Editor,
State Sen. Josh Becker, District 13, is notifying constituents by email that he’s having a town hall to discuss why PG&E bills are so high and what we can do about it. He’s allotting one hour. Once again: ONE HOUR for discussion. That would allow a very small number of people to offer suggestions or ask questions.
What’s more, he offers, in his email, the opportunity to submit a question, but the space allotted is ridiculously small. Clearly the senator has no comprehension of how angry the people are with both PG&E and the total failure of government to do anything but allow them the raise rates. To save millions of dollars, PG&E could do the following: stop TV ads that attempt to console the population and establish PG&E as a “good guy.” Restrict executive pay at PG&E.
They should be satisfied with the $400,000 a year POTUS gets. PG&E CEO makes over $15,000 a week! That’s just salary, not benefits and perks. Trade multicolor printed advertisements for lower bills. My street is 1 mile long. In 14 months PG&E has contracted seven different tree trimming companies from all over California to trim the trees, unsupervised. Within a month more trimming was needed, repeatedly, seven times.
“More” is things like removing all of a branch instead of part of it. This is an extremely high fire risk area but these contractors left their trimmings behind often never removing them. One company one time could’ve done the job and saved money.
Van Thein
Emerald Hills
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(2) comments
Thanks for your letter, Mr. Thein. It sounds like Mr. Becker is putting on on another episode of performative politics to go through the motions to act like he cares but in reality, doesn’t. When has Mr. Becker done something to help the state of California? I’d be hard pressed to find anything of substance. Unless it’s giving more reasons for folks to leave California.
Speaking of high fire risk areas, there have been recent reports indicating that because of red tape, including in obtaining building permits, hundreds of the folks whose houses burned down have opted to sell their burned out lots. Due to California’s nanny state, many home insurance companies dropped coverage and for those who were covered and received settlements, I’m not surprised if some folks will take the money and run, settlement or not, selling their lots at a premium. BTW, your observation on tree trimmers and trimming are spot on. Why trim trees once when you can get paid three or more times to finish the job. Kind of like road repairs. Why do a good job on repairing roads when you can do a subpar job and be paid to repeat the work in another year, or less.
Van - tree trimming is a big racket. It satisfies PG&E's mandate to contract with minority business owners. There were fairly recently two articles in the DJ written by a financial analyst and by a former CPUC commissioner that explained what needs to be done to get PG&E under control. Becker must have read these articles but instead of submitting legislation to include those recommendations, he will use this townhall as yet another political pony to help himself. Don't fall for it.
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