Danville Utility Commission – LIVE! (4/27/15)

We’re LIVE! at Danville City Hall for today’s Utility Commission meeting. This article is now complete.

We’re underway. Bill Donohue & Dawn Witter aren’t here today.

Patricia Conner goes over the financial reports.

Nobody wants to sit on the front row. And we have zero citizens here today.

The left side of the conference table.

And here’s the right side.

We’re already missing Patti O’Keefe. She took the editor job at the Caswell Messenger newspaper.

Patricia Conner goes over the financial reports. Electric consumption is down 3% compared to last year.

We move to the recommendations of the steering committee. Bob Schasse asks if any utility actually wanted to buy Danville Utilities. Fred Shanks said that the committee never got that far. He wants a paragraph in the final report saying why that wasn’t even considered. Shanks mentioned that the obligations to American Municipal Power pretty much killed any possibility of a sale. Schasse says that the city simply didn’t have the knowledge to sell something so big anyway. Chairman Phillip Smith asks Shanks if he has suggested language for his proposal. Shanks says he’d like to defer that to voting members of the commission.

Moving along, Jason Grey says that the system could take around 30 megawatts of electricity directly from any supplier. That would completely zero out transmission costs but would cost a lot upfront. Mike Nicholas strongly urges looking at reducing the money being transferred to the city’s general fund. We have some slight bickering about Fred Shanks’ request for the extra paragraph. Mike Nicholas proposes a motion for the statement. All vote yes except for Jim Turpin.

If you want to read about the rest of this meeting in the newspaper, forget it. The reporter just left.

The utilities power cost adjustment fund is $18.6 million in the hole. That’s up from $18.5 million last month (not unexpected in month-to-month fluctuations). There’s one proposal being floated today to write off $8 million of that deficit.

This plan option was modified into the final recommendation.

They’ve started a conference call with Mark Beauchamp from Utility Financial Solutions, the rate consultant. Thanks to Jenny Holley for getting me that information.

This speakerphone idea worked just as well as you would think it would. “What?” “I’m having trouble hearing.” “No, Mark, he was talking to somebody else.” Nobody thought of moving the speakerphone to the center of the conference table.

Bob Schasse notes that Danville Utilities was hit with another $1 million in congestion charges in February.

The chargeoff would be $4 million in 2016 & 2017. Danville Utilities would have operating losses those years but they have way more cash reserves than required now. Another proposed option is to charge off any monthly congestion charges over $300K by using cash reserves with a limit of $4 million a year. The other option is to keep running things the way that they are. Discussion time.

Jim Turpin says he’s in favor of not using cash reserves to writeoff the deficit. Fred Shanks says that City Council has never been in favor of spending cash reserves but these are extraordinary circumstances. Shanks says he’d like to hear from the bond rating companies before spending any cash reserves.

Phillip Smith floats the idea of using everything over $1 million in profits every year to do the chargeoff. This would be calculated at the end of every year. This wouldn’t touch the cash reserves and take the chargeoff out of profits while ensuring a profit every year. Excellent suggestion. We’re at the 2 hour mark for this meeting. Finance Director Mike Adkins says this hybrid suggestion is the best way to go.

On to the energy-efficient appliance rebate discussion.

Key Accounts Representative Meagan Baker introduces the presentation. Alan Spencer is awake, I promise you.

Jason Grey needs more things on his desk, doesn’t he?

Bob Schasse gets animated with his opposition to people not having to retire old appliances when getting rebates on new ones. He also objects to the lack of air-sealing recommendations on insulation jobs that qualify for rebates. The representative from Nexant (the company that runs the rebate) says that air-sealing is hard to validate and isn’t cost effective in a location like Danville.

The Nexant representative explains how the programs work.

The Nexant representative tells Bob Schasse that the idea of the program really isn’t to cut back of demand and load that much, it’s to put more energy-efficient appliances in service. Let’s hope Bob remembers that from now on.

Let’s talk about the proposed fee increases.

Nobody speaks at the public hearing for the proposed utility fee increases. That’s because nobody from the public is here. The proposed fee increases pass. The discussion about policies and disconnect/reconnects is shelved until the next meeting two weeks away. Mike Nicholas wants to go ahead and talk about it at this meeting but he’s outvoted by everybody else. Boo.

Barry Dunkley updates on the water issue. (Notice the clock. We started at 4:00 PM)

I finally hear what I know was true all the time. The water treatment plant did stop the carbon treatment and that’s what caused the rebirth of the odor/taste issue. Jim Turpin says that he still doesn’t like the wording of Fred Shanks’ paragraph addition. Noted, Jim.

And we’re done. We’re glad to have brought you the only media coverage of this meeting, well at least after the first 45 minutes worth. Heh.