Good thing that we have two 16 SEER Heat Pumps going in tomorrow and friday. The rate increase just ate up about 30% of my anticipated savings from lower electrical costs.

"We remain hopeful this action will be temporary and benefits will be restored in the near future," said Commission chairman Lee Beyer.

And I remain hopeful that Scarlett Johansson will call me up for a date. I think the odds of these two hypotheticals are about the same.

Let's get the petitions rolling for a P.U.D. and not bitch about it. Lloyd Marbett, where are you dude. I'm ready to roll, but inexperienced in working on petitions. I also note our beloved demos' have all but killed petitions, thanks. Sometime it just bites you in the ass!

maybe this will help wean us off hydroelectric dependency.

Great. I can't even afford my bill now, and we don't use air conditioning.

As we say in the old country: PANTS.
To make matters worse I just had a visit from the Multnomah County property appraiser (we just redid the kitchen). I didn't let him in and lied through my teeth but I suspect the tax bill is not going down.

Let's get the petitions rolling for a P.U.D. and not bitch about it. Lloyd Marbett, where are you dude.

This needs to be coming from a new direction. I love Lloyd, but we need something coming from the Sten/Leonard-Bus kid-union direction. With non-hippies proposed as the new management. Read the linked post.

I didn't let him in and lied through my teeth but I suspect the tax bill is not going down.

True colors.

'I didn't let him in and lied through my teeth but I suspect the tax bill is not going down.'

Aren't you just trying to steal from the rest of us?

In BPA's defense (they pay our mortgage), the agency cut private utilities (vs. the publicly owned utilities, which have a statutory mandate for priority) a better deal than (supposedly) we were entitled to get -- it was the court decision that forced the rate hike. Additionally, it was BPA's position that we ought to have been getting the lower rates through our publicly owned utilities, but they lost.

I don't understand the rate hike "came in response to the court ruling" argument in the paper, though. My understanding is that based on the court case, consumers of publicly owned power companies just lose a credit on their bills. The rate increase process takes a long time and would have been something the companies had in the works. I guess the case could have been an inducement for the whopping 13% increase?

The BPA employee in our household tells me that the agency is going to have some sort of forum on the issue in the next week or so.

Er..."through our privately owned utilities," that is.

Rr and Allan,

In an odd way your response is more depressing than normal. It tells me that in moments of quiet contemplation – after Lar’s show has finished and before Rush comes on – you actually have convinced yourself that liberals want to pay more taxes. A bizarre conclusion that then becomes the foundation for other nutty ideas. I may want police on the street, libraries and decent schools, but that doesn’t mean I want to pay one cent more than necessary. I could cut discretionary federal spending in half in five minutes given the opportunity. As everyone else is gaming the system (maximizing deductions and minimizing property taxes) it wouldn’t be rational to do otherwise. It brings us back to that sales tax argument where it would be based on ability to pay and cannot be avoided by the lucky/connected few.

The price change "came in response to the court ruling" due to the fact that the 9th Circuit ordered cash payments from BPA to the privately owned utilities to immediately stop.

Shelley's comments are close enough to the truth. As a result of the NWPA, customers of the IOUs have to receive like benefits from BPA as the customers of PUDs. For many years, this has come in the form of cash payments from BPA to the utilities that are directly converted into credits to the customers. In response to the court ruling, those payments have literally stopped dead and cannot now be passed on to customers.

Blame the 9th Circuit. This is a benefit that northwesterners are entitled to by law that has now been cut off. But the court is only disturbed by the nature of the payback, meaning this should be cleared up and the credit will return in some form.

Responding to this by forming a PUD is like selling your house and moving to a trailer court because the dishwasher stopped working.

Responding to this by forming a PUD is like selling your house and moving to a trailer court because the dishwasher stopped working.

the data on PUD success nationwide (and worldwide, really) is plentiful, convincing and clear.

why would anyone be opposed to the formation of a PUD, i wonder?

why would anyone be opposed to the formation of a PUD, i wonder?

I dunno, maybe because the retard politicians here in this area cant even get the water bills sorted out? You want them creating & running a new bureau for electricity too?

Rr and Allan...

The first time Allan and I seem to agree on anything and Sherwood ruins it with a fugue based on God knows what. I know it suits your argument(?) to conflate whatever's layin' around, but; Allan and Rush??? - c'mon, man, get a grip.

If we can stop beating up Sherwood for a moment, this morning's take on all of this is that PGE and PPL are both out there fighting for our rights. With friends like this.....

Sorry, I blew the link in the last post. Here it is.

Responding to this by forming a PUD is like selling your house and moving to a trailer court because the dishwasher stopped working.

Spoken like a true private utility executive.

8c)

There's a lot more wrong with this house than the dishwasher...

Ricky, I can't tell for sure if I agree with you on this or not since I'm not sure I understood your comment. And I can't relate either your comment or mine to Sherwood's comment. So let's not put this in the book as a meeting of the minds just yet.

Devoutly wish we had a PUD, like Eugene, like Clark County, like Seattle City Light, etc. Wish our city council would take a step toward establishing it's credibility in such matters by admitting that our municipal wifi is worse than useless. Worse than useless because it not only doesn't work, but precludes creation of a system that does work as long as the city remains invested in it and defends its pretense to functionality.

As long as we're trying to run the municipal wifi on happy talk alone, how do we expect people to trust that their electrical service won't be run on happy talk, too? I wish I was wrong on this, but the council needs to work on its credibility problems, and soon.

Who says that a PUD effort has to be done by the city? It doesn't have to be a muni. Some have suggested that having the PUD separate from city involvement is better because it prevents the effect of changes in the power structure on the utility. Who is so naive to belive that the for profit utilties are fighting for YOUR rights? They are fighting for their own and the offset the money provides shields the consumer from seeing how much the utilities actually charge. And, do people understand that the BPA "settlement" would have unfairly doubled the amount that the for profit utilities are given, at the expense of BPA's customers? This is complicated and no one should jump to false conclusions.