Some of us have better things to do. When I read Greenlee's screed, I knew you would need some help with the facts. You said stranded costs. Xcel only claimed $336M (I just re read the claim in Xcel's letter). You may not understand the difference I suppose. There are quite a few reasons to believe they were asking for the moon to scare us off, but even that is nowhere near your fantasy. Your revised claim is equally meaningless since the initial payment is limited to $214M by charter and that includes at most Xcel's $150M claim for the purchasing the system, so the single payment stranded cost payment limit for borrowing is only $64M, not your $400M. At most SC would be about $114M if the system cost is more like $100M, still nowhere near your $400M. Even if you were right and in the unlikely event that is the price tag, we wouldn't do it unless we can handle that cost, even if the charter allowed it. So what's your real problem? The voters ok'd finding out if we can and that frustrates you nay sayers apparently who just can't respect the will of the voters.
You shouldn't assume that just because I crawled under your rock to educate you, that when I crawl back out, it will be to a rock of my own. Some of us live in the light.
Sorry you take statements of fact as dismissive smirk. The problem with responding to Greenlee is that he has so much conjecture to spin the community into being afraid and so little fact to actually respond to. I do my best, but I can only answer a challenge at the level it is made.
When I said Bob got his facts wrong, I was being generous. Bob doesn't deal in many facts.
How does one reply to paranoid speculation and innuendo? Points are usually fact based and Bob offers so few of those. His only fact is that commercial is about 80% of the energy consumption in Boulder, but then goes on a paranoid complaint about how they will be mistreated. Then he says voters are minasule part of the consumption, but that they will push their costs onto business and it will be catastrophic, not so minasule I guess. Of course business would all go off grid or leave as he points out later in his last bit of conjecture so why would Boulder citizens do that? Boulder has gone out of its way to keep business energy cost impacts low. The CAP tax rates are dramatically lower for business ($.0003/kWh) vs residential ($.0049/kWh) 16 times lower for business. Does that sound like screwing business over?
And the spin goes on. I guess the fact that Bob Greenlee gets most of his facts wrong is par for the course in this echo chamber. You might at least try to get your facts straight. I know that you feel that the voters approved spending that you do not agree with, but that is hardly evidence of council's incompetence, unless you truly believe following voters wishes is somehow corrupt. If Bob is right, you have nothing much to worry about, but he isn't of course.
When did the city ever estimate stranded costs at $400 million? Xcel did not even ask for that much in its claim filed to the city. Even if you were telling the truth, you should be happy with your delusion that the muni can't meet the $214 million charter limit. Why are you still making stuff up to scare people if you are so sure?
No, the real issue is profit. Their overhead cost can be covered through rate increases, which could be a fairness issue, but the real problem for the utility then comes in because that just lowers their profits, because they make money through return on equity invested in plants, not by selling kWh's. Solar makes the plants unnecessary so their plants become stranded and profits drop. That hurts their credit worthiness in the eyes of investors and investment drops and their borrowing costs go up, requiring yet higher rates, making more customers leave the system with more competitive solar.
The carbon footprint of our electricity is many times more than the busses so your suggestion doesn't solve our carbon emissions.
You are just proving you do not understand the so called "death spiral". Read the Edison Institute paper that initiated that term and you will see that the death spiral comes about due to credit worthiness issues for regulated investor owned utilities, not muni's. IOU's like Xcel go to the equity market to sell stock to fund a significant share of their funding. If profits drop due to solar sales, then stock prices drop because the return drops, and that causes the death spiral, dropping profits. Muni's don't make profit nor does it have investors in an equity market solely interested in profits. No death spiral. A very large share of customers have to leave a muni to have a large effect, but the same share could kill an IOU by driving up its cost of borrowing, driving up its rates, driving down profits (the muni breaks the spiral here because it does not make a profit), and repeats the spiral.
That's quite a mistake, but it is good to hear that you can admit to one, at least when it is in your favor. Couldn't you be mistaken about hidden data? You stated the "anonymous benefactor" as fact, but we're mistaken. Why shouldn't your other factual assertions be questionable?
If you truly believe there is a better way to proceed, why haven't you proposed it to council and voters? Why does municipalization have to be eliminated before you are willing to share your "better ways"? Can't your ideas stand up to competition? What are you hiding Patrick?
Will Patrick be filing a CORA on Xcel Energy for its 20 year cash flow now? Good luck with that. For all the belly aching here, the city's information is accessible one way or the other. The PUC allows most of the useful data to be held as confidential and kept from the public. Yet, one never sees complaints on that from the commenters like Patrick and others in this echo chamber. A two month delay and a CORA hearing is nothing compared to 18 months at a PUC hearing and having to hire a lawyer at $400 bucks an hour (with no rich benefactor) and signing confidentiality agreements that inhibit public release of financials that lead directly to rate increases and coal and gas plant investments or inhibit renewables with no real voter scrutiny. For all the complaining, the naysayers forget to consider the alternative.
Patrick, there is a difference between knowing facts and understanding them. I have looked at your various presentations and I think you misunderstood the public information you already have. What I do know about the financial model is very sophisticated, but that comes at the price of large amounts of data and complexity that takes someone who is sophisticated enough to understand them. The summary findings that most people can understand have already been published. The process was reviewed by competent, independent experts in analyzing utility operation. I respect their abilities and understand my limitations. Releasing the information will not give us much additional understanding, but will release sensitive information to a hostile seller prematurely who will use it against our community in the legal process. I do not see that as either illuminating or useful. I hope the judge sees and understands that this is still work product in an ongoing process. You claim the decision has been made, but until the decision is made to bond and fund the acquisition, I just disagree.
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