“Our City Our Power”
• • • • • • • • • July 2025 • • • • • • • • •
You’ve received mailings from “Our City Our Power,” an agent and arm of SFPUC (water, sewer, power, city department). SFPUC wants to expand, and it lays out the groundwork.
City agencies and employees are not supposed to take political stands for or against candidates or initiatives. There isn’t an initiative — yet. But SFPUC, with its Our City Our Power, anticipates one. It may well need a bond initiative to buy PG&E’s assets located in San Francisco.
The reason for that is that a prior proposition (from 2002) doesn’t clearly permit SFPUC to issue bonds for acquiring power assets. SFPUC wants to buy PG&E’s San Francisco electrical assets–lines, power stations — the works. Subsequently, SFPUC will employ many more workers. The agency, already the City’s largest, continues to grow. More power to the City — and its bureaucrats.
SFPUC complains that PG&E treats San Francisco badly. True, but if ever there was an invited error, this is the case. For years, San Francisco has run down and antagonized PG&E, formerly headquartered downtown.
SFPUC claims it can save users money. Easy to say, but good luck with accomplishing that. Public employees are hardly known for their fleet efficiency. Nor does their union “negotiate” with a real opposing party; instead, “negotiations” are with politicians who need union support. None of our politicians oppose or stand up to unions; that’s political suicide. So, the median cost for public employees is something on the order of 40% more than the median salary plus benefits in the private realm. That’s just the reality of “socialism:” pay more, get less.
Not that PG&E is truly private. It’s a public utility, given a limited monopoly, with rates regulated and approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (no relation to our SFPUC).
Nor does this author contend that PG&E does a splendid job. There’s room aplenty for improvement. But not via SFPUC takeover of our old, complex electrical system. Down that path lies trouble. ”
Nor does this author contend that PG&E does a splendid job. There’s room aplenty for improvement. But not via SFPUC takeover of our old, complex electrical system. Down that path lies trouble. Electricity should be reliable, not left to newbies and learners. When the Big One rocks San Francisco, do you want city employees or PG&E’s vast staff restoring power?
Forming Our City Our Power, made to look like a do-good nonprofit, funding it, and supplying it with propaganda, is typical of SFPUC. After all, it well knows how to use ratepayer money to accomplish ends claimed to be in the interests of ratepayers, but really benefiting itself and its leaders. Regularly, it has its contractors “donate” to “the needy.” Once called community benefits, that crashed, and was renamed “social impact partnering,” or SIP. When community benefits was found to be corrupt, no problem, change the name. Same game, new name. SFPUC and its big shots get to steer benefits to those they prefer while burnishing the image of SFPUC. Who pays? Ratepayers, of course.
Same with Our City Our Power. Ratepayers pay for the privilege of receiving propaganda in furtherance of the day when SFPUC and the City will want, who knows, maybe 3 or 4 billion dollars – bond funded – to acquire PG&E’s electrical assets located in San Francisco. After that, SFPUC expands and runs the system — if it can. (Don’t be surprised when, after it takes over, SFPUC blames PG&E for failures that occur.)
In a time of rising demand for electricity, who would you rather have as your “electrician,” newbie public employees or those who, fairly reliably, have provided service for a century?
Politicians have all bought into (or been steamrolled into) supporting “Public Power,” a great crusade of progressives for as long as can be remembered. Don’t be fooled by the support of the pols. They don’t dare not support “public power.”
Politicians should be ashamed to ignore Our City Our Power, which, if it isn’t illegal, is surely against the spirit of the law and the public interest. Public resources should not be used to leverage more City employees and more political power. Reject and resist Our City Our Power.
Steve Lawrence is a Westside resident and SF Public Utility Commission stalwart. Feedback: lawrence@westsideobserver.com
July 2025
