Rate Case filing and comments

GVEA's rate request is now filed (click on Comments tab), with a number of comments filed as well, including my own. The RCA has issued the initial order, moving the process forward.

Getting info from GVEA

As those members who come to board meetings know, GVEA prepares a single binder for members to look at when the meeting starts. This has sometimes nothing but the agenda and more often more info on items that are on the agenda. Members are not given copies or allowed to take anything from the binder. They have to request it on a form and wait for it to be approved/rejected. In order to save paper and make it more efficient to provide, I request the information electronically.

At the July board meeting I requested the following and got them in the mail a couple weeks later with a courtesy watermark on them. I've never seen this done with any requests. Perhaps the GVEA President wants to know where information I get is disseminated or checking up to see that board members don't give me anything - perish the thought that my board representative would share with me! Anyway, I'm baffled by this, but I am pleased to share what should be easily accessible by members.

Nominations Process Review
The recent Nominations Process review, after the messy nomination process of District 2 last spring. Note that, of the recommendations on page 4, the board did not approve term limits (item 7). Note also other recommendations which encourage more/better member communications. I'm not holding my breath. Three board members did apparently favor term limits: Tom Delong, John Sloan and Bill Digan (making one think he might not run again, as he's already server about 16 years. The other remaining members that did not support term limits on the board have been on that board in excess of 20 years, I believe.

GVEA Policy 1.2
Cooperative Mission, Vision, Values and Strategic Goals
This seems like something that members ought to have ready access to and been solicited on input. Instead, it was not provided to members until the meeting and, considering member comments take place at the beginning of the meeting, little time to evaluate and comment.

GVEA Policy 5.4 Equity Development
This is what determines the basis for rates. It was discussed heavily during the attempted implementation of the Generation and Transmission Co-op. The higher your tier, the more you have to save and the less that comes back to the members in capital credits. There is an amount that generates better credit for borrowing, but it is a balance. I'd recommend learning about TIER (Times Income Earned Ratio) and talking to your board rep.

GVEA 2008 Annual Meeting minutes (draft)
These are the minutes the board approved to forward to the membership. Please note that the members who spoke were acknowledged by name only and general topics brought up without attribution. I'd think it would be respectful of members who did speak that they be given one sentence each saying what they spoke about and what their opinion was. If this is not revised, the membership can move to include this information. It would be a lot more helpful if the board asked this be done in advance. It really makes them look bad and really, for no good reason.

I also asked for a copy of the board retreat report. This gave a good picture of the workings of the board, valuable for anyone who might be willing to run and serve. I was told this was an internal document, thus would not be provided. I submit that, it was not considered executive restricted material and was available to members at the meeting, so it should be available to members by copy.

In this posting, I've discussed ways that GVEA makes it hard for members to get information from them. Interestingly enough, in the above strategic goals document, page 1 3. Values, it pledges 'open and transparent communications with our members'. You gotta love those little inconsistencies.

At least one can now see the agendas and minutes (1.5-2 mo. after the fact.) on line. It only took a 5 year effort to make that happen.

GVEA Rate Study

The GVEA Board is close to deciding on recommended rates following a rate study. Insiders and outsiders like me have been recommending an inverted rate study that makes the first x00 of kwh at a lower rate and then increased in cost/kwh as the consumption goes up. Some of the board members who don't support this indicate that means they would have to increase the monthly service fee. I assert that the less we consume, the less it should cost. Those with a really high demand ought to be paying a higher rate for that electricity, as it requires burning the most expensive electricity. Whatever GVEA comes up with does go to the RCA, so we can have comments then. GVEA in the meantime only gives members a very elemental view and while asks for comments, doesn't give members any documentation for how they came up with those numbers. I asked for an electronic copy of this, but instead got a printed copy, which doesn't scan very well.

GVEA Districts 1,2 3 election results

MAC volunteers counted GVEA Districts 1, 2, and 3 ballots for their board members this evening. All incumbents retained their seats. district 2, with the publicity over the nominating committee not selecting Tom DeLong, the incumbent and forcing him to run by petition, had nearly double the return of the other districts. District 3 was a relatively close race. The nominee selected to run against the incumbent had already dropped out of the race.

District 1
Mailed out 5156 , valid returned 604 for 12%
Dan Osborne 539 94%
Roy Roehl 30
invalid (including a number of ballots for Tom Delong, who was in District 2) 28

District 2
Mailed out 5973, valid returned 1361 for 23%
Tom DeLong 791 58%
Frank Abegg 504 37%
Lee Santoro 62 5%
invalid 4

District 3
Mailed out 6109, valid returned 778 13%
Rick Schikora 399 52%
Ken Rydberg 375 48%

The remarkable thing to me was that approximately an additional 10% of the ballots returned, not counted above, were ruled invalid because they didn't have the signature of the member on the front of the envelope inside.

According to the GVEA attorney, this is a common percentage, but this means that 10% of the membership that took the time to vote were effectively disenfranchised for lack of following procedure. This is only a procedure, not a bylaw requirement and such a high percentage means to me that this requirement breaks the process and GVEA should look at removing it.

IRV for board of directors elections?

Using a ranked choice voting system to elect our board members (in district) might help avoid an issue of concern to the recent District 2 nominating committee, whereby apparently eight candidates for the seat were whittled down to two so that there would be no risk of one candidate not getting the required margin to win (for example, a three- or four-way tie) and then having to go for a whole new shiny expensive runoff election.

Having elections using IRV would make it a lot easier to give us a wide choice of candidates, but it would mean amending the bylaws. What do you think? Is this something we should do?

Might help avoid dodgy-appearing problems in the future as well as save money.

GVEA and Chugach Electric among top ten CO2 producers in the state

From Kodiak Konfidential comes this interesting news about our biggest utilities: Chugach Electric is #4 on the list, and GVEA is #6:

4. Chugach Electric Association
1.07 million metric tons CO2
Electricity
...
6. Golden Valley Electric Association
0.69 million metric tons CO2
Electricity

That's a lot of CO2. All the more reason to get off the grid with renewable energy, or support net metering (as in House Bill 288), or the SNAP program.