just to keep in mind would be finding fair market value for -- energy infrastructure is difficult. this is not something on the market so there's to the a clear market value. so valuation is possibly one of the more challenging things of this situation and the law does provide that you could go through a superior court process to determine the value of that property or you could go to the cpuc and the cpuc could take a
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role in valuing it. so that's a very brief overview of that area. if you have have any questions, let me know. >> any questions for miss culsa? >> are there any municipal utilities or districts that took a significant part of the grid or other aspects that allowed them to form through eminent domain? is that something that has happened before? do we have examples to look to toward that? >> the municipal districts have the power of eminent domain. i don't know of any specific instances and, perhaps, barbara has antidotes but i know that power has been used in california to acquire infrastructure, as these new utilities were just being formed.
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>> anything of the scale we would be talking about, maybe? >> so this has happened over time in california. more recent times city of moreno valley municipalized and the irrigation district is about the middle of a process now, ongoing for a number of years. i would have to look at history to see if there's any in the more distant past that are of the size comparable to what we're talking about. i'd be happy to, through your executive officer, you know, do that research and provide that information. >> that would be great. it sounds like there's some important legal questions, as well, in terms of whether the courts have found that for a purpose like this that would be
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something eminent domain is appropriate for. obviously there's public use there. >> and now you're getting more into the legal again so i'll step away. >> correct. i think that the good news is that acquisition of public utility's infrastructure has generally been considered a public use in making those finings and getting a two-third vote of the board to move forward that you would be looking at specifically whether or not you felt that it was for the overall public good. but historically, this has been done before and found to be of public use. >> i was just wondering if manager hail could come back and describe the different rfps for the different studies the puc is undertaking, to my colleagues at
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the moment. >> so yes, the puc in response to the mayor's request for a report on what our options are, to preserve safe and affordable electric service here in san francisco, together with the city attorney's office, putting together some analysis and we are seeking the support of consultants as the city does to help us do that. the types of topics that we're addressing are the valuation, as miss culsa mentioned, valuation is an important component of this. and really looking at the financial feasibility. it's a very important question for us to understand what the total costs of acquiring the system could be, what the ongoing operations and maintenance costs of the systems could be and what investments would need to be made to
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separate what would become the city's system from the pg & e system because it's inner interconnected today and you need to invest in infrastructure to do that. what the costs are for -- i lost my thought on what the last thought was but i'll keep going. another important component of the analysis is what the projected revenue stream is and taking together those overall costs and projected revenue stream, could the city provide safe, affordable, reliable electric service consistent with our values and meet our financial metrics. that's really the big question that i think we've been asked to help the city answer and we're relying on some consulting services to help us do that.
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thank you. >> thank you. >> commissioner marr. >> manager hail, i actually had a few questions. i have been wondering natural gas fits into these planning effort, as we're kind of looking at municipalization of energy, services in san francisco, how does natural gas fit into that and for other utility districts, how is natural gas. >> so san francisco having a history of providing municipal electric service, we feel like we have a pretty good fit for scaling that operation up and addressing this feasibility question of whether it's appropriate for the city to expand service to provide electric to all of san francisco. we are not looking at assumption of natural gas services.
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the other -- i think the other cities and jurisdictions have a mixed bag. some provide natural gas service along with electric service and other essential utility services and some don't. so as i say, it's a mixed bag. l.a. doesn't, alameda used to but they discontinued that natural gas service. to anand then the other part ofr question, i suppose, is how does natural gas fit into the supply of an electric utility? our objective would be to continue to operate as we do today with a strong emphasis on greenhouse gas free and renewable gas services. our hedge utility serves our
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customers 150 megawatts of load with 100% greenhouse gas-free electricity. so we would strive for and would model the financial freeze feas, assuming any system expansion. and natural gas fire generation is definitely an important resource in the overall reliable operation of the electric system as it's configured today. thestthe efforts to decarbonizel help us get to further reduction of reliance on the natural gas generation. >> thank you. >> commission sigh. >> are there ways in different target or goals can help with this?
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i believe mr. heims, i think it was you, brought it up at the last meeting that we need to acquire a bond or credit rating for the clean power sf program and is there a way to feed into the process of determining what is financially feasible and what is not some. >> so the two programs, municipal utility and a community-choice aggregation program are two offerings. the hedge program has a credit rating and using that credit rating to support its revenue bond financed capital program. so we're already doing that as a municipal utility. the voters in june of 2018 supported an expansion of that or additional authority or a change in the authority, i
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should say, on how we use revenue bonds that allows us to utilize our credit rating for acquisition and construction of distribution systems and other supply, new supply. so we have the financial tools, if you will to move forward. you're right, the clean power sf program does not. we're the citwere the city to gh an acquisition and service to all of san francisco, we would absorb the clean power sf program into the program and continue to serve those customer customers and the supply commitments that the clean sf program has made would help to
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serve the full complement of customers the city would be responsible for. >> thank you. >> thank you. are there any other questions for miss hail or miss culsa? lead open this up for public comment. any members of the public that would like to speak on item number 4? >> good afternoon, commissioners, eric brooks. just ducktailing off of that last question, it's very important for the lafco commissioners to understand and welcome to the new commissioners, by the way. it's great to see you on. if i had to pick two people be would be the ones. it's important to understand that what miss hail was saying is that if we do a public power system, legally clean power sf ceases to exist. so instead of having a program that's o oriented on clean powe,
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the municipal utility which is a completely different animal. if you look ats los angelos, you can see some utilities are not aggressive on clean energy. if we go the route of a municipal ru utility, as we're supposed to have done as pg & e derailed us but building the last 15 wire wires, we would hae been a public utility already. but if we go that route, we have to make certain that everything that clean power sf is doing right now is baked into the municipal utility and we have to make certain that we do the big renewable energy master plan, like the one in sydney, australia, three were wer that g with you all and make sure that's baked in. most importantly, we need a
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municipal district run by an elected board of directors, elected by the people of san francisco, not a bureaucratic agency. it's time -- if we do a public utility, we need it to be directly run and that will give us the power to make sure clean energy really happens and we don't go the route of l.a. which does not focus enough on clean energy. thanks. >> any other members that would like to speak on item 4? seeing none, public comment is now closed. madam clerk, would you please read item five? >> just for the record, on item number four, no action was taken. >> thank you. >> executive officer's report, labor study update, an expenditure update. >> good afternoon.
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welcome and excited to have you here. i just have a few brief items today. as you know, we issued a request for proposals for our labor survey on on-demand workers on january 18 and right now, what we're working on is really trying to narrow the best way to obtain a good sampling frame for the survey and we're working with the treasurer's office to gain access to business license information, both historical information and information on current gig workers. some of the potential bidders want to make sure before they submit a proposal, they will be able to get a good sampling frame, names and addresses of folks to reach them. and that is something that i have been working on and hopefully will be successful at getting that information. secondly, on the labor study, i spoke to a class of usf graduate
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studented this month. as you know, they're taking on a key segment of our study for their method's course. leah troe, our former intern joined me. it was a great time. the students were very engaged and right now they're in the process of finalizing their research questions and again, they will be making a presentation before this body at our meeting in may. and then finally, i've included if your packet, an update on expenditures through january 31. everything is pretty much on target and with that i'll submit. >> colleagues, any questions? seeing none, let's open this up for a public comment. any members of the public that would wish to comment on item 5? seeing none, public comment is closed. there is no action taken on this
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item. madam clerk, could you read item 6? >> general public comment. >> are there any members of the public that would wish to speak on public comment? >> yes. eric brooks again. this time i'm speaking on behalf of the local grass root's organization, our city, san francisco. anand the san franciscogreen pa. i want to direct this to all but especially the commissioner, we recent -- a coalition of my group and green action and some others working on the bayview hunter's point and treasure island crises have met with your aide and it's important what we do on treasure island, the same contractor did almost all of the
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clean-up work since the mid90s and probably falsified a lot of that work, where there's radio active contamination right now that people are exposed to, where there's chemical contamination like dioxins that people are being exposed to, we need to halt the development program on treasure island, the same way the program in bayview hunters' point has been halted. part of the process is that, frankly, chida, treasure island development authority is bought and paid for by the developers and has been, basically, lying to the board of supervisors, pretending that tetra had nothing to do with the clean-up on treasure island, which is totally false but trying to make it appear that's the case. there are other problems along those lines that we've had this whole time and this is the local
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agency formation commission. that's a local agency. it would be very interesting to possibly have the hearing at the lafco, depending on what the legal council might say about that. but just wanted to throw that out as a possibility. >> thank you, mr. brooks. any other members of the public that would like to speak now. seeing none, public comment is closed. madam clerk, would you read item number 7. >> future agenda items. >> colleagues, any future agenda items to note seeing none, we'll open up this for public comments. >> mr. brooks? >> yes, california for energy choice, san francisco clean energy advocates. so the good news is that i've
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got is that as of late last year an early in this year, we've been meeting with especially the chair of this commission, miss furer and also the people in the mayor's office, workforce development and the mayor's environmental adviser to talk about whether we do public power or stay with clean power sf. under either scenario, right now we're not building clean energy in san francisco. since the beginning of this process that i got involved in 15 years ago and others got involved in this, even longer time ago, we've been asking for a city-wide, county-wide, clean energy build-out plan that's spectaculasimilar to the sydneya plan.
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it's an amazing plan. the only problem was that it was developed before battery storiage became competitive and it relies on bio mass and bio gas and that's not a good panel. so i'll send it with that disclaimer that says energy disclaimer, bio gas, not mass. when we talked, they expressed interest in doing the city-wide master plan. we and lafco have been talking about it and tyrone expressed interest -- i won't commit him to anything -- but expressed interest in lafco leading for the plan. so that is something very important that we would need to get on an agenda soon so that we can get