Our City Our Power
• • • • • • • • • • July 2024 • • • • • • • • • •
Have you received slick emails from Our City Our Power? Did you know that it’s from SFPUC (water sewer power), a City department?
Yes, it looks like a do-good citizen group advocating for positive change for our City. But it’s really a City department (bureaucracy) lobbying for more power and employees for itself.
Should the dollars you pay when you pay your water bill (or your landlord does) be used to propagandize?
The SFPUC message promises lower rates. Will City employees and City contracting really save money?
The message promises a safer and better grid. How often has your power gone out? Is the City really in a position to improve the electrical grid? Much electricity arrives from other states where wind and solar facilities are located. In the future even more will. The City has lines from Hetchy to Newark, a fair stretch, but only a tiny portion of the electrical grid.
Long ago the City got into quite a beef with PG&E. Progressives despise PG&E, and will do anything to undermine it. The City is attempting to take over PG&E’s electrical assets located in San Francisco. Lawyers battle on and on. PG&E has moved its headquarters out of the City and, not surprisingly, has frequently provided slow and expensive service when the City requests that. The ongoing battle costs everyone.
No doubt PG&E is quite imperfect. But is the City bureaucracy an improvement? Shall we expand an already oversized City department?”
Whatever your answer, know that Our City Our Power is not some independent group; it’s SFPUC, a large City department.
Recently a small ray of light may have dropped. The City wishes to provide what’s called renewable natural gas to PG&E. That gas will come from the sewage of the Southeast Treatment Plant, in Bayview. PG&E will continue to deliver gas in SF even if the City is successful in taking over PG&E’s electrical business. A glimmer of cooperation?
Yet City pols regularly bang on about how horrible PG&E is. Now thinly disguised propaganda from SFPUC makes the case that voters should one day vote for a bond to acquire PG&E’s assets. “Inform your elected officials.” Join our cause. (See it here)
(SFPUC may not need to go to voters. It is the only City department exempted from the requirement to get voter approval when revenue bonds are issued.)
Utilities like PG&E were formed to spread the cost of providing electrical service to all Americans. But for utilities, at the dawn of the age of electricity, only urban areas would have been serviced. Today undergrounding is raising costs, mostly in rural areas. Fortunately these added costs are somewhat offset by cheap power that solar, and to a lesser extent, wind provides. Perhaps SF could avoid paying for undergrounding by plucking a lucrative piece of PG&E’s business. Is that fair, or selfish? Who caused global warming? Are we back to sticking it to the hicks out in the sticks?
Moreover, will the City actually save money? Or will City inefficiency erode savings that are theoretically possible? SFPUC’s record for efficiency is far from good. Good luck taking over electric facilities and then finding competent SF employees to run them.
No doubt PG&E is quite imperfect. But is the City bureaucracy an improvement? Shall we expand an already oversized City department?
Whatever your answer, know that Our City Our Power is not some independent group; it’s SFPUC, a large City department.
Steve Lawrence is a Westside resident and SF Public Utility Commission stalwart. Feedback: lawrence@westsideobserver.com
July 2024
