By DOUG CURLEE | La Mesa Courier<\/p>\n
On Aug. 13, the La Mesa City Council voted to join a regional community choice energy program headed, more or less, by the city of San Diego.<\/p>\n
All five City Council members voted in favor of the proposal join a joint powers authority (JPA) that will eventually run the program, buying electrical power from a variety of clean energy sources and selling it to city residents and businesses \u2014 at lower prices than SDG&E can sell it now.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible the council might have been swayed a little by the fact that San Diego is willing to pick up the millions of dollars in startup costs incurred by the respective cities to get all this rolling.<\/p>\n
There was some debate, but not a lot. There were two issues that might have complicated the decision, but both were dealt with.<\/p>\n
The more important one was the fact that smaller cities in the JPA, like La Mesa and Santee, could be outvoted by a weighted vote provision that might have given too much power to the big cities involved \u2014 San Diego and Chula Vista \u2014 enabling any decisions made by the JPA to, in effect, steamroll the smaller cities.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a complicated fix, but it should work, according to Cody Hooven, the San Diego chief sustainability officer who\u2019s been pretty much driving this train.<\/p>\n
The big cities have agreed, or will agree, that no matter how the votes go, no city will be able to cast more than 49% of the final votes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt this was a good, safe medium ground for the protections of the Joint Powers Authority to operate under,\u201d Hooven said.<\/p>\n
One thing that the La Mesa City Council added was a citizens\u2019 oversight board, to keep an eye on what\u2019s happening with the JPA.<\/p>\n
Council members Dr. Akilah Weber and Colin Parent were pretty adamant about that, and they got it unanimously.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the right way to go,\u201d said Mayor Mark Arapostathis. \u201cWe think it\u2019s what the citizens want, and we\u2019ll try to give it to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residents of cities involved will automatically be enrolled in the program, unless they decide to formally opt out and remain with SDG&E.<\/p>\n
The decision isn\u2019t actually formal yet.<\/p>\n
The City Council will have to go through the formal legal process of drafting and approving an ordinance making the decision law, and that\u2019s a legally mandated process.<\/p>\n
The first of two required votes will come at the Sept. 10 City Council meeting, with the second reading and formal adoption on Sept. 24 \u2014 seven days before the San Diego-imposed deadline of Oct. 1.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s likely that deadline could be stretched a little, as other cities tackle the question of whether or not to join the JPA.<\/p>\n
The city of Santee is believed ready to join in soon.<\/p>\n
Cody Hooven said other cities are looking closely at the process, and would be more than welcome if they elect to join. She cited Carlsbad, Encinitas and Del Mar as serious candidates, along with Solana Beach as a possible.<\/p>\n
Solana Beach already has its own small Community Choice Aggregate operating, but might prefer the protection and connection with a larger entity.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see where this goes as time passes. There will almost certainly be bumps in the road to be dealt with \u2014 that\u2019s almost unavoidable in deals like this. The fight will be to keep those bumps from turning into great big potholes.<\/p>\n
\u2014Doug Curlee is a longtime San Diego reporter in both print and television. Reach him at dougcurlee@cox.net.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By DOUG CURLEE | La Mesa Courier On Aug. 13, the La Mesa City Council voted to join a regional community choice energy program headed, more or less, by the city of San Diego. All five City Council members voted in favor of the proposal join a joint powers authority (JPA) that will eventually run […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":766,"featured_media":226571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11548","_seopress_titles_title":"La Mesa to join regional power agency","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11548,11551,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-la-mesa-courier","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/766"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}