Some critics say that\u2019s too long. Never mind that it wasn\u2019t that long ago when we had good ol\u2019 boys on the board for 50 years. I think it\u2019s good that those days are in the past. But the generation, transmission, and financial aspects of providing electric are too complicated for short-termers. Term limits in the state legislature have given the institutional memory to special interest lobbyists. There needs to be a balance.<\/p>\n
Some critics apparently want to keep us dependent on coal-fired power generation no matter what it\u2019s doing to our future. Do those critics have grandchildren?<\/p>\n
Everyone wants cheap electricity. But as I mentioned last month, coal-fired power has major costs that are foisted off on third parties and aren\u2019t part of the cost paid by the customer.<\/p>\n
My electric bill went up a bunch when LPEA raised its base rate, because my monthly electric use is very low (and I\u2019m proud of that). I was advised by a person in a position to know that the base rate is supposed to cover the cost of maintaining LPEA\u2019s distribution system, and that if that cost was really being covered, the base rate would be more than $30.<\/p>\n
Note that LPEA also was whacked with a significant price increase from its power supplier, Tri-State. This year, LPEA raised its rates for actual electric use. My bill didn\u2019t go up as much as it did with the base rate increase. I have no sympathy for those who assert their gawd-given right as Americans to cling to old style incandescent light bulbs.<\/p>\n
LPEA has challenged some aspects of Tri-State\u2019s rate increase, including contractual limits on how much local renewable power LPEA can generate. I am all for more local renewable generation. I\u2019ll support those board candidates.<\/p>\n
My big beef now is that for the second year in a row, customers in what I think is LPEA\u2019s largest district in La Plata County don\u2019t get to vote at all. That\u2019s the area south of Highway 160 and the southwest part of the county.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a commentary for or against the current board members from our district, at least one of whom, I\u2019m pretty sure, has been on the board longer than Jeff Berman.<\/p>\n
LPEA directors are chosen by district. Only people living in a district get to vote on that district\u2019s candidates. I\u2019m thinking some of the people who have been so critical of Berman have supported a similar voting-by-district system for the county commissioners.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d suggest going the other way, to elect LPEA directors at large (but living in their districts) like the county commissioners. That way, some of Berman\u2019s biggest critics could actually vote against him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
critics say that\u2019s too long. Never mind that it wasn\u2019t that long ago when we had good ol\u2019 boys on the board for 50 years. I think it\u2019s good that those days are in the past. But the generation, transmission, and financial aspects of providing electric are too complicated for short-termers. Term limits in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6359],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-120211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-view-from-the-boondocks"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120211"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=120211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}