I've been sick the last month, and am finally recovering, but I forgot all about the GVEA meeting.
I still have a remaining question regarding the G&T: How could the staff legitimately claim a $30 million savings based on a 1.75 margin when GVEA doesn't collect that margin? I haven't yet managed to talk to Dan Osborne, who may be able to explain this to me, but from where I'm sitting, this estimate was flatly fraudulent, especially since it appeared in advertisments/official information (the Ruralite & the website) AND on the ballot. Perhaps I'm wrong--I hope I'm just confused, because if I'm NOT wrong, then we have a serious problem within GVEA, and the deception should not be allowed to just go by the by. It may even be felonious.
Now, to a few suggestions: I have had a few ideas and heard a few from various people during all this brouhaha. Among them:
1. An indigent/emergency electric bill fund that members could voluntarily donate to and which could be used by other members in need of help on their bill. This could be started with unclaimed capital credits to get a base pool going.
2. I second Gary's suggestions below. District meetings and communications such as district rep blogs. I'm not sure a newsletter would be useful, unless it replaced Ruralite, which often seems to have nothing to do with GVEA.
3. Tom DeLong made an excellent suggestion regarding incentives for people who conserve energy: if a member/household uses under X amounts of kilowatts each month over a year, then they would qualify for a reduced electricity rate so long as they kept under that usage during the next year. The threshold amount of wattage would have to be determined after a bit of thought, but the idea is to keep down sudden peak loads among your average users and to encourage conservation. Thus, wasteful users would pay more.
