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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLAFCO TDPUD Monthly Activity Report April 15, 1999 To: Board of Directors From: Peter L. Holzmeister Subject: Monthly report AGENDA # 11 LAFCo issues: I met with Bob Braitman and Placer County Supervisor Rex Bloomfield on April 5, 1999. We needed to find out if Mr. Bloomfield would oppose TDPUD efforts to extend service into Martis Valley. He said he had some concerns. He said that Nevada County based local agencies had been difficult to work with in the past. He also expressed concern that Placer County not relinquish political jurisdiction in Martis Valley to boards elected in Nevada County. He said that the Martis Valley community plan update currently in process is intended to sort out the local service questions. He suggested that I participate in that group. On April 12, 1999 I attended the third meeting of the Martis Valley community plan update committee. Attached are my notes from that meeting. I will continue to attend meetings of this group. Fiber optics feasibility study: I met with Marty Skeer of RMI and Jim Faircloth and Alan Harry of USA Media Group. We asked them if they are interested in subscribing to a TDPUD owned and maintained fiber system. They expressed reserved interest, and said they would provide us with information that would enable us to design a system to accommodate their needs, and information to help us satisfy their financial goals. We have made a formal data request of USA Media Group and they are now preparing a response. TDPUD staff is preparing a map of the District identifying potential fiber customers so that Marty can visualize the size and shape of a fiber backbone system. I have spoken with Marty by telephone several times during the past two weeks to make sure the study proceeds smoothly and quickly. Governance study: I have completed a first draft of the governance study and sent it to Bob Rauch for review and edits. I have also sent it to Pat Sutton for review and edits, since Pat is on LAFCo and will eventually deal with the study in great detail. Strategic Planning: I worked on a revised strategic plan process for NCPA to consider for their year 2000 workshop. I worked on a final draft of the TDPUD strategic plan and contacted Bob Rauch regarding our August workshop. CMUA annual conference: I attended the annual CMUA conference along with Bob Jones, Pat Sutton and Ron Hemig. I thought this conference was better than last year’s conference. It covered topics that we are right in the middle of. Sessions dealt with fiber optics and public power governance issues in a world of electric deregulation. One of the interesting speakers was Phil Hawkey, former city manager of Pasadena, now vice president of administration at the University of LaVerne. He warned conference attendees about the need to separate public power operations from city government structure. He said that his experience at Pasadena convinced him that the organizational culture and structure of a city is not consistent with the culture and structure needed to successfully operate a public power system. SPPCO/Nevada Power merger: FERC has approved the merger of SPPCo and Nevada Power subject to two very important conditions. The merged company must divest its generation assets to non-affiliated companies and it must join a regional transmission organization within three years. These conditions are good news for TDPUD. SPPCo has radically changed as a business organization. We need to rethink and revise our entire approach to SPPCo. This needs to be an issue we deal with when we revisit our strategic plan in August. SPPCo should no longer be interested in offering power supply to customers of TDPUD; they have no power supply to offer. Once SPPCo joins a regional transmission organization they should no longer fight our efforts to gain transmission access; transmission access concerns generation and they will not be in the generation business. We need to see how they arrange for the provision of default power supply, and whether they try to enter the power aggregation business. SPPCo will be in the distribution business, the same as TDPUD, and that may be the arena of our next battles with SPPCo. There is much to think and strategize about here. April 12, 1999 Memo to: Martis Valley Community Plan file From: PLH Subject: Meeting of April 12, 1999 I attended the above referenced meeting. Following are notes. Debora Cubberly and SR Jones spoke. Placer County has a preference for community of interest approach to service delivery. They want a sense of community, boundary similarity and avoid agency proliferation. They may want a single agency that represents Martis valley to provide service. The options identified by Debora are TDPUD, a Placer County service area or service district, and Northstar. Debora says that all agencies that serve Martis valley should have the same territory and sphere of influence. She said there may be a desire to detach parts of existing districts and establish a new placer county multi-purpose district. Placer County does not want to relinquish political jurisdiction over the Martis Valley. Placer County wants a different way of providing service than what is presently in place. There was considerable discussion of consolidation, merger, and reorganization. Debora says that Placer LAFCo will not initiate any consolidations because they fail without community support. So consolidations must begin in the community. When asked to comment on that SR said Nevada LAFCo also will not initiate any consolidations. It takes money to do the consolidation study, and Nevada LAFCo does not have that kind of money (the Town has the Money) and LAFCo wants a more difficult protest measure. Under LAFCo initiated consolidations there is a 10% petition for a vote, under any other initiation of consolidation there is a 25 % petition to bring the matter to a vote. (Can the Town initiate consolidation and end up with a 25% protest petition?) There is a presumption that a single service provider is more efficient than multiple providers. Debora said that public policy is unified under a single provider. She said that there is more flexibility is use of money to solve problems (this is the justification to raid the funding of other services) Debora said that a unified multi-purpose agency would need fewer staff. The committee is meeting on the second Monday of each month. Next meeting is May 10. Agenda covers transportation, circulation and air quality.