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-: I see, we definitely have a quorum,
so I think we can get started.
Alright, very good.
Gillian before we begin introductions,
did you want to go through any of the standard technical
matters in the first few slides.
-: Sure, that would be great if the host could advance
the slide, the slide deck.
All right, so this is some meeting information
just to let everyone know this meeting is being conducted
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However, you can also watch the meeting via AdminMonitor.
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and a note to all of our speakers today,
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Members of the public will have the opportunity to provide
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Next slide please.
And just a thank you to everyone for joining.
And I think we can begin with introductions
on the next slide.
After, yes, perfect, thank you.
-: Okay, very good, well welcome everyone.
Sorry, we're starting a little bit late,
but I'm sure we will make up time today.
Wanted to just provide a concise hello
and welcome to everyone to the last quarterly low-income
oversight Board meeting of 2021.
By the end of this meeting,
I think it will be two years of meetings
in this virtual environment.
And I know that that's going to be our next one as well,
but we're hoping that by the spring or early summer,
depending on how we schedule it,
that we'll be able to see each other in person again
and go back to what used to be normal and a little bit,
have a better feeling than it's wonderful to see everybody
in a square box, but I miss seeing people in person.
So with that, I wanted to pass it on to our assigned
Commissioner, Commissioner Shiroma for opening remarks,
and then we'll proceed with introductions
with the rest of the Board.
-: Thank you, good morning, everyone chair, Delgado-Olson,
fellow Board members, indeed, as we come to the end
of another year of both opportunities and challenges,
I want to take a few moments just to thank each of you
for your expertise, experience, commitment to the sports
and low-income community.
This year, we've had some major accomplishments,
the Commission adopted decisions to improve
and take us to the next level of the CARE program,
which is the California alternative rates for energy,
the FERA program,
family electric rate assistance and the energy savings
assistance program or ESA.
The transition of customers on payment plans
to address the debt accumulated from the COVID-19 pandemic.
More recently, new programs for CARE and easy customers
to participate to help address
the upcoming summer reliability.
We've also embarked on coordinating LIOB activities
more closely with the disadvantaged communities advisory
group or DCA and the California lifeline program committee,
or ULTSAC, all towards aligning efforts serving income,
qualified customers and disadvantaged communities.
I thank each of you, this work could not have been done
without your advice and input.
Turning to today's agenda, the focus is to provide a status
from the investor on utilities, ongoing efforts
to assist low-income customers since the COVID 19 outbreak
is Chair Delgado-Olsen indicated, my gosh,
we're entering two years.
It's been a bit unreal, but folks have been agile,
they've been nimble and looking to address the needs
of the customers and low-income communities.
And one of these is a new pilot to reduce electric
and gas disconnections.
It's called PIP, percentage of income payment plan.
It's another opportunity to reduce those disconnections,
to set utility bill payment amounts at an affordable level
and the investor owned utilities seeking input today from
this body on their PIP proposals before submitting
their advice letters to the Commission due on February 4th.
So we will hear their presentations later this afternoon,
the investor owned utilities will also provide updates
on their power safety.
I'm sorry, yeah, power safety, no public safety,
power shutoffs, too many acronyms, public safety,
power shutoffs or PSPSs,
and the impacts on low income communities,
the kinds of things that are being used to mitigate
those impacts, we'll hear their update on the ESA
program solicitations and funding.
I do want to thank the Energy Division staff
for their efforts regarding the ease of contracting funding
and program solicitations working with the IOUs
towards increasing transparency,
providing for that transition into 2022,
very much appreciate the efforts of this group, the LIOB
of our chair and the investor owned utilities
since our last Board meeting in September.
And we will hear more about those efforts.
Also looking forward to hearing from our colleague,
Jason Wimbley, with the California Department of Community
Services and Development on the low income weatherization
and the California Arrearage Payment program,
or arrearage means folks who fell behind in paying
their energy bills.
And Jason will talk about the efforts to help mitigate that.
We'll also hear from Roman Partida-Lopez, Vice Chair
with the disadvantaged Communities Advisory Group
on their activities, and then from the Commission.
I mean, we have a packed agenda today.
And as you can see,
we'll hear from our Energy Divisions Ankit Jain
and Jefferson Hancock on a stack proposal
on implementing affordability metrics,
our very own Capell Kulkarni on the CARE, FERA, ESA program
cycle, summer reliability,
and the low income needs assessment arena.
We'll hear from Water Divisions via Kevin Truong
on the customer assistance program and conservation reports
and an assembly bill activity.
And then from our consumer affairs branch, Rivender Manget
offer the update on the community health and awareness,
natural gas and electric services call or changes.
And then we will hear from Reverend Frank Jackson
and from Village Solutions, a community based organization,
an ESA contractor who will discuss serving the needs
of low-income customers in Southern California
and always last but not least,
I want to thank Gilligan Weaver, our LIOB staff coordinator
for yes, yes, indeed, Gillian's work on coordinating
this meeting, getting all of the pieces put together
and all of that behind the scenes work
and have a meaningful meeting,
with that back to you Chair, Delgado-Olson, thank you.
-: Thank you very much Commissioner for your opening remarks.
And I think Gillian, the next slide has all of our Board
members listed, right?
-: Correct.
-: And so we'll proceed with introductions
and having the Commissioner and I already introduced
ourselves, we'll pass it on
to our vice chair, Maria Stamas.
-: Thanks, Benito, good morning, everyone.
Vice Chair, Maria, and also the public member.
And looking forward to the conversation today,
I'm especially looking forward to hearing updates
on the Arrearage plans and the CAPP program,
and I'll pass it to Jason.
-: Good morning, Jason Wimbley
with the Department of Community Services
and Development, the department representative to the Board,
and I'm glad to be here today
and I will pass it to Robert.
-: Robert, I think you're on mute.
-: Sorry about that, yeah, good morning.
We have a lot of items today, the agenda is packed.
However, there are certainly some issues
that have come to my attention in terms of the transition
with ease program going into actually to some degree,
the end of this month in the beginning of Q1 in 2022.
And I know that we're looking for some guidance
as to where those particular items,
at least at the very least can be teed up
as part of a further discussion at impact to both customers
and workers in the program.
So I would ask the chairman for his leadership
and his guidance as to how we structure that discussion.
And having said that,
I know that I had an opportunity to speak to Pat Watts.
She and I have had very informative discussions
in terms of the employment issue and some of the things
that clearly would impact the ability to avoid workforce
layoffs as well as program disruptions, thank you.
-: And I think Laurdes, you're a Board member Medina.
-: Good morning, all.
(speaks in foreign language)
I think that being on this Board has really been a very
important task in my life and considering everything,
every challenge that a household goes through
when we're talking about low-income communities,
whether it's a single parent with children
or a single parent adult with children
and elders that care for,
and that's just the Raider life challenge.
When we brought COVID on the challenges became more acute,
the behaviors of our companies who are there to also offer
customer service and to offer also a mentality of prosperity
and wanting to be with a state where they do business,
had to take CARE of its stain, they CARE of its consumers.
It's even more vital now,
this Board, I am very grateful for each one of you
who brings a voice of transparency and integrity.
But above all I think is that we know that we're working
as a team, as a community and as a one California,
I keep pushing in wanting to see us each more.
When we get back in person that we keep pushing to have
community members present at some degree,
challenges are more acute now,
even to be on a phone call is challenging
because parents getting calls from their schools
to either pick up their kids because they're in contact
tracer or whatever that thing is called or for your employer
telling you have to come in right now because your coworker
can not show up.
Not having transportation, so a lot of people are right now,
their cars are being picked up
because they can't pay their pass.
So that here in the Central Valley is a real challenge
to even think about our electricity or gas bill
or that our house is not equipped to maintain the heat,
it's really, really stressful.
So let's always keep that in mind,
especially all our IOUs who work for this IOUs
and come on this committee and listen to us,
please do listen.
Yes, you are paying a salary,
but your will there because you have a specialty.
And I do wish that we all always keep this in mind
because the struggle is real, thank you.
-: Thank you, Lourdes.
Really appreciate your comments this morning.
Next member is Board member Watts.
-: Good morning, everyone, Pat Watts.
I am president and CEO of FCI Management
and I am the private weatherization contractor
representative on this Board.
I take that role very seriously because of this,
the contractors that make this program work
and serve the community and contractors often have
many concerns and issues that we have an opportunity
to talk about today.
And I hope that we will be able to just enlighten everyone
as to what some of those challenges are for the contractors.
Especially as we go through this transition into our new ESA
cycle, there are a lots of concerns around solicitation
process and timing.
There are economic concerns with what's happening today
in the real world with cost.
There are also some concerns as we move forward
as to retaining DBEs and community-based organizations
in this program.
And so those are the issues that contractors
are concerned about.
So I hope at some point in time and maybe in item four,
that we'll have an opportunity to address those issues.
And with that, I will pass it on to Paul.
-: Good morning, I'm Paul Irwin, I'm a public member,
I'm a executive housing director of the North Fork,
Rancheria Indian housing authority,
look forward to today's meeting and getting updates.
We weren't able to touch on it last quarter,
but to also go over some of the tribal outreach efforts
and changes and the mini grants and potential partnerships
with tribes, so thank you.
-: Good morning, LESA Castilone, public member,
and also a affiliated with grid alternatives,
inland empire tribal program manager
and community development.
I'm very thankful to be a part of this Board and I'm looking
forward to the presentations today, thank you.
-: Hi, good morning everyone.
I'm Jeff Linam.
I am the water utility representative on this Board.
It's a privilege to be part of this Board and to serve
our low-income customers in the state.
And my focus is really how do we design and implement
the best programs to serve our disadvantaged
and low-income customers,
and there's a lot going on right now.
And so I look forward to hearing the discussion today
and providing any insight that I can, thanks.
-: All right, I am the last person on the Board to introduce
myself, good morning, everyone.
My name is Jessica Lim.
I am with Southern California Edison.
I represent the electrical and gas corporations
on this Board, and I just wanted to thank
Commissioner Shiroma for the perspective in her opening
remarks about all of what we've accomplished this year,
really privileged to have the electrical and gas
corporations be a part of administering such important
programs, such as CARE, FERA and ESA,
as well as being part of administering these important bill
relief programs as well.
And so I also look forward to today's discussion.
Thank you so much.
-: Okay, thank you very much, everyone,
for the introductions.
We're gonna move on to item two,
which is the approvals September 29th LIOB meeting minutes,
opening it up for any discussion,
if not happy to entertain any motion to approve.
-: Motion to approve.
-: Okay, is there a second?
-: I second.
-: Okay, Gillian, would you like to call the roll?
-: Yes thank you, let me begin.
Board Chair Delgado-Olson.
-: I.
-: Board Vice Chair, Stamas.
-: I.
-: Board member Windley.
-: I.
-: Board member of Medina.
-: I.
-: Board member Watts.
-: I.
-: Board member Irwin.
Board member Castilone.
-: I.
-: Board member Linam.
-: I.
-: Board member Lim.
-: I.
-: And Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Okay, did you call Board member Castaneda?
-: Oh, I did, I am so sorry, Board number Castaneda.
-: Thank you, Commissioner, I.
-: I'm so sorry.
-: And I'm also an I, thank you.
-: All right, perfect, so the meeting minutes are approved
and we can move on to public comment.
-: Okay, very good, and thank you again for the hard work
on the minutes, onto item three, public comments,
just a friendly reminder that public comment
is intended to provide an opportunity for members
of the public who wish to address an item that is not
on the agenda.
Members of the Board are not allowed to take any formal
action on an item, not on the agenda,
if possible, it is requested to public comment,
the limited to two minutes per speaker,
and with that happy to open it up to public comment
and Gillian, I'll rely on you to facilitate that.
-: Yes, and before we move into public comment,
I just want to read out some instructions.
So for those who joined via WebEx,
you can request to speak using the raise hand button
in your participant panel,
or you can chat the host and request to speak.
If you're joining from the phone line, English phone line
on WebEx, you will press star three to raise your hand.
And then the host will unmute you
when it's your time to comment.
If you are on the Spanish line,
please press star one and state your name when prompted.
And you'll be moved into a queue to provide comment.
So I can repeat those instructions as needed
if people are having any problems,
but we do have one request to comment already.
So I will go ahead and begin,
if the host could please unmute Anna Solario.
-: Anna Solario is now in the participant list.
-: Hi, good morning, thank you for allowing me
to make some public comments.
Didn't know I was gonna be on,
I just wanted to acknowledge Commissioner Shiroma's
leadership and direction.
And as a result of some comments,
ESA contractors made last cycle last needy.
And as a result, PG&E did meet with ESA contractors
and we were able to work out some, PG&E was able to restore
some funding to the beginning of next year's ESA contract.
And I'd like to acknowledge Commissioner Shiroma's
leadership in this and Energy Division's assistance.
So I know this is gonna be a challenging year,
there's gonna be a lot of changes.
I think a lot of contractors embrace the changes
and see what better service we can provide,
low-income customers.
I do want to bring up a concern that is the ESA PRG
the review group, that is the procurement review group,
that the membership specifically,
it's very disconcerting who has made the members of the PRG.
I brought it up at a open public meeting
that no people who work with low income
or low income communities are represented
on that procurement group.
And why that is concerning is because one of the task
of the procurement group is to monitor the scope
of the multifamily procurement process
and solicitation process.
So there are two groups well-known to all of us,
and they have legitimate views.
They've been active participants in the proceeding
and that's National Consumer Law Center, NRDC.
They have strong opinions about the multifamily portion
of ESA, there was a public process.
The ALJ decided the Commissioner decided the scope,
but what's concerning is that this group is gonna monitor
the scope and will have influence on how PG&E
specifically rolls out, develops, establishes
their multifamily program and why that's concerning
because there's no other voice or counter voice
or counter ideas per se will be presented on that PRG.
And while I anticipate good faith on everybody's part,
I do believe that should be an open process,
a transparent process.
I did ask that certain members be added during,
there was a process where we could add members
that were community members not associated with ESA,
but that did not happen through a variety of reasons.
But so it's a concerning thought it's concerning.
I know it's not just my concern.
I've heard from other contractors have heard from other
public members about the lack of diversity,
the lack of inclusion on the review group.
So what I would like to ask,
and you can not take any action at this meeting,
but that any conversations that are made between the PRG
and PG&E be documented,
I understand it's a solicitation process, it's private,
but after the fact there should be transparency,
and there should be acknowledgement
if changes were made that the direct direction of certain
parties, because I think again,
it needs to be an open process and need to be a transparent
process and this issue is too important to be left
to a small group of people to determine
how Californians, low-income Californians are treated.
So thank you for indulging me
and I appreciate the opportunity to speak.
-: Thank you, Anna, Gillian, next speaker.
And then just as a quick aside,
I do believe PRG is within item eight somewhere.
So if members have questions about that,
that's the points from the agenda where that I believe
there's something located about.
Gillian, next speaker, whenever you're ready.
-: All right, so we have Jay Thomas on the line as well.
And I think due to his system,
we're gonna have to promote him to panelists
so he can speak.
Just want us to give you a heads up,
so the host could, could move Jay up so he can provide
his comment, that would be great, thank you.
Brendan: This is Brendan with IT.
Jay has now been promoted.
-: Okay, so you should be able to speak,
Jay, are you able to speak, if you are,
we can't hear you in the meeting right now.
-: Gillian I see him on the panel, his roster,
but it doesn't show any connectivity to audio or visual.
-: Right, which is, I think why we had to promote him.
But perhaps he's joining in on the phone.
Jay, if you could shoot a chat to IT,
if you're on the phone and we can work offline on this.
-: Also Anna Solarios's mic is still hot.
-: Okay, thank you.
Brendan: This is Brandon with IT.
And we have seen that Jay Thomas has connected his audio
and would surely be able to speak.
-: All right, Jay, it looks like up there.
I think you're un-muted.
Jay: Yes, can you here me?
-: Yes.
Jay: Sorry about that.
Again, my name is Jay Thomas.
I'm with a company called Energy Efficiency Resources.
We're a supplier of appliances for low-income programs
in the Southern California area.
Our primary client is Southern California Edison.
We've been involved with prop supply apart
for about 12 years now and in performing
latent warranty issues.
I'm sure everybody is probably aware of by now that there's
a supply chain crisis that is affecting almost every aspect
of our lives.
That's a distributional level we're experiencing
unprecedented inflation, raw material shortages
and freight increases because of rising fuel costs,
just become a greater concern because it has been brought
to our attention that there is a large reduction
in the number of in 2022 forecast.
This becomes problematic because during the past 12 years,
a very large scale leverage purchasing power has been
one of the key components for manufacturing,
a warehousing and delivery of product,
accurate forecasting with our manufacturers.
It's enabled us to keep the inventory stream flowing
even during the pandemic to the large number of units
being purchased in past performances with SCE,
this is now in jeopardy because the forecast for this
next year is calling for a such a dramatic reduction
that we won't any longer have preferred status.
That means price increases no guarantee
for holding inventory, moving forward.
Our freight costs have always been absorbed
by the manufacturer because the bond allows to ship
in truckload quantities.
Less units means mostly partial shipments,
which incur freight costs that will now have to be passed on
buying power has always been his for mental
and maintaining cost effectiveness for the measurement.
Our business will be currently impacted also by this change,
I'll lose a third to half of my staff budget calculations
will have to do, that'd be done to reassess,
our direction forward.
My warehouse and Casper capability will have to be downsized
because of the cost associated with reducing inventory.
This will affect our manufacturers as well,
because there could possibly be layoffs of staff
because of reduction.
They're already experiencing labor shortages
across the Board.
And this could exacerbate an already a significant problem.
Everyone from my business to the manufacturers
to the truck drivers will be impacted.
The greatest impact to the law customers.
Appliance technologies are constantly changing,
sear ratings for HBAC, energy efficiency standards
for refrigerators and energy efficient fans and motors
and water reduction for evaporative coolers.
Cutting back at this time,
or products are needed now more than ever.
The greatest impact though,
it could be felt by the contractors layout widespread
because of reduced number of appliances,
installers warehouse workers,
clinical staff will all be greatly impacted.
Lastly, once the forecasted numbers are good
and the manufacturers any on schedule increases
will be very difficult to accommodate moving forward.
These numbers we locked in for the year
and with the current shortages,
they'll be no guarantee of product for the seeable future.
So again, thank you for allowing me to make my comments.
I appreciate it.
-: Thank you, Jay, for your comments.
Gillian, next speaker, please.
-: So the next speaker is Paul R.
and you should be able to unmute yourself and speak.
-: Can you hear me?
-: Yes, can.
-: Let's see if I can get my camera to, look at that.
Well, good morning Board members.
Thank you for your time.
My name is Paul Braille,
I'm the President of Clinical Appliance Distributors.
One of the suppliers to California Edison,
currently a distributor of residential kitchen appliances.
And most specifically frigidaire brand of refrigerators,
we've appreciated that the opportunity to supply low income
program with energy star refrigerators.
In order to maintain a smooth supply of refrigerators
for the program, we have rented additional large warehouse
space and hire additional staff to manage the storage
and delivery of these refrigerators to the program.
We're purposely storing large quantities of fridges
from high volume or displays throughout the year.
In order to meet the two week shipping requirements
of the program, should the program be cut back
or reduced in volume?
We will not be able to justify the additional warehouse
space and the extra workers or high volume orders
to remain a priority for Frigidaire is limited
manufacturing quota, all kinds of impacts and manufacturing,
we have trips, shortages, truck shortages.
The list goes on right to the like two minutes.
So I just wanted to thank you all for your time.
And we look forward to a smooth
and successful 22, thank you.
-: Thank you for your comments, Gillian next speaker.
-: At this time, I do not have anyone else.
Oh yes, there is someone else.
If the host could please unmute Mike M.
great Mike, you should be able to speak.
Mike: Morning, hear me?
-: Yes, we can.
Mike: Okay, thank you, good morning,
my name is Mike Malki.
I am the national sales manager for Champion Cooler
and STK Products.
We manufacture residential and commercial evaporative
coolers, and we also manufacture a specific cooler
for the California Edison, a low-income program.
I just was asked to speak on behalf of the low-income
program and the funding explaining what some of the supply
chain issues that we've seen over the last year.
As we're living in unprecedented times during
the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has affected so many of our
lives and professions, the impact of raw materials
and transportation costs have severely effected
our cost of goods.
Along with the challenges that we've seen with the pandemic
and our workforce numbers over the last year,
there are new new efficiencies and cost cutting
and purchasing activities, we have done our very best
to mitigate these rising costs, but over the last 10 months,
we have seen huge increases in our supply chain,
25 to 30% increases in steel that we manufactured
our coolers to Edison, 15 to 20% increases
in plastic polypropylene for our winter coolers.
Ocean freight costs obviously have skyrocketed
over this time as well as we get our components from China
and especially container availability is a big concern
with lead times for these products that we sell,
where we're seeing long lead times of six to eight
additional weeks on the water.
Obviously we continue to do everything possible
to minimize manufacturing costs without affecting quality.
But these increases have been pushed on to our customers.
We continue to look at everything we can,
but obviously you've got cooling is essential
for these low-income programs.
As we continue to see electricity prices increase over time.
I just want to thank everybody for your time as well.
And hopefully we can continue to move through this pandemic
as a group, thank you.
-: Thank you for your comments, appreciate it.
Gillian, any other speakers?
-: I do not have any other speakers in the queue.
Could it confirm that no one else has requested
to speak in the chat.
Brendan: Brandon with IT,
and I can confirm that no one else
has been requested to speak.
-: Okay, thank you, and then I want to check on the Spanish
phone line to see if we have any commenters
on the Spanish line.
Any questions or comments?
All right, I just got confirmation that there are no
comments on the Spanish line, so,
oh, there is one more hand raised.
However, John H. if the host could please unmute him.
All right, John, you should be able to speak.
(indistinct)
-: Yes.
John: Very good, my name's John (indistinct),
I'm the District Manager Allied Air.
We supply the program with residential
air conditioning and heat pump units for the low income.
And just wanted to give you an update,
we've set up a nice process on delivering even through
the last two years of the pandemic and the issues
that we've all encountered.
And just give you an update that we continue to have
the process to support this program.
It's been very beneficial.
I know for the low-income homeowners,
I'm getting conditioned air and heat when needed
and changing out units that are antiquated
and in need of repair, so they do the change outs,
just a couple of keynotes.
We all know the supply chain issues we've had increases
and raw materials, upwards of 87 to 97%.
We all know that labor has been an issue over the years,
our CEO and his third quarter comments
to the shareholders stated that the global supply chain
and COVID-19 disruptions to production and our labor force
material impact financial performances looking had the,
for the company overall demand remains strong.
A global supply chain, bottlenecks and shortages
are expected or not expected to be resolved soon.
And COVID-19 adds more complexity to the labor
and production disruption.
So as we look at 2022 and any changes we would need to know
as we've set up supply processes to get the products
to the needed people through Edison.
So that was just the comments that we did
from the Air conditioning side.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you for your comments this morning.
Gillian, any other speakers for public comment?
-: No, there is no one else in the queue
to provide competent.
-: Okay, very good.
We'll move on then to item four,
which is the joint investor owned utility status reports
as has been the norm for quite some time,
rather than a presentation,
we're gonna open it up for questions and comments
from members of the Board.
Before we do so in light of public,
some of the public comments we just heard,
and also just as an update, the colleagues, I will say,
I have received a number of inquiries from the contractor,
community suppliers and so forth expressing their concerns
and also just requests for some clarity.
And I know that this has taken up some time
from our previous meetings.
So I wanted to just share that I did reach out
to representatives of the other IOUs,
just to kind of inquire about three questions
that were prevalent in feedback we received
at these meetings and that I've received through email
and phone communication, namely of, a lot of people
were quite pleased with the responsiveness
from RHA and PG&E
following their all hands meeting contractors.
And so that prompted questions of do the other utilities
have this sort of all hands meetings.
Do the utilities have the ability to add or restore
any funding if there are cuts and do they know of any
workforce reductions at this point in time
or expect any in the future?
And so I shared those questions earlier in the week
with representatives of each of the IOUs,
just to get some of their responses and to add some clarity
to the discussion at the onset.
And what I can share of course is from PG&E.
We're aware of the response from them in RHA.
And according to them,
they're not aware of any workforce reductions
since making that adjustment of additional funding
to the ESA budget for 2022, SDG&E shared that they do
hold these quarterly contracts meetings as well,
and that they're authorized funding increased from 2021
and that they allocated program funds last June
for contractors through program year 2022.
And that they're also not aware of any workforce reductions
due to the 2022 ESA program budget this time.
SoCalGas shared that they conduct all hands meetings
with their contractors.
The most recent was a network opportunity
on the 19th of October.
And they also, of course, as all IOUs to meet
with their contractors individually to discuss
funding allocations for 2022.
SoCalGas also shared they plan to allocate virtually
all of its contractor related budget as authorized,
and the decision for the 2022 year.
And in that their conversations with their contractors,
they haven't heard of any specific workforce reductions
at this time, SE excuse me,
Southern California Edison responded that they also hold
quarterly contractor virtual meetings,
that they have plans to commit open work from 2021
to supplement contractor work in 2022.
And we'll communicate the 2022 forecast to contractors
the email with follow up individual meetings as requested,
and that they're not aware of any workforce reductions
due to the 2022 ESA program budget.
And so those are responses from each of the IOUs.
I think one minor clarification
for Southern California Edison would just be,
if those meetings with contractors are ever all hands
similar to PG&E and some of the others,
'cause I know that's what seem to provide
a good opportunity for feedback.
And then the other question I would just have to the other,
IOU is just to confirm that everything I stated was true
because there are dates to misrepresent your responses
and create confusion.
So, and then also just thank you for being so responsive.
I sent these out on a Monday and by the end of yesterday
had responses, so appreciate it,
but that's where it's at right now.
So with that context, I'm happy to open it up to questions
and comments from members of the Board
and would also respectfully ask just Edison
for that one clarification
on other contracting meeting structure.
-: So we do have all hands virtual meetings,
but if we're talking about individual contract terms
and condition rates,
those are then on a one-on-one basis with specific vendors.
So if it's a general training information about program
updates, then we conduct those.
We discuss those topics during our quarterly all hands
meetings, but in their virtual.
But if it's an individual contract discussion,
then we meet with an individual vendor or contractor.
-: Okay, thank you for the clarification, Eugene.
And with that, happy to open it up to questions,
comments from members of the Board on this.
And of course the presentation put together,
but IOU, Commissioner did I see your hand up?
-: I'm not sure how many folks are signing on strictly
who the phone and she only, we have the slide deck
on our website, but I think it would be helpful
if each utility just gave a two minute over,
very brief overview of what they are doing for,
we're in December now,
we're going to be entering the 2022 great very soon,
there's new effective July 1st,
which increases the pool of homes that will qualify for ESA
from 200% of poverty to 250% of poverty.
There will be work underway towards folding that in
that's ahead of us.
But that will be an increase in the number of homes
that will be included.
So again, for our listening audience,
not doing audience, I think less depart from just simply
bringing up questions and have each utility give an overview
of what they're doing.
I know we hear a little bit from Edison,
but 'cause not ever can see the chat where the utilities
you're saying, yes, chairman your summary is correct.
All right, so whoever wants to go first.
-: Commissioner, I could probably go first.
This is Eugene from Southern California Edison.
So in terms of this year,
we are actually operating in pre pandemic levels.
In fact, it's been, we did a lot of ramp up on our
productivity from various contractors and you are very close
to maybe exceeding 80,000 homes this year.
And I know that there is this new legislation that allows
the ESA program to expand eligibility to our ESA customers.
And that's like 250% of FPL.
And I think it's a great opportunity to increase our number
of home treated, but at the same time,
there are limitations that we're seeing right now.
So first off, SCE receive a significant cut
in our budgets for 2022.
It's a big difference.
So in 2021, you're looking at an 80 million budget
and in 2022, you're looking at around 58 million
and we've heard all the far contractor concerns
and we're addressing those.
One of the things that we're doing at least for 2021,
is looking at whatever amount of funds that we think
is going to be unspent this year.
And we're continuing to assign every single dollar
to contractors so we could utilize
all of the funding this year.
Another area that we're we're looking at is we do have
unspent dollars, which heard the decision is supposed to be
used offset future funding levels for 2022.
We're trying to explore if we could utilize
that to supplement additional work in 2022,
instead of offsetting current work.
And I believe PG&E, we will be in discussion
with PG&E and trying to leverage what they have done
to increase their budget for 2022.
But overall our contractors have been informed
that our budgets are a lot lower and our targets
are lower just based on the disposition.
But we are looking at avenues to make sure
that we can increase those,
considering that we have more customers who will be eligible
for the program come mid 2022, thank you.
-: Commissioner, did you want the other?
-: Yes, PG&E San Diego gas electric and SoCalGas
again, in that order.
-: Is there a staff from PG&E,
we're able to respond to the Commissioner?
-: And I'm looking at slide 25 in the slide deck.
-: Okay.
-: Which is the ESA contractor funding update that table.
-: Hi Benito.
-: Also, for Eugene,
maybe we don't have results right now,
but about your budget.
Well, okay, we're gonna have to just look at
that going forward.
All right, back to the other utilities.
-: I think I see Mary O'Drain promoted the panelists.
Perhaps we could go PG&E.
-: So I can give a high level overview.
The program manager is not on the call,
but basically at this moment that the numbers
that you're seeing in the slide deck that's as of October.
So, it's a little bit behind where we actually are.
We're expecting to, and I know home's treated
as no longer our goal, but it's a number two to tell you
where we are right now at, we expect to achieve a neat
about a 100,000 homes in total in the ESA program,
which is let's see, so.
Neil: Mary, and I could fill in,
so this is Neil apologies.
I'm having a camera issue, but so PG needs to end the year.
We have our 50,000 homes treated for bridge funding,
which we met, we treated 53,000 and we have the similar goal
for the second half of this year also 50,000.
We will most likely fall short of that by a couple,
maybe 3000 units, but we, for what it's worth,
we expect to treat a 1000 homes
for the year overall, just we would not meet the exact
splits will be over for the first half
and under for the second half, but put together,
we expect to be at the 100,000.
-: And if you wouldn't mind, Neil,
just a very brief description
of your education training outreach.
The contractors just being kind of held up, held on high.
I held up high as the model for the other utilities.
Neil: I'm sorry, Commissioner, could you repeat that?
-: What outreach and training and education efforts
you're doing for the contractors
for the folks who are going to be
continuing the program and who are going to be competing
for this next phase.
Neil: So we continue to meet with contractors
to educate them on the new measures that will be put
in place for the program, what the parameters are
as far as the needs states in the new program,
updating them on the additional potential licensing required
for new measures, as well as any updates to the IS manual.
Also that they received some general training from the,
our energy training centers,
as far as certain classifications, such as,
and get training, they take a,
they receive training and take a practical exam.
Also, they go through ES training as well.
-: Thank you, San Diego or SoCalGas.
-: This is Irma Dupretti with San Diego Gas and Electric.
So similar to PG&E, we're on track to meet
an overall homes treated goal of about 12,000 customers
this year, which is in line with what our goal was.
I don't remember the second half of the bridge period,
we were a little bit uncomfortable there.
We're struggling a little bit in this second period of 2021,
we are in a different position than the other utilities
where are in funding has increased over 2021.
And therefore we're not really the contractors
aren't concerned obviously with the funding levels.
However, we're still having some contractors,
a contractor struggled with issues related to the pandemic
and higher rating resources here.
And so we're still a little bit slow when they're trying
to ramp up.
We are in communication with the program changes
that are upcoming and working towards the savings goals
and transitioning to the new program cycle.
And we're in communication with our contractors regularly
on what the measures changes are in, in what's upcoming,
as far as, like I said, funding,
there's really no concern from the SDG&E side,
as far as marketing and outreach.
We have a team of which we'll talk a little bit more about
that if they have the opportunity,
but we work directly with our contractors here
to support some of their campaigns as specifically
that they're looking for when they're looking
to target specific areas, we support that.
And we do feel that, moving towards
the new FERA guidelines in July will certainly help
in reaching more customers.
But the challenge is sometimes are more along the lines
of property owner optimizations and getting more work done
for the units themselves.
So there is a little bit of a struggle on that end,
and that pretty much wraps it up for SDG&E,
unless if you have any questions.
-: Thank you, that's very insightful.
And then Socal and then relinquish the microphone
to other Board members for their questions.
-: Hello, good morning everybody.
This is Mark A. Gary,
I'm the Customer Assistance Program Manager
for Southern California Gas Company.
Just to provide you an update of where we're at
relative to funding from 2021 and the transition into 2022.
So the SoCalGas contractor related budget is decreasing
by 14% from 2021 to 2022.
And so we have been working with our contractors
and communicating to them early regarding this potential,
so they can make adjustments.
In addition, we met with each one of our 40 plus contractors
to discuss the allocation, what the potential for them is.
In other words, to maintain productivity
from 2021 into 2022,
in some cases working to identify that,
considering the program rules do not allow for fund shifting
from year to year, it's kind of, if you don't use
the budget, you lose it that that year,
we want to make sure we're allocating to our contractors
appropriately, and they're fully able to utilize their,
their budgets, the allocated budgets at 2022.
So we work with our contracts to do that,
and we feel we've allocated appropriately,
although the, but there is a budget reduction overall,
although contractors saw a budget reductions into 2022,
it seemed to be manageable in discussions with contractors.
The other thing I wanted to mention the we're also seeing
a reduction obviously into 2023,
I think overall from 2021 to 2023,
it's about a 32% reduction, so it's very significant.
SoCalGas will be holding a solicitation next year
for it's a core contractor network.
And at the appropriate time,
we've already held a solicitation 101
for potential bidders.
We're also having a symposium that's upcoming in January
to connect prime contractors and subcontractors
as an IOU symposium.
And then at the appropriate time,
they'll have a bidders conference,
so that contractors are being a well-prepared
to participate in the solicitation for SoCalGas.
For 2021, for the first six months,
SoCalGas goal was 60,000, I think we did 59 plus,
I don't have that number in front of me.
And we're on track also for the last six months of the year
to reach pretty close to reaching our goals.
So I don't know if there are any additional questions
from Commissioner Shiroma, if there's anything that you,
that I missed that you asked for.
-: Thank you, and thank you all for your overviews.
I think I saw some hands raised earlier a chair.
-: Yeah, I saw Board members, Medina and also Board member
Castaneda, Board member Medina, would you like to go first?
-: Yes, sorry, I'm trying to use my phone here, kinda crazy.
Yes, so looking at the I'm looking at the all presentation
sent home and which is the ESA contractor funding updates,
says that's the segment are we still on that one, right?
-: Correct.
-: Oh, great, so, and listening to all these are concerns
that are being shared right now, both from the IOUs
and the ESA contractors.
I think it's interesting for us to see some sort of a report
done on costs.
I mean, obviously because of the pandemic
and what's the chain of events that has happened with that.
I think that we also need to start looking forward
to seeing as a Board for us to see this information,
how it affected prior to COVID, how was this managed?
Because as I asked him prior meeting on the funding,
that when I started,
I think it was three years or four years ago,
I remember saying to the IOUs, well,
what you're reporting to me about the funds you're in fourth
quarter, they weren't even like 50% spent.
And one of my questions I had in the last Board meeting
was the funds where they're placed.
This is a significant amount of money.
Is this generating any sort of interest
wherever it's placed?
And is that interest money that's generated from those,
from this funding?
I don't know if it is because I don't know
if it's such an account,
which it should be if that interest is being poured back
into that account to send it back to the general fund.
So the CPAC handles, or I don't know who handles that,
but I think we need to see that because cost obviously
is going to keep going up and does this mean,
then we have less funding available to help
more of our community, so those are just my clarification.
So I would like to see regarding the budgets
for the ESA, thank you.
-: Thank you, Board member Medina, Board member Castaneda
-: Thank you chair.
I'll tell you, we have a very, very complex set of issues
that at some level are in conflict with one another.
What I'm reflecting on is that reduction in budgets.
And then again, as I go to the ESA program spend
the expenditures clearly they kind of reflect program
activity on a ground level,
which are less than the authorized budget.
So when we take that reality from the previous year,
we take a new sort of mandates with unspent funds
and not being able to carry over dollars.
And then we take, again, a major re re-engineering
of the program and the shifts with less money,
and again, these are factors that are emitting knowledge
by the utilities themselves.
And I'm thinking more specifically of Southern California
Gas, market gary.
I appreciate your candor in connection with this Board,
with your financial situation, with the program,
as you've interpreted decision,
I also want to commend Pacific Gas and Electric for,
and they have historically,
as long as I be connected to this program have met
in an open forum with contractors four times a year,
where, again, those meetings can't be easy.
They're very robust, but at the end of the day,
PG&E is committed to the program to evaluate it
and revise it from the service delivery area.
The last meeting generated additional monies
that they were able to shift into the program.
And really realistically, what are the goals of that?
And I think that as a Board, we have to hold up our values.
We have to make very, very clear to the utilities
because we are government, IOUs are not government,
they're Fortune 500, are private sector companies.
And I respect the private public partnership.
But at the end of the day, our program values workers,
we value services targeted at the low-income community
that can do a number of things.
obviously energy efficiency is important,
but so is the reduction of energy burden
and the promotion of health, comfort, and safety.
So again, what I think has been somewhat lacking
and I have to be a little confused about the Southern
California Edison presentation just now in terms
of their dialogue and their communication with contractors,
because I have had concerns brought to my attention that,
because of the budget reductions that Jean so adequately
cited minutes ago, that contractors are considering layoffs,
they are considering downsizing their program.
And that's my major concern through any and all of this
transition, a couple of things should not happen.
We should not compress the program in terms of again,
workers' employment, and we should not compress the ability
for us to deliver services to this program,
because in my nearly seven or eight years
connected with ESA, primarily with Proteus,
which is a major nonprofit in the south central valley
Proteus extend services as far north as Bishop,
as part of its Southern California Edison program
that they participate in.
And Bishop is a long way from Viselia.
And I spoke with the CEO about the cost of doing that,
the cost of Proteus and Proteus absorbs a loss to service
some of those outlying communities are hard to serve.
And that's something that we consistently hear about,
over the years when we meet and I asked the CEO,
Mike, why don't you do that if you're losing money?
He said, look, because people need what we provide.
So we send our trucks up the hill to do that.
And so what I'm saying is, is that it was,
we marched through this transition.
We should always keep in mind, the fact that these programs
are important to people that we understand
that there are workers and primarily workers
that are hired at a disadvantage communities
that are again, stakeholders in our processes
would change it.
And so what are the things that I would strongly recommend
it would like to see are, again, maybe they can't do them
quarterly, but I would like to see them at least
twice a year, all contractors on Board can meet
with the individual utilities because I think individual
contractors feel that there's strength in numbers.
And so they are not inclined to not say and really speak up
about direct impacts that all of us on this Board
have to revaluate because we're concerned with results.
The other thing is that I think might be helpful as a tool
in terms of a survey monkeys online.
I mean, there are other sorts of tools that are available,
so we could actually pull contractors to see,
what the potential for layouts are as we transition,
as we transition through solicitations,
as we transitioned through changes in the program.
So having said that, Mr. Chair, I think that,
we should be looking at a little bit more open lines
of communication between utilities and contractors.
Again, I know that specific utilities i.e PG&E in Southern
California Gas had been very good at doing that.
I understand also SDG&E has a very, very sort of interactive
line of communication and I would encourage Edison
to do the same thing, thank you.
-: Thank you Board member Castaneda, Vice Chair Stamas.
-: Thank you, I just wanted to build on what Board member
Castaneda mentioned in terms of also seeing
some incongruencies here between, I understand that,
budgets may be smaller next year,
but we're seeing numbers this year with millions of dollars
of unspent funds.
And so just encourage taking a closer look of if we have
millions of unspent funds this year,
why are we still seeing a contraction in workforce?
So that's, I guess just one question also,
just like a public policy comment on the unspent funds.
I understand that Commission regulation right now
does not allow them to kind of be reallocated to provide,
additional benefit for low-income customers,
but it just does not seem right in this time of COVID
and this time of need in this time of legislation coming,
that's going to expand the pool of those eligible
that we're seeing unspent funds going back
to all rate pairs.
Okay, that aside, I had a question as well.
I'm looking at the energy savings numbers,
which directly correlate to reductions in energy burden.
And I'm seeing that per household, numbers around like 2%
in bill reductions
and with the exception of Southern California Edison,
which has 30% savings.
So I was just wondering if someone from SCE could just speak
to how they're getting such high savings
and if maybe there's anything instructive
for some of the other utilities.
-: Yeah, so yeah, Maria that's actually a good question.
We tried to double check this multiple times today,
but it all boils down to, we covered four months from July
to October and then annualize
the estimated savings per home.
So, you're dividing 51 million KWH by 15 million KWH.
And that's how we got the 29.5%.
Last month, last quarter as it was at 7%.
And I could only make an assumption that it's because
we have a lot of distributions for lighting products
in the past few months that it actually brought up
our numbers a little bit higher normal,
but we can double check these numbers and confirm
that next time.
-: Great, yeah, and I asked just because those are amazing
numbers, so if it's accurate, I think it would be great
to see higher numbers from some of the other utilities
as well, thank you.
-: Other questions or comments from Board members?
-: Yeah.
-: Board member Watts.
-: Thank you, so I want to talk about costs for a minute,
and we've heard from folks that made some public comment
about supply chain issues and impacts on cost.
There are other costs that are also impacting contractors
significantly, right now we are experiencing 6.7%
inflation rate nationally.
And so that dribbles right down into our supply chain
cost as well.
Let's talk about wage increases right now,
even priory and biting is almost literally a wage war to get
new employees higher, you pay them higher costs,
and we try to balance that with costs that haven't increased
in the last few years significantly in that to cover
inflation costs increased cost of wages to customers.
And I mean, literally a contractors that are fighting
with fast food restaurants who are raising their minimum
wage rates to $20 an hours to get qualified people
to come in and work for the contractors.
Some of the other issues of concern are insurance costs.
Insurance costs are increasing tremendously directly related
to COVID, it's not only healthcare insurance,
but it's general liability, it's ourbrella liability.
It's those of us who also have to have cyber liability
insurance, which is going to be required as part of the new
solicitation carrier at our significant increase of overhead
cost to the contractors.
And then there's an increase in fuel costs.
Your contractors are out in their chucks and sending out
their outreach people and cars every day,
and we're paying mileage reimbursements for those employees.
And so therefore there, we have no way of really absorbing
those costs that they're not addressed in the new contracts
through increased costs and measure costs that will
and will be in line with the current inflation rate.
So that's one issue.
There's a lot of other variables and unknowns
that we're gonna see in the next year or so,
because no matter how you look at it,
we're still going to be impacted by COVID related issues
on our economy, whether they're in the supply chain
or otherwise, so wanting to just address that and bring that
to everybody's attention.
'Cause I think that it needs to be really examined,
especially this is a pay for performance type contract
that we start looking at that in a measure cost
doesn't go new contracts.
The other thing I wanted to to address is again,
on the solicitation process.
And if you don't mind putting that slide back up for me,
please, Brandon, I think you're in charge of slides,
solicitation slide.
Brendan: Pardon Patricia, what slide was that?
-: The solicitation, is it a program
contractor solicitation update.
-: I believe it's slide 13 in the deck that you have.
That was up earlier.
You're talking about the one with the dates correct?
-: That's correct.
-: Okay, yes, this one, right?
-: Yes.
-: Okay, thank you.
-: Thanks, so there is some real concern
with the solicitation process with contractors.
If you look on each one of the utilities dates
for issuing RFP, they are literally right on top
of each other.
A lot of the contractors serve multiple utility companies
in this ESA program.
So having the ability and resources to respond
to these RFPs at the rate that they're being released
is difficult, it is difficult to keep someone writing
and keeping up with the dates,
submitting all of the necessary paperwork in a timely
manner, these RPS are coming out one behind the other.
It's a very aggressive schedule.
And as far as contractors are concerned,
it really puts them at a disadvantage to be able to respond
to them, they should not have to pick or choose
which one of these RFPs they're going to respond to.
They should be, given the opportunity to respond
to all of them.
But this schedule is very challenging.
Want to bring that to the utilities attention,
because I know that you do want your contractors
to be able to respond to these RFPs in a timely manner.
The schedule was very aggressive.
So those are my comments on both two issues,
economic and solicitation.
I do have one last comment and that has to do
with the percentage of disadvantaged businesses,
MBEs WMB service disabled veterans that are a part of this.
I know that they have been a very high percentage
of the utility span occurs in the ESA contractor network
because many of the contractors are qualified in WBEs.
And so I would like to know from the utility companies,
what percentage of DBEs are in your current ESA span?
Also the CBLs, what percentage of CBLs
are in the current DBE span?
Because I think that you're going to see a shift
of that as we start to go through the contractor
solicitation process and the awarding of contracts
for the 22 and beyond, those are my comments.
-: Okay, thank you Board member, Watts,
I see, remember Wimbley's handed up,
but I had a really quick question that I wanted to ask
that I think is a followup to some of your comments, Pat,
and perhaps Robert, which is, and looking at this slide
and the various states across each of the utilities.
I'm wondering if it would be helpful if we requested
of the IOUs to create a timeline that goes down
to weekly granularity with milestones due dates, et cetera,
across all four IOUs.
So think of like one calendar or a Gantt chart
or something like that.
I guess my question for feedback would be is that would
disallow potential bidders and contractors,
CDOs and small businesses alike,
to have more predictability of when things
are going to happen and more,
therefore more of an opportunity to prepare for the shifts
that are coming in the program and to partner
with other businesses and so forth
in terms of like thinking of a next step
that would make this much more straightforward
and easier for the contractor community to plan.
-: In my opinion, it's just about the reasonableness
of being able to respond.
So yes, I think your Gantt chart would help,
but let me get with sort of help everyone see how aggressive
this schedule is and to determine whether or not they can
put a little bit more of a timeline in between
the solicitations that are coming out within days
of each other and some cases, they start in Q4
and most of them stop, most of the releases stopped in Q1.
So that is exactly 90 days for them to respond to multiple
RFPs and it's not that it's a single family core.
It's the deep plus, that's the multifamily.
If they're all different RFPs
that have to be responded to individually.
-: Okay, remember Castaneda I mean, with that,
and I know you work with a lot of different stakeholders
in the contractor community as well,
if we tried to develop this tool that was public
and on all the websites and the lists, et cetera,
and updated at some regular interval,
would that be a positive step towards getting to a place
where this is more predictable for the,
and easier to work with?
And also we could forecast challenges kind of like
what Pat was talking about in terms of,
if all of a sudden three IOUs have dates that coincide very
closely that can be addressed
if these were all on one calendar.
-: Yeah, quickly, and I know that Jason's in the queue,
so apologies Jason, but we have to take into consideration
these particular contractual relationships between IOUs
and the service providers.
And again, Pat brought up some very, very good points
about what we value and exactly what is going to be
the impact in terms of the minority business,
small CBOs and small businesses here in California.
But I think, you know, as a practical matter,
we need to identify a process and I like what you brought
forward, Mr. Chairman, but I would like to build on that
because again, since we don't really have a recent history
of RFP and solicitations on this program,
and there have been legitimate issues based on again,
scale of economy costs,
what's happening with COVID internal costs.
I know that Commissioner Rushdoff commented when he voted
for this particular decision that he wanted to see
higher wages, and we certainly would like to see a career
ladder built on workforce education and training
as the program evolves and all of that.
And I'm sure there are many, many other items
we'd like to see.
It's just a matter of bid public policy require resources.
So the tool that we have at our disposal
are not only the budgets for these solicitations.
I think that, again, just to crank them out,
because we think that, again, that's what we're being
asked to do, without the analysis, without the basic
identification of critical sort of criteria without,
again, putting forward in terms of eligibility requirements
to provide proposals, the values that we put
into the program in the service that contractors,
CBOs nonprofits as well as small for-profits provide
is a little hasty.
And so, I'm certainly in favor
of doing more analytical work.
I think that more communication is critical.
I think it should be done on a macro and a micro level
by all utilities, there should be some consistency,
especially where one utility reaches out to another utility
and says, well, gee, how did you do that?
Or what sort of format did you follow?
I think that that sort of exchange should be made public.
And so Mr. Chairman, I'm certainly supportive of any tools,
any process that we can put on the front end that sheds more
light that provides us a better transition tool
with solicitations and again, I agree with Pat,
as I look at this schedule, I mean,
I just don't see how contractors can do this,
if they work with more than one utility,
and understand that these are just not big companies
that provide services through our program.
And I reflect on the conversation that I have with CEO
of Proteus when he sends these trucks up to Bishop
and what allows him to absorb that cost,
that he's not reimbursed for,
the fact that he does volume with two utilities
so he can share and leverage money.
So that is a consideration that we have to consider
as we go through the solicitations
and the actual contract execution and implementation
who gets left out.
And if we know that on the front end,
that we can avoid that,
I'm just concerned at this point that we haven't done
the upfront work before we're jumping into the solicitation
process, so to answer your question, Mr. Chair,
I support that, I also support direct communication with
contractors to see based on what they know communications
they've had with utilities,
what their forecast is going to be based on their workforce.
I think that's important for this Board to know.
So, again, I support any sort of activity that we can,
support be part of or endorse that allows more information
to be forthcoming.
-: Okay, that sounds good.
So perhaps, and Jason, thank you for waiting.
Perhaps if it's agreeable,
then that's something that could be worked on offline to see
if there's a way to facilitate that so that it can provide
more predictability and problem solving opportunity.
So with that Board member Wimbley.
-: Oh, thank you, so Board member Watts,
I got, and I think there's more directed at you.
So in your comments, you talked about,
some of the financial challenges that contractors
are facing, that's attributed to the need to pay higher
wages, difficulty with hiring qualified staff, fuel costs,
even earlier today, the public comments
that we're talking about supply chain issues, inflation,
and the cost increases that you're going to be seeing on
that front and I was trying to get an understanding
of how this kind of overlays with the conversations
that we're having with budget compactation
and the contract that concerns.
So my question to you is, how does the IOUs
or the contractors navigate these issues
where there are these significant cost increases
that you're trying to absorb?
Now, what's the mechanisms for addressing that?
Is that this something that contractors have to absorb
or do the IOUs take proactive measures to address
those changes in the environment that's increasing costs
and service delivery?
-: So Jason, I want to just say that,
I think all of this is so new, I mean, we, first of all,
have not seen price increases like this.
People are nor have we seen supply chain issues
that are real and no one really understands
and knows how long that's going to last,
maybe fuel costs will go down in the next couple of months,
or maybe they won't, or maybe the supply issue is mentioned
by the vendors, that are still occurring across the Board,
not just for the materials that we buy or the appliances
they supply, but, how has that long-term.
And when you think about that,
when you're talking about 2022 into an existing budget,
measure costs need to be adjusted.
I don't know that that is happened.
I have not had those conversations.
So and I don't know if other contractors have had
that conversation with the utilities,
but they have all expressed it to me and our conversations.
So I'm bringing forth their issues and their concerns.
The other thing about that is as you're starting to be it,
and you're going into bed and you're pricing as being
for a bids on pricing,
and you've got all of these issues and unknown
that we're facing, we've got to go in there and say, okay,
we're gonna be at least 10 to 15% higher in cost
than we were in the last three years.
So those are all concerns.
Those that keep you competitive when you're bidding
or in a competitive bid.
That's an issue too.
-: Yeah, thank you for that.
'Cause I guess what I was getting at that,
these issues that you're talking about a real, I mean,
even the programs that CSC overseas, we've had to make
adjustments to reimbursement and measure costs,
things of that nature because we have to deal
with the reality that these things are changing in the world
that we're operating within.
And in many cases, the supply chain issues in inflation,
even though we've seen a stark increases as a way,
but we've been dealing with these issues
for more than a year now and it's impacted program
operations and service delivery in one way, shape or form.
So I was just trying to get an idea on how,
what the remedies are for these things,
because I think that these are also imposing financial
strain on contractors and the only way you can recover
is through volume if at all.
So it's just trying to get an idea on what the strategies
could be going forward to address.
-: Yeah, and I don't want to say one thing
and I don't want to sort of stereotype everybody
or point fingers at anyone just in the contracts that I had.
And then I deal with, there are some times when I've seen
adjustments on particular measure costs based on inflation
on what's occurring in the market,
that happens as necessary.
But all of this is changing so quick.
And so across the Board, it's not just one measure,
it's not just right now lumber,
it's also the cost of faucet aerator, so yeah.
-: Yeah, I think, but to Bob's point earlier about
convening these all hands meetings, I mean,
they seems like the focus should be on that as well during
these discussions, because I think trying to get out
in front on some of these issues with only serve
the program better, and then obviously, these things could,
that don't necessarily, they can always adjust up
and then back down once we kind of get an idea where things
are going in terms of cost increases and cost impact,
but it's one of the flag that I think there's a other
concern that we should also give attention to
with cost increases.
-: Yeah and cost effectiveness too don't let me forget that.
-: Okay, we're a little past time and we have a presenter
waiting in the queue.
However, if Board members want to read it this discussion
after lunch, when certainly can,
but I want to respect our presenters time this morning.
So we will move on to.
-: Chair, I apologize, and to the reverend,
I have a noon time closed session that I need to attend.
So I will be departing probably at noon.
I do apologize in advance for missing a part of it.
If I'm gonna be missing part
of that Reverend's presentation,
but I'm here now, thank you.
-: All right, understood, and I would also add that much
of what's being discussed here does overlap a little bit
with item eight, but again, I see some hands that are still
up in there, there may have been a couple of people
who wanted to make public comment,
so we'll provide time later this afternoon.
I just wanted to respect our presenter's time.
And with that Gillian, I will pass it to you to do
the introductions of Reverend Jacqueline
from Village Solution.
-: Great, thank you so much.
I see IT is going to be pulling up the slides for Village
Solutions, but I want to thank them for their time today.
They also presented at a rate summit hosted by the CPAC
and it was a really great presentation.
I also want to acknowledge Board member Medina
for attending that summit, appreciating this presentation
and suggesting it to the Board meeting today.
So I don't know if we're a member of Medina has any comments
before I open it to village solutions.
-: Appreciation for the work being done.
And also we're having them here.
Thank you so much for bringing that forth.
And I think that it's really the grassroots efforts
that I saw a benefit in to be a best practice for us
to look at for other CBOs that help us with getting
the word out about CARE and all the different programs
that we have available for our public, thank you, Gillian.
-: Thank you, Reverend, are you able to speak
and unmute yourself and.
-: I believe I'm unmuted, can you hear me?
-: Yes, I can.
-: There you go.
-: Advance to the next slide IT,
and then we'll, you can queue IT
to move through your presentation, thank you.
-: First off, I just want to let the committee know that,
I really do appreciate this opportunity and also thank you
to Ms. Lourdes for recommending and just listening to some
of the commentary and the conversations that we've had prior
to me coming in, I think it's important,
that we really do look at how we get this information out.
And next slide, please.
One of the things that we bought noticed we've been
a contractor with Southern California Edison
now, since I believe like 2008, 2009.
And so we've been at a ASAP contractor for that long
and during our process of doing assessments
and going into the homes, we have a wide area that we serve
is going from Inglewood and then also all of Orange County
and then those areas that kind of share near that,
on that Inglewood area.
And one of the things that we noticed over the last say
three to four years was the lack of black participation
in the CARE and the ESA program.
And this was over a long period of time,
but really taking a good, hard look at it
over the last three or four years.
And then when COVID came,
it really did show itself that there was a wide gap between,
the number of black participants that was taking advantage
of this CARE program.
And then you can see in the slide,
we have a relationship with the University of Southern
California Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement.
And we've also worked with Ms. Watts, Pat Watts,
over that period of time as well at one of the things
that we noticed was when I would be on the phone
during COVID being on the phone,
we went to a virtual assessment process.
But even prior to that,
I started really noticing that when we started dealing with,
the black Edison customer base that they continually kept
saying they didn't know about the program.
Well, and then looking at like the Addison Scholarship
program, we noticed that there was a real low number
of black students applying for the program.
We went in and looked at even going
into the Edison Internship program,
noticing that there was a low number of black students,
that college students that was participating in the program.
And then this really went across pretty much all
of the various disciplines that we work with.
We do some work with LA Metro and they have an internship
program and we a low number of black students participating
in that program.
And so what we did was we went to Edison
and had a conversation with the Edison international
the charitable contribution arm,
and brought this to their attention.
And then we sit down and came up with a concept,
of combining our wealth building program that we work with
the University of Southern California in the faith based
environment, and then taking the, our wealth building
program and then pulling in this energy savings assistance
program, our climate change project,
our CARE program project,
our time of usage, building a project,
taking in even our wildfire project and then putting it
into a curriculum, turning it into a curriculum,
and then focusing in on,
high school and college students.
And then we put together an internship program,
which was last year and what really this year,
and then we're merging it over into a fellowship program
beginning in 2022 and incorporating a train the trainer
program, all the way we go in.
And we identify a high school and in college students,
and we use the church,
the faith based community as kind of our home base,
because historically when you're looking at,
even the brown, even the yellow, Latino community,
when you're trying to get an information until the black
or the Latino community, the best way to get
that information in is through the church.
Historically, that's been the best way to get it through
the civil rights era.
The information was delivered through the church,
you in the 70s and 80s,
the information has always been deliberate
in through the church,
but for some reason over say over the last 10, 15, 20 years,
it kind of shied away from that.
So what we ended up doing is, is we brought that back
into fruition, so what we do is we take the information
that we get from Edison.
We take the information through our energy savings
assistance program and then what we do is retrain
those students and how to deliver that information,
because they really are experts at social media.
I'm not really that good at it,
but they really are experts
in that social media environment.
So what we do is we train them on the information,
I'll say, for instance, the time abuses billing program,
we take in the information,
and then we identify those ministries that are within
the Edison territory,
and also those ministries that are part
of the USC Cecil Murray program.
And then we identify those that would be able to best
utilize that information.
And so what we ended up doing is like, for instance,
the time of usage billing program, or even the CARE program,
whether you or the ESA program and taking it and putting it
into our wealth building strategy and say, for instance,
and walking through with the customer and walking through
with the group of the most important,
the largest and most important expense that a home has
is their mortgage or their rent, and that's a fact,
but now after that, we asked them, what is the second most
important expense that you have in your home on now,
that's going to be your utilities.
I mean, we've had people say their condo,
we've had people say other things,
but in actuality it really is their utilities.
So now we take it from there.
Now, how can you best utilize that resource?
And then we came up with this E-Smart, E-Stewardship
initiative where E-Smart and again,
using an incorporating in scripture into it.
So that way it really can come into that faith-based
community, E-Smart, there's a scripture that says,
people perish for lack of knowledge.
E-Stewardship, in the stewardship side,
scripture tells us, to whom much is given much is required.
And so then we go in and then we break down that equation
into, okay, climate change and then taking also the data,
because all of the data that we get,
just using that example,
the black community and this climate change,
the data says that the black community is two times
more to be impacted by climate change
and all the communities.
So we go in, we take the data and then we trained
our young folk, our young adults and our college students
on how to absorb that information.
And then we create a train the trainer environment
by getting those students to go into that particular
ministry that we've identified that again,
that's in that Edison customer base.
And then they go out and then we try to put teams together
of five, we'd even go as far as working with the pastor
of that church and the minister and your staff,
and working with them to even be able to incorporate
this information into their servants.
And then we take the information that we have,
and then we show them how to set that information up
into their ministries.
So now, if one of the members of their church say,
has we had an issue, an example a couple of weeks ago
on the TOU program, one of the ministries that we work with,
one of the seniors got this, received this a letter
from medicine about the TOU program,
but she was concerned not knowing whether it was for real
or not, so she called her pastor.
Her pastor made contact with the young adult.
that's in the program, that's, what's called.
We call them energy ambassadors,
make contact with that energy ambassador,
that energy ended up contacting me.
And then they had the senior call me.
I went in, had her load up her computer,
and then we have the next slide, please.
And then we had one of our interns and fellows,
make contact with that particular, a customer.
And I was on the phone with them.
And then we pulled up the TOU page.
That's on the Edison website and then walked them through
the TOU process again,
incorporating this internship fellowship initiative
that also ends up coming in as a workforce development item
as well, you can see here on this slide on October 30,
we did a career fair, we call them days of opportunity.
Again, when you're talking about kind of incorporating this
information into the low to moderate income community
or to the disadvantaged communities,
I was a single parent dad for 18 years.
And so when I got my bill,
the only thing I wanted to see was how much I owed,
but again, going through this process,
when you're talking about dealing with the low to moderate
income or dealing with a disadvantaged community,
or really just dealing with anybody right now,
people are concerned about how is it going to benefit me?
What did vantage is this going to give me if I go in
and say, okay, I'm gonna pay attention to this time,
but usage, billing process.
Again, what we did was we taken the senior,
Mr. Alexander had her load up per system.
She was on the Addison mine account system.
We had her pull up her mine account site,
and then we show her, okay,
here's how much energy you're using per hour.
Here's how much energy you're using per day.
Here's how much energy you're using per month.
Here's how much energy you're using per day
that got her attention.
And then we pulled up the time of usage, a slide,
a presentation, that's on the website and then showed, okay,
if you're doing it, your energy is going to cost you less
between eight to four, it's going to cost you a little
bit more from four to nine, it's going to cost you less
from nine to eight the next morning,
walked her through that process
and then got all the way down into my new show up.
Okay, Ms. Alexander, when did you do your laundry?
When do you normally do your laundry?
Well, I normally do my laundry
when I'm watching Steve Harvey,
that's not a good time to do your laundry,
because Steve Harvey comes on at six o'clock
and goes off at eight o'clock and then showed her
here's how much you're spending to do your laundry
between four and nine, and then the light clicked on.
And then once the light clicked on,
what she did was she said, okay, I got it.
And then, because she has this network of seniors
that's in her community, what she said was now she was going
to go and let the rest of her senior community cohort
or partners know, okay, that you can really go in and engage
into this time of usage program.
Because she was the go-between, once the light clicked on,
she passed the word on and then ended up,
we ended up getting some flyers, taking them to the church.
And then each time we do a program like Christmas time,
and we're doing our feeding programs.
We put all of the information that we have in a time of use
it's climate change, wildfire and information
CARE information, ESAP information, energy assistance
fund the information for both the gas company and Edison.
We put all of this information and we make it available
to that particular church site.
And then we turn that church site into an ambassador energy
ambassador site, so again, in 2022,
what we're working with is the fellowship piece
of the program, we have this climate change project,
and I noticed what Ms. Watts was saying with these RFPs
that are coming in, one after another, after another,
what we've done is it's taken all the information
that we've gotten from Edison and there we're putting
it into our fellowship program.
And then we're training those college students
that have accepted their fellowships.
We're training the college students in number one,
how do you know how to write these RFPs
of how to really understand what climate change et cetera,
how to understand the impact and also in the fellowship
and internship program, identifying those energy sector
areas where there's opportunity for career path,
because that really is one of the things that really
attracted them into the program is beyond paying your bill,
where are the opportunities in this environment?
Because I truly do believe within, with this climate change,
with this clean energy environment, we also,
every program we do over the last year,
we use that the Addison pathway, 2045 video,
we use that as our base.
And again, we take a student that say 20 years old.
Okay and they're in the program that's 25 years.
So we asked them a simple question,
in 2045, how old are you going to be?
And, and in 2045, when they see it's gonna impact
your home, it's gonna impact your vehicle.
It's gonna impact your career path.
It's going to impact how much you're spending.
And then again, when the light clicks on with them,
now we have the opportunity to engage them into the process.
Because again, when we look at who's taking advantage
of these opportunities, again, we keep seeing from our side
that the black community and also the Latino community,
I don't know if they're left out, but the information
is just not getting down to the grassroots.
And so we taken this approach of the triangle of success,
the engaging, the home, engaging the school and engaging
in community, next slide, please.
Again, the education piece, you see Louis Howard Latimer
none of the students that
and most folks did not know, or didn't realize,
or even downed on there in their mind,
that there was somebody black that worked with Edison
when the light bulb was created.
Again, these are, we give them this kind of data
to engage them into the process, to let them know,
that this environment, this career path is just not for
a certain group of people is for everybody.
And so, again, one of the things we were working with our
students, we're working with our ministries,
with our congregations to let them know
that this is actually a 21st century lifestyle choice.
There's 2045 is going to happen.
Vehicles are going to be electric.
Homes are going to be smart.
Cell phones are going to be smarter than that.
How do you engage into this environment?
And you engage into environment in a proactive basis
and not waiting until 2045 comes and now you don't know
what's going on.
So again, we go in and we partner with the organizations
that we work with, like I've worked with Ms. Watts
now for a little over 12 years,
Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood
is one of our gardeners.
Christ Our Redeemer Church in Orange County
is one of our, a part in the city of refuge.
And in Gardena is one of our partners.
We have ministries out in the inland empire.
So what we're really doing is trying to create
an environment to engage the target community
that we go after.
We've also share our business model with couple
of our Latino partners.
One of them is in East LA because again,
because I'm black, I focused in on our children
and young adults, but again, we also share that model
and we try to pull everybody in together in it,
because I believe this is important at one of the things
that I stick to is when the industrial revolution came,
we did not have the opportunity to engage in it
as an equity partner in it.
When the technology industry came in,
we were still kind of dealing,
coming out of the civil rights era.
But I truly do believe that this clean energy
and this green environment,
if the opportunity is the first time that we will have
the opportunity to really get in on the ground floor
and then engaged this homeschool community concept,
the school concept, Edison put together this E-Smart
all that, next slide, please,
Edison to put together one more slide, I'm sorry.
And then we'll go back to this, and one more.
Okay, Edison put together a few years back a website
it's called SCE for Kids, and there's three portals
in this website.
There's a kid's portal, there's a parents portal
and there's a teacher's portal.
And so we've engaged this website for the last,
like three years, when we do our in-home assessments.
If there's a child in the home, especially when we,
before COVID, if there was a child in the home,
I would ask the parent, did they have a web?
Did they have a tablet or another computer?
I would email them this link.
And while I'm doing the in-house assessment
and the kids are all over the place,
I would pull this website up,
have them pull this website up and then have the children
that's in the home play with it and navigate through it.
And then in doing that, what we're doing is,
is incorporating the household into the project,
into the initiative, because again,
energy is the second most important line item
in a home's budget.
So now we take the position of how can we educate
and train you to use your energy better?
How can we get you to understand that information,
and even with the kids, okay,
ma'am let your kids know if they went into the refrigerator
at 6:30 and they go back in the refrigerator at 6:45,
there was nothing changed in that refrigerator.
But what has happened is you just cost your household
some money on the energy
and again, getting them to be more energy smart.
Next slide, please.
Again, we also have the teacher's portal,
we've been working with now
with the Los Angeles County Department of Education
and working with them to see if we can get them to include
this in the curriculums,
in the middle school and the high school environment.
One of the things that we know is we've taken this model
from the dare program of coming in and incorporating
key information and rethink that the lower we can get
that information into the lowest grade possible grade
that we can get, where they can comprehend it.
Now, what we're doing is,
is we're building a pipeline of information,
because now when they get to high school,
this information will be second nature to them.
When they get to college,
it'll be a part of their lifestyle.
Again, incorporating the teachers and using these
types of models to get the information out again,
like with the program,
we use the same, we use the same concept, a wildfire,
same concept, climate change same.
Any program that we get, we take that program
and we put it inside that triangle,
and then incorporate that triangle of success,
the whole going in, one-on-one doing ESAP program,
doing the CARE programs, the school incorporating
this website into the concept.
And then the community becomes the church piece
and the faith based community piece of the program,
by going in, and again, identifying those ministries
that are in those key areas
where we can get the biggest impact.
Because one of the things that I tried not to do,
I just don't believe that passing out flags
because all they ended up doing is being in the trash can.
But what we really try to do is go grassroots
and get that information into the source
that they're going to believe again, not with COVID.
Most of your ministries now have gotten used to putting
information up on their screens, et cetera.
So we take the information, pass it over to them,
and now they can properly go in and disseminate
that information as well.
And then you have them identify young adults
and young adults in their ministries to take
that information and then disseminated out via the various
social media outlets and then at the end of the month,
the only thing we're requiring of them as part of their
fellowship requirement is when you eat blasted out,
report back, how many lights did you get?
How many hits did you get?
How many one-on-ones did you get?
And then have them, we're going to incorporate
the fellowship program this year,
the churches that are a part of the program
are going to participate in earth day.
That's going to be a requirement.
We're going to do another day of opportunity
coming up in February and March.
So now what we do whenever we do any of our wealth building
sessions with the university and through our wealth building
program, energy information is always the second item
on the agenda, because you can get away with all the car.
You can go public transportation and you can change
how you eat and reduce down your bills,
but it's very, very hard to have a home with no utilities.
Also, that means it's a priority.
So now what we try to do,
and we've been pretty successful at it is getting those
ministries and incorporating that train the trainer program,
to where now that information, when it gets to them.
Now that information has some meaning,
it's gonna impact that home.
It's going to save on their bill, okay.
The education piece, okay.
You're going to get some information that may even trigger
you and to say, I want to be in,
I want to take this as a career path,
and then the community piece of engaging those faith-based
or community-based organizations in our outreach efforts
to get this information out to those communities
that are hardest to get to get to.
Because again, when you're doing events, most of them,
if you're a single parent moms,
you don't have time to go to new event on Saturday,
because now you're just trying to get you a couple hours
worth of rest, so you can get yourself ready
for offer Monday.
And in closing one of the things I think that has been
a real benefit for us, COVID hit some folk hard,
but it did give us the opportunity to go through
and be one on one with our customers
going through the ASAP program.
And it gave us the opportunity to navigate that person.
We navigate every ESAP application that we do, we navigate.
Could you go back forward, go back two slides.
This one here, again, every ESAP application assessment
that we do, we email while we're on the phone,
we emailed the customer this email,
and then all of you could see one through 12,
there are links.
And then we walk that customer through the links.
You can see like down here, the, my account online,
they can click right onto it,
put their service account number in,
and then we can walk them through and show them
here's how you're utilizing your energy.
And there may be a better way to do it.
Our students that are part of our internship program,
one of their requirements was they had to go through
their own family members if they had an Edison bill
and then do this five minute energy savings exercise.
So again, you can see a slide number of six,
the east smart for kid, you can see slide number three
and four, the energy assistance fund.
So what we did was just created a resource page
for the people that we service,
and we take this same resource page,
and we turn it over to the ministries that we work with
as well, and then let them customize it.
And again, utilizing the students because they're brain sets
are just so far more advanced in this social media
environment than mine is, but again,
getting them to get that information out.
And we really have been able, I believe,
to make an impact, and again, we would not have been able
to do this if Edison hadn't been supportive of it
because they've supported it financially,
they've supported it physically.
They'd been very, very supportive and it's cost us a little
bit to do it this way, but I could see the end result
of the project and that is, we do have some young folks
that have made the decision to say
that they're gonna take this energy environment
as a career path.
We're working with Dr. Richard Rhodes
at the University of Laverne,
one of our fellow students as part of his project,
he presented it to Dr. Rose, Dr. Rose taken it to the powers
to be at the University of Laverne.
And they're working through now doing the sustainability
curriculum at the master's at the PhD level.
And we're partnering with them to walk them through
this process, again, we're excited about
what's coming, the 2022,
I really do believe that we're gonna be able
to on your hopefully, get this program going in a direction
where it will be a permanent program,
and then working with other community based organizations,
if they want the model, we share it all with them.
If they want to be a part of the project, we've been,
we embrace anyone that wants to be a part of the project,
but we really do believe, that if there's a problem
with getting the information out to the community,
I think we've come up with a viable solution,
by taking it more on a grassroots level,
we may not get the massive numbers,
but I do believe that if we continue to work at this way,
the numbers will grow because as that information gets out
to the church, then because black vote,
if we don't do anything else,
we gonna go to church on Sunday
and with it being virtual, now,
it really has done an outreach,
to expand out the breadth of the people
that you're gonna be communicating with.
And again, I'm very thankful for Edison,
and the community has expressed their thanks to Edison,
and P you've seen pretty much everyone, because again,
this 2045 pathway initiative,
we've stressed that it is for real.
And we use the same that if you're not at the table,
you're gonna be on the table.
And that's one of the things that we really have stress with
our young folk and our ministries that we want our people
to be on top of this.
So when 2045 comps, then they'll already be able to take
advantage of what's coming, because again, it's coming.
And we really do believe that if we continue on this road
and the path that we're on,
I think it's going to be successful.
And I think we'll be able to reach the communities
that we've been targeted to reach
and do it with some success.
Anybody have any questions?
-: Well, thank you very much, Reverend Jackson
appreciate the third presentation
and all the good information members.
I know we're a little overtime,
but we'll come back a little bit after one.
There's some things later in the agenda that we'll probably
catch up with, which happens periodically,
but we do have time for a couple of questions.
So Lourdes, I know you and the honor of introductions
for the speaker, did you want to start with any questions?
Okay, great, any questions or comments from other members
of the Board?
-: Yes, I just want to thank Reverend Jackson
for his commitment to the African-American community.
I mean, he is the real deal.
As you can see, he speaks with passion.
I have had the opportunity to not only work with him,
but serve on a couple of Boards,
working groups and advisory panels, and he's a real deal.
Great presentation, thank you so much, Reverend Jackson.
-: I appreciate you Ms. Watts that's my mentor.
-: Very good, and I think I saw
Board member Lim;s hand up as well.
-: Thank you, that's a lot faster than finding
the virtual hand.
Oh, I also just wanted to add my thanks to Reverend Jackson.
This was such an inspirational presentation and super happy
that Edison was able to partner with you on this.
And we had a lot of side chats going on a lot of fans here.
And so just want to thank you for really taking that energy
education up to the next level.
And to hear that it's going to impact people's career
choices, I mean, that's so impactful,
and I've had the pleasure of working with you personally
at the clean energy access working group
in some of these other meetings.
So really excited to see you here.
I just wanted to offer a quick thank you.
-: Thank you.
-: And I think a Board member Castaneda
I see your hand up also.
-: Yeah, and again, thank you, reverend.
I think that what you did is you showed the value
of not only what you do,
but programs that enable what you do
directly with your community and speaking directly to ESA.
So thank you for participation.
I think I'm gonna share the word in terms of the model
that you put the really the formula that you put out
that not only delivers ESA core services,
but frankly provides added value in connection
with a challenging world that energy provides or presents
rather in terms of bills and burden and things
of this nature and helping helping folks,
navigate through that environment.
And so, as I would hope you were part of the,
at least listened into some of the discussion earlier today,
these are some of the additional value adds and benefits
that come out of reset.
When we engage CBOs, when we engage faith-based
organizations, when we engage minority small business,
with our program, because again,
those benefits can be directly related with community.
And sir, you so eloquently provided that information
to us today, so I thank you very much.
-: I appreciate that, thank you, sir.
-: Any other questions or comments from members of the Board?
Okay, well, Reverend Jackson, thank you once again,
and thank you for your patience and waiting.
I know we were a little bit behind this morning.
I think I want to know where your energy comes from.
'Cause I have a feeling it might be just slightly younger
than you, but you seem to be way more energetic than I am.
And I'm a little jealous of but.
-: I just turned 67 on Friday.
-: Wow, well, happy birthday belated.
And thank you once again.
And thank you to Board member Medina for the invitation
Board members, 12:21.
So why don't we come back at 10 after again,
I think we'll catch up with some of these afternoon items
and that way everybody can have almost a full hour break
and thank you once more.
It's the Reverend Jackson and I'll see you all varies there.
-: So we're coming back at one o'clock?
-: We'll be back at 1:10 and I'll put up a slide
that says that too.
-: Okay, thank you guys.
Narrator: Event brought to you by admin monitor dot.
-: Welcome back, everybody, it looks like we have quorum.
We might have one or two members coming in slightly late
to recap, I know the discussion from item four
was ongoing and we might want to discuss next steps,
but without I think it,
it overlaps a little bit with item eight.
And so that might be the time in place to do that.
And I know we have some folks scheduled for items six
and seven, so with that, like Gillian would you like to do
the introductions for item six?
-: Yes, thank you.
So item six is an update on the affordability proceeding,
and we have some CPU staff here to present on that,
you have Ankit Jain and of the Energy Division
and Jefferson Hancock of Water Division
to give a presentation.
So with that, I will pass the mic to them.
Ankit: Thank you, thank you for the opportunity
to talk about the affordability proceeding today.
So before we dive into the phase two staff proposal,
I want to do a quick overview of where we are
in the procedural timeline for this proceeding.
The first phase of this proceeding wrapped up in 2020
with the adoption of the decision that you see there,
which adopted the three affordability metrics
with some slight modifications to what was proposed
in the revised staff proposal.
That decision also directed staff to develop the annual
affordability report, the first issue of which we released
in April of this year, and also kicked off a phase two,
the proceeding, which has been focused on developing
a methodology for forecasting feature values of the metrics,
as well as developing recommendations for how those metrics
would be incorporated into the CPACs decision-making.
So the staff issued a staff proposal in November
of this year and held a workshop to gather party input.
And we are currently expecting a proposed decision
in the first half of 2022.
Next slide, so before we dive into the staff proposal,
we're gonna do a very quick overview of the three metrics
that were adopted in the phase one in this proceeding,
the three metrics are shown down below here.
The first metric kind of our Keystone metric
is the affordability ratio.
This is a variation of the utility burden metric,
where we account for non-discretionary expenses,
such as housing and other utility expenses.
When we look at what percentage of household income goes
towards paying for essential levels of utility service,
this is a metric that can be measured for households
at any point in the income distribution.
And our work has focused on households that are at the 20th
percentile of the income distribution
within their communities,
as well as households that are at the 50th percentile
or the median income.
The second metric is the hours and minimum wage.
This is a metric it's fairly straight forward.
It looks at how many hours members of the household
would have to work over the course of the month
if they were earning minimum wage in order to pay
for an essential level of their utility services.
And then the third metric is the SEVI metrics,
socioeconomic vulnerability index,
which is derived from the CalEnviroScreen metric
and specifically looks at the socioeconomic sub-components
of that metric.
So if we go to the next slide,
so the phase two staff proposal kind of covers
three main topic areas.
The first topic area is the affordability ratio calculator
and associated with that.
The forecasting methodology for how this metric
can be forecasted into future years.
The idea behind this was staff wanted to develop a tool
that would be publicly available to help stakeholders
calculate the AR metric,
the affordability ratio metric in recognition of the fact,
this is a fairly complicated metric with that requires
input from multiple data sources and is a calculated fairly
geographically granular level.
The second element of the staff proposal covers our attempt
to provide additional context to these metrics kind
of in recognition that they're new,
particularly the affordability ratio and the SEVI metric.
So to that end staff developed a couple of definitions
to identify vulnerable communities using the AR and the SEVI
metrics and in doing so hopefully providing additional
context for how to interpret those metrics.
And then third, the staff proposal lays out some industry
specific recommendations for how to implement
those metrics within the CPUC decision-making.
And what we're going to talk about today toward the end
of the presentation are the energy
and water specific recommendations.
So we go to the next slide.
So first the affordability ratio calculator, like I said,
this is a tool that staff has developed and we've released
a first version of it that we will be continuing to update
on an annual basis and issuing alongside
the annual affordability report.
The idea behind it is this tool would allow stakeholders
for any parties to any proceeding,
to input their expected essential usage bills
for utility services,
and then use that input to derive what the affordability
ratio results would look like both for current years,
as well as forecasted out into future years,
kind of baked into the supportability ratio calculator
is the methodology for how we're gonna forecast
the affordability ratio metric into future years
and specifically how we're gonna look at what changes
in income levels and housing costs are expected to look like
across different regions of the state.
So that methodology is gonna rely on economic forecast
to the state's department of finance produces,
specifically around their CPI forecast,
their consumer price index.
That tool will, like I said,
will be available to parties and would allow parties
to calculate the AR metrics at a geographically granular
level and for instance, include those metrics
in any applications that they submit as well as
allow stakeholders to evaluate the affordability
implications of counterfactual proposals
and discuss the affordability implications
using this common language
of the affordability ratio metric.
So go to the next slide.
So just have a couple of screenshots to show what the tool
looks like in terms of the inputs and the outputs
and how it can be used.
These screenshots look at the inputs to the tool
for the electricity industry.
The example that I've got here is how the tool would be
used if we were looking at the affordability implications
of the SCE 2021 GRC track three revenue requests.
So the on the left side,
this box shows what the inputs are for the essential usage
bills for basic electric service on the left,
the essential usage bills for all electric service
in the 2021 column,
you'll see the white shaded cells for the SCE climate zones.
This is what the essential usage bills would be using
the rates that are currently in effect in 2021.
And in 2022, this is what the essential usage bills
would look like if the GRC track three revenue request
was approved for both the basic service
and then all electric service.
So the inputs are climate zone level essential usage bills.
And then you'll see on the next slide, the output are,
can go to the next one.
The outputs would be the affordability ratio results
at the climate zone level as well.
So what we have here are the affordability ratio results
for households at the 20th percentile of the income
distribution, as well as households at the 50th percentile
of the income distribution,
on the left hand box shows what the results look like
for 2021 using the essential usage bills,
reflecting current rates and 2022 showing what the change
in those affordability ratio results look like.
Assuming that the track three revenue requests.
Keep in mind the change in AR values here reflect
not just the change in essential usage bills,
but also the change in household incomes and housing costs
based on the department of finances forecast.
And then I can go to the next slide.
We'll also see that in addition to providing results
at the climate zone level,
the tool provides results at more granular geographic
scales, this is looking at a couple of climate zones,
broken down into Pumas, public use micro data areas,
which are census bureau defined geographies that are a bit
more granular than the utility climate zones,
and allows you to kind of get a better idea
of what the results look like
at closer to a community scale.
So if we go to the next slide,
we can move on to the second element of the staff proposal,
which is the identification of vulnerable communities.
Like I said, scaffolding to provide some additional context
for the AR and the 70 metrics and we've done so through
these three concepts here,
the first two relate to the affordability ratio metric.
And the third one is related to the 70 metric,
basically with the via affordability demarcations.
What we've done is we've taken a look at the results
from the 2019 annual affordability report
specifically what those results look like,
the distribution of the results across the state,
within each of the industries.
And we've identified inflection points in those distribution
plots that kind of, the AR levels at which,
we feel that the affordability concerns are particularly
acute, so it's a small percentage of communities
in the state that have air values that are at that level
or above, and those values are significantly higher
than the AR values that we are seeing
in the rest of the state within each of those industries.
And then kind of dovetailing on that concept is this idea
of the areas of affordability concern,
which is the specific census tracks,
where we are seeing AR 20 values that are higher
than the affordability demarcation values.
And I'll show some examples of this in the next slide.
The third concept is this idea of the SEVI-DACs.
It's a variation of the disadvantaged communities,
which is defined in the yesterday action plan census tracks,
where CalEnviroScreens are scores are in the top 25%.
Well, we've done something similar,
but instead of using the full CalEnviroScreen scores,
we're just using the SEVI scores,
which are derived from the socioeconomic components
of the CTS.
And I'll show you kind of how those two different sets
of data compare to one another.
The idea is that staff will issue lists of the areas
of affordability concern and the SEVI-DACs
annually alongside the annual affordability report
and the updated affordability ratio calculator each year.
So if you go to the next slide,
so this is a as an example of what the areas
of affordability concern look like on the electric side,
the map on the right shows two things really,
it shows the areas of affordability concern
for electric service,
which is gonna be the areas that are highlighted red
and green, the green being the overlap
with the other kind of vulnerable communities.
I wanted to show here, which are the ESG communities.
So these would be the communities defined
in the ESG action plan.
They include the disadvantaged communities, tribal lands,
areas where average incomes are below 80%
of state median income.
And as you can see,
those are the areas that are in purple and they cover
quite a broad swath of the state,
the areas of affordability concern on the other hand,
kind of hone in on specifically on the areas that are really
seeing the most significant affordability concerns
as denoted by the affordability ratio metric.
So there's a little bit of overlap between the two concepts,
but the areas of affordability concern,
I think are gonna be a bit more targeted
in terms of which communities are being highlighted.
And so this is the electric results specifically,
but we are able to do something similar for natural gas
and communication services as well.
So if we go to the next slide,
what I wanted to show here was the overlap
between the traditional definition
of disadvantaged communities, which like I said,
is based on the CalEnviroScreen score and our definition
of SEVI disadvantaged communities,
which is based on top 25% of SEVI scores,
you can see that there's some overlap.
Those are the areas that are shaded in green.
Whereas the blue areas are the traditional DACs
and the orange areas are the SEVI-DACs.
The main takeaway I wanted to provide with this map
is to show that by focusing on the socioeconomic elements
of CalEnviroScreen specifically,
we're able to kind of identify a different set of census
tracks that we are defining as disadvantaged communities.
So just kind of giving decision-makers a couple of different
options for how to identify vulnerable communities,
whether it be based purely on socioeconomic considerations
or whether we want to take into account the full suite
of risks, including environmental pollutants
and whatnot, to the next slide.
Moving into the industry specific recommendations
that are part of the staff proposal.
On the energy side,
we have two main use cases that we identified
for how we want or how we recommend these metrics be used.
The first use cases to understand what the affordability
implications are of a proposed rate increase.
So the recommendation here is that for all GRC applications
and any non GRC applications that include a proposed revenue
requirement increase of greater than 1% utilities,
whether they be IOUs or SMJ use would be required to include
the affordability metrics in their application
and an analysis of what the affordability implications
would be based on those metrics.
And this is kind of where the affordability ratio calculator
really comes into play in terms of helping the IOUs produce
those calculations for the affordability ration metric
and kind of a standardized way and remove any mystery
as to how they they've come up with those calculations.
And then if we go to the next slide,
the second use case that the that's including the staff
proposal on the energy side is the use of the affordability
metrics to prioritize program resources
for eligible customers.
For instance, when we're talking about assistance programs,
the example that we've highlighted here is the recent
decision for the ESA program,
which we think can serve as a model for how other assistance
programs can use these metrics to help target
the allocation of resources.
So in that decision IOU's are required to file a tier two
advice letter detailing,
how they would sort of segment customers and identify
specific low-income customers who would be eligible
for enhanced energy efficiency, treatment measures,
and included in the possible criteria that the IOUs
can use are the SEVI and the affordability ratio metrics.
So the idea would be for instance, utility screening,
to identify, using the metrics that can identify
parts of the state, where those metrics,
the values for those metrics are particularly high.
And if customers are live in those areas and are eligible
for the program due to their income levels,
then they would be eligible not just for the basic
treatments, but for enhanced treatments as well.
So we think that this could be a good model
for how the metrics should be used
in other proceedings as well.
And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jefferson,
to talk through some of the recommendations
on the water side, the next slide.
Jefferson: Thanks, Ankit, I appreciate the good summary
of the affordability framework so far and there's metrics,
including our latest work in the stock proposal
for implementation in the water sector,
there's three main components to this that I want to touch
on briefly, and we can go to the next slide.
The first of these components is just a calculation
of these metrics as something we want to bring
into the Commission's decision-making again for water,
the use case mostly follows energy's first use case
of calculating these metrics for rate
or revenue increase requests.
The kind of triggering threshold for that,
that was recommended in the proposal was shown here
kind of in line with the guidance from the Commission's
existing rules of practice and procedure,
recognizing that in calculating these metrics,
we want to have kind of a before and after.
So we can see not just how much a given rate request
is affecting affordability overall,
but how the affordability impact posed may differ
from the affordability impact that's ultimately adopted.
And so kind of to facilitate that we're hoping
to kind of work together between one division staff
utilities and other stakeholders.
Next slide, please,
again, in line with Energy Divisions kind of use case number
one is, in certain cases in particular formal proceedings,
we recommended a more in-depth analysis
of those affordability metrics to kind of get a better
sense of what some of the causes might be,
why that affordability metric basically why the metrics
that we're seeing the results of those affordability
calculations, putting those into context
for the Commission's decision making.
And this is kind of the list of specific elements
that the staff proposal recommended.
But I think as this affordability analysis
becomes to play more of a role in the admissions
decision making, there's some room for flexibility here,
kind of expanding on what the staff goes last recommended,
and next slide.
And so the last piece of the water industry recommendations
from the implementation stock proposal is this rate and bill
impact tracking tool, in the staff proposal,
we recommended adoption of a draft template hasn't been
developed by the public advocate's office.
Since then, we've been holding a number of smaller working
sessions and the affordability proceeding.
If you're on the service list, you will receive that notice,
but basically work-shopping distract template coming up with
some counter proposals and kind of working on ways to,
again, put the rate impacts and affordability increases
into kind of the context for the Commission's
decision-making as well as for Water Division.
So when you see on the screen,
just kind of what was recommended in the stock proposal.
I think it's fair to say that kind of,
as a result of these working sessions,
what's ultimately adoptable likely differ.
But all that to say is that there is in the works
of this implementation of this tool that will allow us
to kind of track what the ongoing components
of the bill are.
And ideally project out kind of what the expected increases
both to rates and bills as well as to affordability
might be going forward.
And with that that's, I think all that we've got to present
today, so again, we really appreciate the time given to us
to speak about these metrics,
and we're happy to answer any kind of up questions
either over email
or if there's additional time this meeting.
-: Okay, great, well, thank you both so much
for the presentation it's proceeding
is really interesting and clearly overlaps
with a lot of the charter of the Board.
So I appreciate you doing to keep us posted and I noted,
and I appreciate you skipping over it for the sake of time,
but I noted in the appendix that the tentative schedule
for comments on proposals will be in September of 2022.
And so if am I reading that correctly, go ahead.
-: The comment scheduled currently is that comments
to the implementation staff proposal that we released
in November, those will be due January 10th
with reply comments do thereafter.
-: Okay, that might be worth noting is the Board considers
that they want to voice any opinions on this.
So the only I had one quick question,
they want to open it up to colleagues.
I was looking at the socioeconomic data
that was part of this.
And I had a question with respect to change in climate.
I noted that we had a presentation from the national weather
service maybe a month or two ago about the heat index
and how they're using socio-economic data from that
and how different government agencies like CalOES.
And a lot of public health departments are starting to use
it for how they prepare for weather events.
And I'm wondering if in the process of this proceeding,
there's been any communication with them to see
if the tool they've developed could help inform
the development of this one?
-: Yeah, no, we haven't had any communication with them
as far as how, how to use that data in the development
of our tool or our metrics.
I would say that kind of the, where we kind of see
an intersection between the metrics that we're developing
and these climate change related issues is probably
going to come into play on the energy side,
at least with regards to what we are defining
as the essential level of electricity service.
So currently the definition we're using for essential levels
of service are based on the baseline allowance
that is climate zone dependent, as part of the PG&E GRC,
there is an essential use study looking to see
how customers, what appliances they use,
what appliances are present in customer's households,
what their electricity usage looks like.
And one of the things that we're interested in understanding
as part of that study is whether the outcomes
from that in terms of what they define as an essential level
of electricity usage,
and particularly the weather dependent components
of their electricity usage are significantly different
from the baseline allowances that we're using
for our definition of essential service.
That's something that we might revisit in terms
of what we are using for our definition
of essential service, based on what comes out
of that essentially you study.
And so there's potentially an opportunity to think about
how climate change driven impacts to electricity usage
could be reflected in our central levels of usage in this,
in these metrics as well.
-: Okay, that sounds good.
I do know they're coming out with a refined tool
'cause they know it was a pilot and sort of prototype
in the spring of 20 is printing too.
So it might be worthwhile taking a look at it.
I know they're also starting to explore cause right now it
focuses on heat and I know they're starting to explore
a cold as well, so just something to keep in mind,
I'm happy to open it up to other questions or comments
from members of the Board.
-: Hello Mr. Chair.
-: Yes.
-: Yeah I have a couple of questions.
What's the genesis
of this supportability proceeding legislation?
-: So I can, I can speak to this a little bit.
I will say, not too much and that I think everyone
on our kind of affordability, small group,
once we kind of put together this proposal,
we all joined quite a bit after this rulemaking had started,
but ultimately I don't think this came from legislation.
This came from in mid 2018,
the Commission opened this rulemaking as part
of kind of a wider look at affordability concerns
more generally, the energy disconnections proceeding
was opened kind of in partnership.
So those two have been running concurrently
as to the best of my knowledge.
This is kind of a Commission driven focus.
-: Good job, second, define stakeholders as mentioned,
and in terms of utilization of the affordable ratio
calculator, we're talking about low income households,
they are defined as stakeholders.
-: Yeah, so I use the word stakeholder,
I'm referring to anyone who would be a party to a particular
rate-setting proceeding.
So that would include groups that represent
low income households as well.
-: Okay, yeah, because my concern was is this
is going at the household level,
the fact is that to be able to kind of utilize this level
of mathematics would be very difficult.
So when you say stakeholders and we're looking
at a voice for the effected community, frankly,
that would be participants, right.
And, or stakeholders that would reflect
or advocate for that population.
-: Okay, number four, it seems like the action items
that would be derived from the affordability tool
is to rate increases only, in other words,
it's certainly a valuable tool for that.
I totally totally get that, in terms of where we set rates,
but if existing rates are affordable, I mean,
is there gonna be any consideration and connection
with tools or actions by the CPC to deal with that
particular segment of the population?
-: Yeah, so certainly the recommendations that provided
are kind of focused on kind of perspective rate changes
that would happen in the future.
What we are doing is with the annual affordability reports,
that's kind of where we take more of a retrospective look
and see what the state of affordability looks like
with rates that are currently in effect.
That's kind of the platform that we were planning
on using to highlight where affordability concerns
are most significant in different parts of the state
and try to identify whether there's anything we can glean
from the metrics, as far as what's driving those
affordability concerns as well.
So I would kind of characterize it as the affordability
report, which we'll be putting out each year as being
the place we'll re kind of take more of a retrospective look
and then the affordability ratio,
calculator being a tool that can be used
on more of a prospective.
-: Sure, great, let me make this suggestion in terms of,
again, trying to mitigate or address the concerns
and the energy burden within low-income
households utilizing this tool.
I think that with utility applications,
especially as you know we have a new ESA decision
and again, the outreach on CARE and so on and so forth
has always been an issue, a lot of hard to reach
populations, so it seems to me that if we can develop
a better develop our target markets
within low-income populations,
within the affordability issue of existing rates,
we should be able to utilize this tool as navigation,
into those communities.
And they should really experience some priority,
with the assistance programs that we have funded.
And again, we can look at methodology
on how they're gonna do that because it was easy,
we'd already be doing it.
So, and in the end, I think that this tool will be very
valuable from two perspectives,
one to address GRCs because you had said with regard
to rate increase,
but also in navigation tool in terms of existing programs
with low-income populations on current rates.
So, and again, I know that there's a process
to this that allows input, but,
that's something that I would see to be added
to the equation.
-: Yeah, certainly that's something that we try to include.
That's kind of what that second use case that I highlighted
is trying to get at is how we can use these metrics
to prioritize where resources are being devoted
or those sorts of assistance programs.
And I think that a lot of that's just going to come down
to making sure that the right folks within the CPAUC
and outside the CPUC are aware of these metrics
are familiar with them.
They understand how to interpret those results
and how to apply them to their programs.
So it's really gonna evolve,
involve just a lot of education,
just kind of teaching folks that these metrics exist
and how to use them.
-: Well, the other thing I would suggest too, is immigration.
I mean, to the extent that you have applications,
you have program performance and penetration
that are accountability issues with this Board.
So giving them, given, the need for the Board to really
oversee those assistance programs with energy.
I think that that information would be very helpful
if we could highlight specific and acute areas of need
and what the level of program penetration is
within those areas.
-: Definitely, thank you.
-: Thank you.
-: Thank you Board member Castaneda,
I don't see any other hands up and I know we're at times.
So just want to thank both of the presenters again
and look forward to seeing you back here for another update
on the proceeding.
-: Sorry, chairman, I couldn't find the little hand,
and I don't think I have it up and I don't know
if you could see it, so I just maybe if I could get follow
up now on this slide, is page 69 on here,
I don't know if you guys see it, did I freeze?
Either way I just I appreciate that you put the information
there Fresno County with the metrics right there,
I appreciate that because it gives me a perspective
of the presentation but will this data also be helpful
in the time of use preceding stuff
and also for the ESA contract stuff?
-: Yeah, so we definitely would like to understand
the affordability implications of any rates that are being
proposed, including the time of use one.
So we are looking for opportunities to apply these metrics
and that's one potential proceeding.
We could take these metrics and use them to understand
what the affordability implications are.
We'll have to do a little bit more thinking
about how to apply it to time of use rate,
because it is a little bit more complex.
We probably need to develop some sort of typical usage
profiles and then apply those to the rates
that we're looking at.
And then of course also with the ease of that's kind of what
we were trying to highlight with the second use case
in terms of how the metrics can be used to prioritize
particular communities where affordability concerns
are greatest and make sure that those folks are eligible
for enhanced benefits.
-: Great, thank you, Board member Medina,
and Punka thank you again.
Well as Jeffrey we'll move on now to item seven,
which is the percentage of income payment plan presentation
I believe by Edison.
Gillian would you like to do the introduction?
-: Yes, thank you.
So, as the chair mentioned,
we have the percentage of income payment plan pilot
presentation, there will be representatives
of all four IOUs, and we'll begin with Edison.
I just want to ask if Board member Lim has any comments
about this program or presentation,
otherwise we can begin with Anthony.
-: Yeah, thank you, Gillian, I appreciate that.
I just wanted to say a quick word about the introduction
of this topic.
The IOU's one of the opportunity to come today to the LIOB
and share what we all have in mind in terms
of implementation for next year.
The PIPP program has been also collaborated with
in terms of the working group,
but this group wanted to expand getting feedback
from this broader low-income oversight Board.
So really appreciate the time on the agenda.
And the intent again, is to get feedback prior to filing
the implementation plans on February 4th
through an advice letter.
So I'm gonna turn it over to Anthony
to begin the discussion, thank you.
-: Hi everybody, Anthony Abeyta Southern California Edison.
Can I get just a thumbs up to let you know you can all hear
me, everybody good, all right.
So like Jessica said,
I'm going to talk to you about the percentage of income
payment plan, it's a new pilot,
very excited to talk to you about it.
So we have a lot of discussion, a lot of presenters,
so we're just going to jump right on into it.
Next slide please, next slide.
So I think we need to, could we advance the slides?
I'm not sure who's on slide control right now.
Awesome, this is just a great brief overview.
I'm going to kind of give the kind of high level overview,
then we're all gonna kind of go into each of the idle user,
have a section where we'll talk about
our individual implementation plans, next slide please.
All right, we'll move forward.
One more please.
All right, so here's the summary rule making 18-07-05
mandates that the IOUs implement a percentage
of income payment plan.
We call it PIPP.
And really what PIPP does is this going to apply a bill CAPP
set at 4% of the households income for both electric and gas
would be a four year pilot.
And it is focused on CARE customers who either kind of fall
into one or two categories.
We're gonna have those that reside within in Zip Codes
with the highest rates of disconnect or customers
who CARE customers who have been disconnected two
or more times in that kind of year prior to disconnection
moratorium, next slide.
-: Hi IT, could you move to the deck side, please?
Thank you.
-: Thank you, so when we're talking about those CARE
customers who will receive the benefits of PIPP,
we kind of classified them into two groups.
Those that have zero to 100% of the federal poverty
guideline, and then those that are 101 to 200,
and in doing so, they kind of establish what each of these
types of buckets might look like.
So for those in between zero to 100,
they use 50% of the FPL as the reference income,
which means for an average house of three,
their monthly income would be $905,
which means that their bill kept for both gas and electric.
Their bill CAPP or utility would not exceed $37 per month.
Likewise, for those that R&D 101 to 200,
they referenced right in the middle at 150,
which kind of equates to, for a family of three 2,745.
And the bill CAPP again for both gas and electric would be
no greater than 109 per month.
The bill CAPPs will be reflected annually as we get new
guidelines and every June, just like we do with CARE,
if we get to the next slide, please.
So in having those two different kinds of groups,
you saw that those that were in the zero to 100% group,
kind of a very small CAPP,
even compared to those that were in the 101 to 200.
So to kind of ensure program integrity,
those that fall within the zero to 100%, a FTG group,
they must provide their income within 90 days
of signing up for PIPP.
If they do great, they get to stay with that zero
to 100% CAPP of about 30-ish dollars.
But if they don't,
they will be defaulted over to the 101 to the 200% group.
That 101 to 200% group will not be requested to provide
their income, however, they are subject to the CARE regular
CARE verification process.
So if they were selected for CARE,
whether it be a model or via high usage,
they would have to provide their income documentation.
And ultimately, if customers are removed from the CARE
program, they're also gonna be removed
from the PIPP program.
So it's just to ensure that PIPP keep up
with the income verification requests, next slide.
So the goals of the program are really,
it's centered around a couple of things.
They really want to bring down the number of households
at risk of disconnect within the low-income community.
They want to encourage participation in the ESA program
or other energy management programs
to increase access to essential levels of energy service,
and ultimately control program costs as we administer.
Next slide, and we can go one more.
So the evaluation, so the PIPP pilot will be evaluated.
And as part of that evaluation core,
part of the evaluation is, did PIPP meet those goals?
Did it do all the things that I just spoke to you
in the previous slide?
So I'm a third party evaluator independent will assess
the pilot based on the first 18 months of data.
We'll recommend pilot modifications as needed,
and then recommend whether the IOU should file a joint
application for a long-term program.
In addition to that,
IOU's will be reporting every six months on it to make sure
that everybody kinda gets a snapshot of where we are
and how we're progressing along in the pilot.
Next slide, one more please.
So I'm kind of like Jessica had spoke to earlier.
PIPP is having a series of workshops.
We had our first workshop last Monday,
our next one is coming up this coming Monday,
and it really is a chance for us to provide a preliminary
understanding of what our,
each of IOUs will be implementing in terms of the PIP pilot
it's it was open forum.
I think we had 130 plus participants roughly
in our first forum.
So we'll actually,
you'll get a preview of that as we get a little bit further,
we're gonna all the IOUs are gonna kind of give you
a version of what we have presented in our first workshop.
And then it also has a chance to solicit feedback
and response Q and A et cetera, or the workshop.
Next slide, next slide, please.
Next slide, so that concludes the overview.
I'm gonna go ahead and jump right into Edison's PIPP pilot
workshop presentation, if you can advance, thank you.
So as part of the workshop,
we noted that a lot of what PIPP was designed was already
outlined in the decision.
There are a few areas that we wanted to kind of highlight
gray areas that we wanted to talk about
and refine in particular,
these are some of the four big ones that Edison
wanted to speak to was the Zip Codes,
what Zip Code should we really target to find those
customers that are at risk of disconnect attrition?
So the pilot is relatively small in terms of total volume.
Edison only has 4,000 slots for our entire territory,
but the question is, well, what would happen if people were
to be removed themselves from CARE and they would also
be removed from PIPP?
Do we backfill now?
What does that look like?
Do we just let them fall off the program?
But attrition is another factor.
CCAs are a big part of PIPP.
We are to partner with the CCAs and make sure that they have
a proportional percentage of their service territory
as part of our overall kind of pilot participants
allocating a piece of that to them
as their territory demands.
And then also the outreach.
What is outreach gonna look like?
How are we going to engage the customer
and how will we create that positive
customer experience around PIPP?
We can go to the next slide, please.
So I'm a little bit of an eye chart here,
but in looking at the PIPP eligible population,
the decision said that we were to look at the top areas
with the highest rate of disconnect.
And if you look on the right hand side,
you'll see that our top 10 highest rate of disconnect
roughly equates to about 50,000 customers across various
cities within our territory.
But we also decided let's see what it looks like.
Let's expand that look and see, by volume,
what areas have the highest volume of disconnect.
So we looked at those on the left and then we found
that the good news was, is that the lists were didn't have
a lot of overlap.
So really part of, one of Edison's core ideas behind
the pilot is that we wanted to make sure that PIPP reflects
our entire territory, not just looking at one
or two small hubs of areas,
but we really wanted to take those 4,000 people
and spread them out across the territory.
So we felt that I would give the best benefit
to the evaluation, the data.
And so we're going to propose that we look at both
the highest rate of disconnects,
which would center a little bit more about these high,
higher density areas,
but also the highest rate of disconnects,
which we'll get into a little more rural areas,
but kind of spread out that tip customer pilots
across the territory.
I also mentioned earlier that customers that had been
disconnected two times or more in that year prior
to the moratorium, for us, that's only about
8,000 customers, so although it's small,
we want to really use that population of customers to,
again, try to get a good cross-section even outside
of these target 20 Zip Codes.
So this is our approach in targeting top 10 highest rate,
top 10 highest volume.
And then again, those that were disconnected twice
in the year proceeding, next slide.
So again, I mentioned before,
our pilot size is only about 4,000.
So we looked at CARE and said, hey, on an average year
in 2019 pre-pandemic we had about a 23% attrition
within CARE, so every year, theoretically you would lose 23%
of our 4,000 customers.
So in looking at a four-year pilot,
if we wanted to maintain that level of 4,000 consistently,
we would have to have roughly, almost seven, 8,000 customers
lined up and ready to either participate in PIPP
or be placed on a wait list.
And that was another one of Edison's sort of proposals
is to have a wait list and I think that's on the next slide.
So yeah, so our wait list is really,
we wanted to establish a wait list of interested
and eligible customers that were ready to participate in.
And what we're gonna do is we're gonna kind to break down
each of these target areas.
You'll see later that we have various CCAs that
are participating in each CCA has kind of their own bucket
or pool of customers that we want to make sure
are represented, now, if a customer was removed
from a territory, the idea of the tidal waitlist
is that rather than selecting a customer from anywhere else,
again, with the idea of being want to provide the best data
for the evaluation,
we would kind of look at the wait list to see what other
customers are within that territory.
And then take one that has already expressed interest
has already kind of filled out an interest
form or application, and then they would next be next
in line to join a PIPP.
And then in addition to that,
we wouldn't have to wait and they're, they're already ready.
We can get the, signed them up and get them on right away.
But it also maintains that integrity of keeping those
pockets of target areas kind of full throughout
the four year pilot.
Next slide please.
So why would we want to use a wait-list, like I mentioned,
customers will already be available to participate.
We'll have a clearly defined open enrollment periods.
Sort of the idea is that initially we would kind of do all
this outreach and kind of get everybody aware and signed up.
And once we had a sufficient enrollment goal
and a sufficient waitlist goal for all these target areas
effectively, we could shut down the enrollment phase
and that would help keep costs down by not having to,
turn it on and off on the websites on and off.
And kind of, it becomes a little bit tricky in trying
to have those outreach kind of happening all the time,
all the time, all the time.
So by establishing a wait list,
a customers will be ready to go,
we'll keep the cost down and we'll keep the integrity
of the target areas.
We also looked at doing smaller campaigns,
but again, starting and stopping it just
if it's not really efficient
in that regard or just not having a wait list at all,
but we kind of felt that it would be important to help as
many people as possible and keep those slots full
as often as we can, so we decided that we would,
the waitlist was the way to go.
Next slide please.
So like I mentioned,
we have those target areas and one of those target areas
is the CCA.
These are the current list of CCAs that have agreed
to participate in PIPP.
And just to kind of say like Clean Power Alliance
is one of our larger CCAs.
They have about 19%, almost 20%
of the total Edison territory.
So therefore they should also receive 19-20%
of our 4,000 targets.
So for them, seven 800 customers would be enrolled.
But like I said before, if we have an additional
up to the 1500,
those people would be placed on a wait list.
And in the event that the attrition holds at 23%
attrition folds, as people drop off,
you would just be able to grab one from the wait list
from that CCA territory and slot them in,
ready to go for PIPP.
We would do similar things because another aspect
is CBO participation.
So CBO's will have similar goals if they based
on their target area who they outreach to kind of where
they're located, the Zip Codes, et cetera,
that if a CBO had a certain number of slots,
as people dropped off from those slots again,
back they'll from their particular waiting list, next slide.
-: Hey Anthony, this is Benito, just a quick time check.
We're about 25 minutes into a 30 minute item.
And I know there's a few other IOUs that wanted to speak,
so we'll probably just need to move through quickly.
You happy to go over time a little bit, but just wanted
to do a time check.
-: Absolutely, so next slide.
I'll briefly talk about this.
We're going to have multiple ways for customers to enroll
direct marketing, CDOs, websites.
The call center can actually enroll people over the phone
and our CCA, which you spoke to already, we can forward.
And then one of the last pieces is the gas electric split.
So with Edison and the gas company,
we're gonna look at the 4%.
Total CAPP is based on their total income,
but that's for gas and electric.
So we have to figure out whether winter versus summer
electric versus gas in coastal climate zones
versus inland climate zones and all those things
will be factored in and how we split the gas,
electric total CAPP, or get that 4%.
I think that'll conclude if you move forward,
maybe one or two,
we'll get to the next presenter, thank you.
-: If the host wouldn't mind moving up one more side,
I believe the next presenter is SoCalGas.
And maybe one more.
-: Thank you, hello, I am Christine Holiganga.
And I will be presenting the components of SoCalGas's PIPP
implementation plan, today I will be reviewing
four key areas, our approach to identify
and target potential eligible participants,
our communications and outreach.
SoCalGas is envisioned process on PIPP enrollment in income
verification, and finally the electric
and gas bill CAPP splits.
Next slide, please.
In this slide, it really outlines SoCalGas's two tiered
approach in identifying potential PIPP eligible participants
as shown and bullet points one and two,
first we've those CARE residential customers that are most
at risk of disconnection by identifying the top 10 Zip Codes
with the highest reoccurring number of disconnections
of enrolled CARE residential customers.
So in the table below what it displays first are those total
CARE customers that are potentially eligible to enroll
into PIPP since they are currently enrolled into CARE.
In review of that data,
what we found is that there are over a 100,000
potential customers that are eligible and enrolled in CARE.
So that number greatly exceeds so-called gases,
PIPP pilot participation CAPP of 5,000 customers.
Also in the table, what it displays is our approach
to target CARE customers but also a subset of non CARE
customers that have experienced a disconnection.
And then touching on bullet 0.2,
in analyzing the Zip Codes with the highest residential
rates of disconnection, we found that seven of 10 of those
zip codes actually exist in the data set that I described
in bullet 0.1.
And then finally for bullet 0.3,
aligned with the language and the decision that authorized
the pilot programs and in efforts to reduce
the number of disconnections.
SoCalGas proposes to reserve 10% of the total PIPP pilot
participation CAPP for those customers
who are subject to disconnection.
So what this is equivalent to is offering about 500 spaces
to enroll eligible customers into PIPP
before disconnecting the customer.
Next slide please.
So for communications and outreach,
they're really two components we are envisioning to utilize
the traditional marketing
education and outreach efforts,
and then also compliment those activities
with community-based organization or CBO support.
So for marketing ME&O activities,
SoCalGas envisions creating a website and an intake
enrollment form that will be developed in place
on our homepage.
Then we will create awareness of the pilot program through
meaningful and consistent tailored communications.
And as I mentioned in slides before,
we are targeting through various channels,
such as email and direct mail letters to specific CARE
and non CARE residential customers.
In terms of ongoing support,
we envisioned that the customer contact center
or CCC will be our first point of contact
for customer support and then secondary issues
then could be escalated to either the billing team
and or CARE program team for resolution.
The component that I mentioned before for CBO level support,
we have talked through leveraging select CBOs
that are currently partners under the low income decision
to educate and build awareness on these, this pilot program.
And that would be heavily dependent based on the top 10
Zip Codes that we are targeting for this pilot.
And then another example that we have been brainstorming
is the potential opportunity to leverage our existing
partnership with the United Way of Greater Los Angeles
through the gas assistance fund agencies.
I wanted to note that these GAF agencies are nonprofit
organizations and they are a network of agencies
that partner with United Way,
and they offer assistance throughout
the entire SoCalGas territory.
Partly these gap agencies handle upfront
income intake verification.
Next slide please.
So SoCalGas is envisioned process for PIPP enrollment
and income verification are highlighted here in this slide.
SoCalGas envisions to proactively send targeted
communications to these potential eligible customers.
From there, those interested customers would be directed
to apply online through the SoCalGas's website,
through the interest intake form.
Then SoCalGas can manage those customer interests
through the intake form,
and it can also perform income verification
through this process.
Next slide please.
And finally, for the electric gas bill CAPP split
bill CAPP split will be a separate for electric and gas
service, utilities will apply a monthly bill CAPP
based on 4% of the household income for both electric
and gas and where their customers that are served
by two utilities, the utilities would include a joint
proposal for the splitting of the bill CAPP
between electric and gas.
The bill CAPPs split will be implemented as a line item,
bill credit and what has SoCalGas has proposed
is the calculation methodology to really estimate
that average bill amount.
And what we have discussed currently with Edison
is going forward with a 36 month average bill
for the CARE residential customers.
This would exclude core aggregation transportation
customers, and in the calculation of total charges,
we will be including CARE program discounts
and also excluding user utility taxes.
Thank you for the opportunity to present SoCalGas's
PIPP implementation plan today, thank you.
Jessica: Hi, my name is Jessica Chancellor.
I am presenting on behalf of Pacific Gas and Electric
Company, can you confirm that you can hear me, okay, great.
Thank you, next slide please.
So today I'm gonna take the opportunity to provide you
with just a very high level overview of where we're at,
especially considering time I'm gonna be respectful of that,
but to start with the things I will touch on
is billing implementation, our targeted population
and our marketing education outreach also known as ME&O.
So specifically for billing offer the billing operation side
of it, we're currently still looking at
all of our options on how to implement this,
the timeline and the complexity of the pilot is definitely
something that is challenging for us and may require us
in fact, to do a form of manual billing.
In regards to targeted population,
we have a very large number of eligible customers
for the pilot,
just as you you're hearing from the other IOUs as well.
But the areas that we're looking at
are the highest number of disconnections.
We're currently looking at the data for our CCAs
that are participating.
And we're also looking at how our CBOs have the ability
to support those targeted areas and how they layer over
the disconnections Zip Codes that we'll be targeting.
And then for the ME&O piece of this,
because there is such a large population of customers
that are eligible,
we are really targeting phased approach for our outreach
and for marketing,
we'll be utilizing CVS to help us with this,
but we are wanting to ensure that we are providing
a good customer experience and making sure that we do not
overmarket to customers and resulting in an excess
of customers, interested in us having
to turn them away, next slide.
Okay, so a little bit further about the billing
implementation piece of it.
Some of the items that are in discussion right now,
our bill CAPPs,
we service both gas and electric for a lot of our customers,
but there are scenarios where we do only service one
commodity and we'll feel like there is a potential dis,
I guess it's a rather an equitable result
for customers who only have one commodity.
So in keeping that in mind,
we are considering an option of potentially having
one CAPP per commodity.
And if a customer only has one of those has just one
commodity, they would only be capped at that amount.
So for example, these costs are just illustrative.
These are not true costs at this point,
but if a customer has electric only,
rather than getting the $37 CAPP,
they would only be capped at 27.
And if they only had gas, they would be capped at $10.
So then it would be a little bit more equitable
for the customer as well as not doing a disservice.
And then if they have to have propane or another,
another service through a different provider, next slide.
Okay, so for our targeted population,
I touched on this a bit,
we're looking at the top 20 Zip Codes and those Zip Codes
have the highest number of disconnections.
We have over 200,000 customers eligible.
And just looking at that we're our enrollment CAPP
is only 5,000, so to put it into perspective,
that's more than 40 times the amount we do also have seven
CCAs that have cited interest to participate.
And those seven CCAs,
we have two of them that are represented
in the top 20 Zip Codes.
That means that overall,
the majority of our CCAs that are participating
don't have as many disconnections
as some of these other areas.
We are still providing an allocated population to the CCAs
per the decision, where we would be giving them the total
portion of the pilot CAPP based on how their population
fares against the total bundled population for residential
customers, and we have a meeting slated to share
all of that with our partner CCAs tomorrow, or excuse me,
on Friday where we'll be getting a little bit more
into the granulars of all of that.
Similar to SoCalGas, we are also looking at a reserve
for two or more disconnections and also customers
as kind of a last to assist customers
where they are being disconnected.
Next slide, all right and this is my last slide.
I'm speaking to the ME&O piece of it.
As I explained with 5,000 customers being kept
for this pilot, it's we have to be very strategic
and our outreach efforts
we'll be leveraging direct marketing.
We'll also be utilizing CBOs to assist in that measure.
We currently have an RFP that is underway,
and this is expected to conclude before the end of the year.
One of the challenges that we'll be faced with is that proof
of income is a new role for our CBOs.
We don't currently have anyone that does that.
And with customer privacy,
being something that we hold at the utmost important,
we need to figure out a way to have our CBOs assist
in a way that protects customer privacy
and also supports the program.
So I'm available for additional questions
at the end of this, if there's time,
or I would put my information in the chat and you can reach
out to me, I have included an appendix slide.
That is just for your guys's knowledge on the timeline.
Thank you for your time.
-: All right, and then if we could advance a few slides
to the final presenter for SDG&E, thank you.
I'm just checking Erin, are you able to continue?
Erin, I see that you're muted from your end, Erin,
to unmute on the phone, I think you need to press star.
Joe: Hey, Gillian, this is Joe and let me, oh, and there,
it looks like she, looks like they'd come up.
-: Erin, otherwise perhaps in the interest of time,
we could, we can start with some questions
while we figure out Erin's.
Joe: This is Joe Hega, shall I try to unmute her
from my end.
-: Yes, that would be great.
-: I was in this might be a good opportunity for feedback,
thanks, Gillian, I was gonna say we're a little,
we're probably like, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes past time
on this item already.
And I know there was already part of the plan
to have a January committee meeting.
So I'm wondering, we'll certainly move forward
with this presentation,
but I'm wondering in terms of feedback from our Board,
if that's something we could put on that agenda,
just so I know if you people have hard stops
at four o'clock, I feel like if we do Q and A on this,
we're going to blow away past that or not hear some
of the items on our agenda today.
So wanted to just kind of do a temperature check
with colleagues to see if we did a joint committee meeting
in January, which is kind of probably late January,
mid January, would that be agreeable to them?
And then Jessica question to you would be,
as I think I heard the onset with the filing
is on the 4th of February.
And so if we did have a committee meeting like the week
of January and, or even 17 and provided feedback
there would that still provide enough time for the IOUs
to take that feedback into consideration
into their application?
-: Yeah, thank you, I'm just checking on that.
-: It also looks like Erin is up and ready for SDG&E.
-: Can you here me now?
-: Yes.
-: Wonderful.
-: Oh, I was going to say Erin, why don't you proceed,
and Jessica, if you're able to get an answer on that,
that could be helpful.
-: Thank you.
-: Erin forger.
-: Great thank you, hello, Commissioner, chair, Board,
and joined IOU colleagues and guests today's meeting.
My name is Erin Maturo.
I am the pilot owner for PIPP pilot at San Diego Gas
and Electric, over the next five minutes,
I'm gonna share with you how we took the decision
to inform how we're going to implement the pilot
into our billing system to inform us our target population
and eligible population, as well as to inform our ME&O plan.
Next slide, please.
Next slide, we took the eligibility requirements
that the Commission's direction and the decision
to look out a few items.
How can we implement this into our billing system
and how can we find and identify the target population
from that information, we discovered that we have two groups
of individuals, a very specific group that was disconnected
at a very specific point in time and our CARE customers.
We have that data extraction as well as the data extraction
on the topic disconnected Zip Code.
We that in this data,
like you've heard from the other joint you use,
that we had quite a broad offering group
of a population eligible.
And we brought that in a little closer so that we can inform
and take a look at our ME&O plan.
Next slide please.
So we will look to our new billing system to implement
the bill, and we are looking to, as you've heard
from the other joint from the other joint I use
a dual service, gas and electric,
and we're going to take that 4% split for the bill CAPP
and allocate that based on the average CARE customer bill
for electricity and gas into two categories.
So we took it brought together inland and coastal
and desert and mountain we'll take those averages
and that average then we'll inform the split.
So there'll be a percentage like you heard from PG&E
a percentage that's gas and a percentage
that is electricity, and for a single service
and individual, they will get the full 4% of their income.
Next slide, we are in the capacity to work with two
other CEAs, CCAs, CEA, and SCCP.
And we look to the information that is outlined here
to target and get a group of individuals
that need PIPP the most.
And what you see here on the screen is how we've
kind of organized our data because we have
to meet the requirement of a proportional share
and with our CCAs, they're going to be coming online
gradually over the duration of the pilot.
So we have information here before you that shows
that we are looking to two or more disconnections
and a group of individuals there,
as well as a group of Zip Codes and individuals that reside
in a very select group of Zip Codes.
And we can take that information as you can see a broad
group of offering and then adjust our marketing and outreach
to a very specific population, next slide.
So as of right now,
looking at our service territory at the initial offering,
we are looking at these cities here on your screen.
Now with the opportunity of this decision,
we also have the chance for the CEA and SDCP to weigh
on the Zip Codes that they would like to target too.
And that will help us to get to the customer that needs
the most help, next slide.
So our ME&O plan is a very targeted multi-step approach,
that's going to be monitored and adjusted using enrollment
as a guidance, because we have the complexity of many users,
we want to make sure that we're adjusting our plan
to accommodate multiple channels.
And so you can see here on this screen at the SDG&E level,
there'll be a website, there'll be direct communication.
We'll have our contact center reps prepared to take
and support questions.
There'll be even an outbound calling campaign if needed
only if we're not able to meet that target date,
the six months from initial offering and reach directly
to the customer.
We're also gonna partner with our CBOs in our communities.
We're gonna give them the relevant information that they
need to have that conversation with the at-risk community
and inform the customer, along the way of the other
program offerings and the CCA is that having the opportunity
to elaborate upon that,
maybe there's a very special marketing
that they would like to do, we're open to that,
and we look forward to partnering with them.
So over the next duration of our pilot,
we're going to be taking the information that was provided
to us in requirements that the Commission's direction
to target individuals that need our most help.
Next slide, please.
That concludes my presentation, like the other IOUs.
I'm prepared to answer any questions that you might have.
Back to you facilitator
-: Okay, thank you very much, Erin.
And I think I'm gonna defer Jessica,
were you able to get an answer with respect to,
if you committee meeting might be an opportunity to provide
more formal feedback?
-: Yeah, thank you.
So it sounds like mid January would be workable
for a Southern California Edison.
As long as we are able to work into that,
sub-committee agenda,
if we can get an hour on the agenda so that we can share
at that point, we'll have feedback from some of the other
working group sessions.
I am seeing that the date might be too late
for another one of the IOUs.
So we're all sort of in real time,
trying to communicate with the timing of that.
But if the other IOUs outside of SCE would like to chime
in with their thoughts, maybe that might be
the most efficient, I don't want to speak for the other IOUs
if they haven't confirmed their responses.
-: Okay, understood, yeah.
Apologies colleagues for the circumstance.
I think it's just, I do know a few of our members
have to leave right at four o'clock and so I don't want us
to skip over other items.
So the other IOUs can provide an answer,
that would be very helpful.
-: Hi, this is Jessica with PG&E.
I'm not getting any communication on this topic.
So is this coming over email or chat?
-: If you're prepared to answer now,
I mean, the question really is just,
if we were to have a committee meeting say the week
of the 10th of January and provide more substantive
feedback, then would that be enough time for the IOUs
to take that feedback, when we consider anything
for the February 4th filing date.
-: For PG&E would be incredibly tight,
but I feel like any feedback is really valuable
from, at any point.
So I would welcome whatever we could get.
-: Okay, very good, and for SDG&E in Southern California Gas,
are you able to comment on that as well?
-: Yes, I concur that any feedback we welcome,
we look forward to engaging with you
and we look forward to that.
-: SoCalGas also we agree any feedback provided
would be helpful.
-: Okay, excellent, so we will work offline
and work through our colleague, Jessica,
to coordinate that as quickly as possible.
So tomorrow we'll start putting the details on that together
to see what works for our members.
And with that, we will continue on to item eight,
which are the CPC standing reports.
And first up there is, Kapil from the Energy Division
so I can feel whenever you're ready, you have before.
-: Hi chair, this is Gillian, due to kind of the timing
we're going to have to rearrange the standard reports
if that's possible.
So we will begin with the Water Division update
and then move to changes and then end with Kapil
and Energy Division.
So IT I hate to ask you to kind of skip around
the slide deck, but if you could go to approximately
slide 141, which we'll have water utilities update,
that would be great.
-: Thanks Gillian, hi, good afternoon everyone,
it should be quick presentation.
So hopefully I can get help make up some time.
I'm Viet Kevin Truong from Water Division,
and I'll be providing updates on the water utilities.
Next slide please.
So just three topics today.
I will provide the latest data on customers enrolled
in CAPP as well as conservation numbers.
And I will be going over assembly bill 1250,
that was just passed in October regarding acquisitions
of failing or at-risk systems, next slide please.
So the latest data shows that there are about 280,000
customers enrolled in CAPP,
a slight increase from the previous months,
and that represents about 23% of all residential customers
served by the class A's,
comparing it to the beginning of the pandemic
participation in continues to increase and is now over 25%
since March of last year.
And as I mentioned in previous meetings,
the data exchanges will occur four times a year,
starting next year, next slide please.
Right conservation in July,
the Governor called for a Californians to voluntarily reduce
water usage by 15% compared to 2020 usage.
This graph shows the water IOUs water usage in 2019, 2020,
and this year, you can see that before July, 2021 usage
was generally higher than the past two years,
but once the voluntary reduction was in place and the water
IOUs took actions to have people conserve water usage
has been lower than the past two years.
Currently the cumulative savings is 6.3% or the water IOUs
and Statewide is 5.6%.
So still a bit of work to do,
to try and meet that voluntary 15%.
Next slide please.
And for the last slide wants to discuss AB 1250,
that was signed in October and will be effective beginning
of next year.
The purpose of this bill is to focus on acquisitions
of small community water systems that are struggling
and labeled as failing or at risk by state water Board.
It provides a additional guidance for the Commission
to review an acquisition application within 12 months.
And if the water system is under is valued under $5 million,
an advice letter can be filed instead,
and that review must be completed within 180 days.
So this bill also establishes the consolidation for safe
drinking water fund.
A fee of $10,000 will be charged when acquisition
application is filed,
which will be used by the Commission to cover costs
associated in reviewing and processing the acquisition.
So the goal of this bill is to mainly prioritize
acquisitions involving those small water systems
that are struggling.
And that concludes my presentation.
-: Okay, thank you as always Kevin, comments or questions
from members of the Board?
Okay, I guess we're good.
Kevin, thank as always look forward to seeing you again
at the next meeting.
Oh, wait, I think I did miss one, Jeff, do you have
a comment or question?
Oh, okay, sorry, we're good, thank you, Kevin.
See you next time.
-: I was just complimenting Kevin, that's all.
-: Okay, so I think next item or sub item on this item
is the changes program update.
And I think we have Ravi in the queue.
-: Oh yeah, it's a Ravinder Mangat,
can you hear my voice?
Okay, great, okay,
I just want to say thank you chairman Commissioner,
Board members for having the, this update on changes
on the agenda.
I know you're running a little late,
so I'll try and be as brief as I can just wanted
to say the program contractors,
Casey McFall from Milestone Consulting
and Annie Chung from Self-help for the Elderly
are also on the line and are here for any questions.
Could I have the next slide please?
Very briefly changes was initiated to support predominantly
limited English customers,
but also supports disabled and senior consumers
with their energy services through three major components,
outreach education and individual case assistance,
which itself is broken down into needs assistance
and dispute resolution.
Contract oversight is by the CPCs consumer fair branch.
And the contractors are Self-help for the Elderly
and Milestone Consulting, just to brief lion on funding.
So changes is what's funded by the CARE program,
and that will continue to be the case.
The CARE decision also approved funding continued through
the end of the cycle and the 2026.
Next slide please.
Quick overview, Outreach predominantly was undertaken
via in-person community events and traditional media.
Obviously mostly in-person events have been canceled.
So traditional media has taken up the slack.
Also social media has also increased.
You'll see there, Facebook is very popular as honored
by Twitter and Instagram,
in terms of the education, this was previously done
all in person, mostly, almost all in person that led
to a great reduction in education during the pandemic,
but due to the efforts of the contractor online education
has continued now and 300 presentations have now been
translated in all the different languages into education
topics that can be delivered online.
Consumers do face issues when we're dealing with a target
group that, the main issues are in access to good equipment
that can run in a fast internet and also,
navigating some of these apps
is challenging for the group we're working with.
So there are some ongoing challenges with doing online
education, but a lot, it has moved forward.
And to a large degree,
it's a good effort by the contractors.
A case assistance is as mentioned needs assistance
and disputes have been delivered in over 26 languages,
predominantly Spanish and Chinese,
but Vietnamese also is a significant language
and probably three other languages.
Could have the next slide please.
Yeah, next slide please.
Okay, in terms of the most prevalent case assistance,
looking at disputes, most of the disputes
or much of the dispute activity in prior years
has been connected to this connections,
however, with the moratorium, a lot of that activity
is down, so dispute activity is actually very low,
relatively to the historical pattern
that we've witnessed.
However, there are ongoing issues with CCAs
and called transport agents with CCS is generally
some issues about not understanding why their bills
have been transferred over not necessarily billing issues,
with needs assistance, as has been typical for this program
over the years, HEAP/LIHEAP and enrollment in financial
assistance programs continue to be the most in demand
services and particularly during the pandemic,
we've seen this issue exacerbate,
the arrearage management plan was added this year
and that's become one of the more significant needs
assistance issues that the contract has done a good job
of trying to conduct outreach and sign folks up for that.
Obviously the sample group we have
is a small footprint of all the customers out there,
but instead of become a feature of the changes landscape,
some issues with billing or so language changes continued.
But if I could move on to the next slide, please.
Yeah, here, it's just briefly just to show you
that the orange line shows the needs assistance,
which are by far dwarf the disputes,
again, the financial assistance and LIHEAP,
and now AMP have become the majority of this.
We had a bit of a spike in the summer,
but that's by far the largest activity,
our numbers are still low compared to pre-pandemic,
but we've seen a gradual increase from last year overall.
So, okay, next slide please.
Yeah, so I think that the Board asked that we provide
a report back on our risk management plans,
currently it's at the end of last month,
740 QMS consumers were enrolled in the program
through the CBO network.
Total balances were close to a million dollars,
in the programs with an average of around 1,400.
The contractors have followed up with customers,
sample of customers to identify how they've been managing,
to stay on AMP and whether they've had any issues.
And some of the data is shown below,
which is that about 31% have managed to make all their
payments and are current on the program.
However, 40% have actually been dropped from the sample
because of missing payments and 29% are at risk because
if they have missed one payment, so these numbers
are fairly significant, I did quantify that with a sample,
but I think this is an issue,
which I think the IOU data also shows as well
in the wider disconnections reports that are produced.
You have the next slide, please.
Yeah, just again, to show that education,
we had to pivot from in-person to online
and you can see over the course of the last year or so
that there's been a gradual increase.
And at the folks are the CBO has have pivoted to providing
online education and they've been able to sign consumers up
and it's an ongoing trend again,
still lower than pre-pandemic, but sending,
moving in it in a good direction,
and based on the efforts of the contractor,
could we move to the next slide please?
Okay, and in terms of topics,
most probably topics that are understanding your bill
and assistance programs.
Again, it kind of underlines the issue with financial
concerns that customers have had,
over the last year, with the pandemic, trying to understand,
what the issues are and why the bills are so high,
like usages are up and help with trying to get on programs
is always, has typically been at a high level prior
to pandemic and that continues to be the case.
I think I've got one more tutorial to show you,
the next slide, please.
Okay, yeah and actually it's outreach.
So yeah outreach in general, again,
in-person events have been canceled.
So there has been a predominance of working on traditional
radio television and Brent,
there have been issues trying to access some
of the broadcast facilities, but, that's,
the folks have tried to work on that,
and they're working with immigrant groups to provide
the information to those local communities that are in their
language in the country specific way.
And they've also integrated COVID related information
and protections as well as they can.
So I think that's, again, one more slide please.
Okay, next slide please.
Okay, again, just to finish off here,
just to show you how the CBOs have kind of used their own
approaches to provide services by,
here's a vaccine clinic and providing services onsite,
for folks that there are issues with their bills or,
requiring any help with any other services,
CBO staff had been out working remotely to try
and provide an end kind of work around the current pandemic
landscape, so, again, kudos to them for trying to find
these approaches and the program in shrines,
these kinds of innovative designs by the CBOs.
So I think that's it.
One more slide, please.
Yeah, thank you, that's the end of the presentation.
Thank you, if there any questions we have Casey and Annie
on the line as well.
So if you want to go dive a little deeper there,
we have access to the buzzer them.
-: Questions or comments from members of the Board,
I think that's the Board member Medina's hand up.
-: Yes, thank you, Mr. Mangat,
I hope that you were able to catch the presentation
by Reverend Brandon earlier,
but also I was concerned with the outreach,
working with non-profits, I understand that,
we have to work regardless of what pandemic was happening.
So I was wondering if the, how the staff,
and the people who work with changes have been affected
emotionally and if we're able to help them in some way,
or is there some services that might be needed for the CBOs,
because dealing with utility costs
and disconnection questions and pandemic,
it takes a toll before they had to help a lot with
the crisis as far as being disconnected with the LIHEAP
programs and so forth like that.
But now on top of everything the pandemic.
So I was wondering if your staff and also your CBOs
and changes how are you guys taking CARE of you.
And I hope you are, and I too want to say,
thank you for the work you still did,
regardless of the pandemic, thank you.
-: Yeah, I think I'll just allow Casey,
I think in particular to say a word,
if she's available, I think that due to the Casey
and Annie have done a remarkable job of trying to keep these
CBOs provide us some the support that they need
and keeping the information.
And here at CPUC, we're happy to help in any way we can.
And Casey frequently gives us the insight that we need.
And then so does Annie as well.
So Casey I'll hand the floor to you.
-: Hi everybody, and thank you, the Lulu for that.
And for asking about that,
it's been a tough couple of years.
I think for all of us, one thing that
we constantly remind ourselves is that when the pandemic
first hit, all of our CBOs really essentially
became frontline workers immediately,
Annie's organization immediately had to go to home delivered
meals, many of our organizations did that.
All of the congregate feeding sites had to go to home
delivery, it's been wearing,
and it's been a long time and the pandemic is not over.
We're still losing 1500 people a day in this country.
And so, now asking CBOs to move forward on new things
when things are not completely recovered yet
has been difficult.
One of the things that we do,
because we are actually a coalition,
we're not just a network that contracts with CBOs,
but we're a coalition that works together
is that we're able to provide a lot of extra support.
So all of our CBO workers have access through milestone
to credentialed coaching.
We do a weekly check ins with each CBO
on progress and we help them to take,
we have always helped them to tailor their service delivery
so that it's not just a cookie cutter approach.
That's part of cultural competency.
As you have to be able to change your service delivery
methods, to meet the community that you're trying to reach,
but with the pandemic,
that's increased quite a bit.
And so just as an example, things like our requests
for one-on-one coaching, we used to do a couple of week
now I'm doing two or three a day just with CBO staff,
because there's, as Lulu there's stressors that have to do
with just that we're all facing in general
because of a pandemic.
But then there are also the additional stressors of having
to still meet goals and expectations without the resources
that you usually have.
An example, one of our organizations in San Diego
has had almost 50% of their staff submit doctor's
recommendations that they not go back into the office.
This is an organization that serves the disabled community
and so their stuff themselves are at a higher risk as well.
And so we're doing as much as we think we can to support
our CBOs individually and as a group
and doing lots of recognition, helping them figure out how
to implement more volunteers.
But that means more training, it means background checks.
It means a lot of extra stuff there as well,
but we do those kinds of things to try to keep services
going as best we can.
And I think that CBS have stepped up,
but numbers are down.
I think they will continue to be down for a while,
and we'll continue to try to modify any approaches
that we take to meet the needs and then provide
the individual and organizational support that we can.
-: Thank you Casey, Board members Wimbley is your hand up?
-: Yes, thank you, well, we thank you for the presentation
and I just wanted to circle back on some statistics,
you kind of referenced in your presentation regarding AMP
participation and the 31% that made it and payments on time.
The 40% that removed from the payment for failure to fulfill
those payment obligations and the 29% that missed one
payment and are at risk of being removed from the program.
This was curious as to do being that AMP is a relatively
new program, and it was possibly doing this heavy lifting
to help mitigate some of the challenges that people
have encountered during the pandemic,
namely this issue of energy affordability
and having past due bills.
Do we know like, whether it's some of the challenges
that are preventing an individual from completing
their enrollment in the amp program.
-: Builds are very, very high.
So, it's a little interesting that when people haven't been
not been able to pay their bills for so long
that they have a balance of a thousand to 2000, yesterday,
I saw one for 10,000 to assume that now they're enrolled
in a program and they'll just be able to make their current
charges every month.
If they could make their current charges every month,
they wouldn't need AMP,
they wouldn't need a 24 month payment plan
and be enrolled in that when, I mean,
payment plans only work if you actually have money
to make your payment.
And if your bills are low enough to do that.
And so you can keep putting people on two, three, four, five
different payment plans.
It's not going to matter if the bill is so high,
that it exceeds their ability to pay.
-: Right, yeah, and I know that we were hoping to cover
this in more detail on item four but chair,
I just wanted to flag this as an area of interest
for the Board, because again, AMP, LIHEAP, CAPP,
these are all programs that are here to try to address this
issue of utility arrearages and minimize the risk
of surface disconnection.
And I think we need to understand,
but understand what are the challenges that are preventing
an individual from successfully completing the program.
And then if there's anything that we can do differently,
I think we know what I did that comes to mind to me is that,
the requirements from AMP were such that now we're testing
them in the, in the real life situation,
and maybe they need to be revisited or something needs to be
done to maybe better assess those that are being enrolled
in the AMP to make sure that they can maximize
the opportunity and the benefits of some of the program.
And again, making sure that they can afford
those repayment terms.
So, yeah, I think this is a real issue
and I'm hoping that we can also include this in our meeting
meeting next month.
-: That's great feedback, and I would agree.
I think maybe the key here is what are the criteria for just
more forgiveness and where did those dollars come from?
'Cause obviously you can't just forgive,
without some sort of resolution of where the dollars come
from, but yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
If people don't have the income to begin with
and how are they going to meet the plan,
they're just setting themselves up for all kinds of problems
that will snowball.
-: And I would just follow all of that up with,
the way we present things and put the responsibility
for this on a low-income person,
by saying they have failed to comply,
or they failed to meet the demands.
When we're setting them up for failure
and nobody wants to carry a $5,000 balance
on their electric bill.
Nobody is choosing to go out and spend that money
on something irresponsibly.
And so when we look at things like,
I think percentage of income combined with some
of these things might help.
But another thing to remember about that
is for the populations that we serve,
people have a very difficult time proving income.
They don't necessarily get paychecks that show tax
deductions or if you work in a certain areas,
sometimes you still get paid in cash.
We found that to be a problem with people
who want to apply sometimes for lifeline.
I'm sorry, I'm not going to start rolling.
So sometimes when people have to prove income,
they may not have the appropriate documentation to do that.
So you may be leaving out the most vulnerable people,
if your requirements are difficult for them to meet.
So it's something to consider as you go forward,
is how do you prove income?
And what if you don't have a Social Security number?
-: I think those are all good points.
I think also just to take Jason's you were talking about
with item four and everything,
is it sort of premise to this committee meeting in January
to just take a step back?
It's been, I think I speak for everybody when I just say
it has been a very long two years,
'cause it's almost two years.
And by the time the holidays are over,
we're basically there and there's been a tremendous amount
of energy expended, but not a really a lot of time
for any in depth reflection.
And so I've talked with a couple of colleagues here
about just what does equity and success
in our space actually look like,
and how do we want to measure that?
And then how do we write it down?
So in any case, thank you again for the great presentation.
It's always Ravi and also Casey and the changes team.
And I see we're rejoined by our Commissioner.
And I was also going to ask, I know our agenda,
I believe at a schedule for a break from 3:00 to 3:15.
So we could take that now and just hear the Energy Division
update, when we reconvene,
I suspect we're going to make up a fair amount of time
on the other items and still get out by four.
So do you folks want to take a 10 or 15 minute break right
now or just continue through,
I'm pretty open to whatever the group wants to do.
-: We have to take a bathroom break, so.
-: Yeah, so why don't we take the break and we'll come back,
it's a 3:15 as scheduled and we'll hear from the energy
division and then we'll catch up on the other items.
So you all, then.
Narrator: The feed for this streaming event
brought to you by adminmonitor.com.
-: We'll get started, so you can rejoin be great.
-: Should I go ahead.
-: The floor is yours to fill.
-: Okay, hi everyone, thank you for staying for my part
of the presentation, Kapil Kulkarni Energy Division
within the California Public Utilities Commission,
and wanting to provide three major updates.
The first is on the ESA CARE FERA programs primarily
on the ESA program.
The second will be on summer reliability updates
and the third, a brief update on the longterm
needs assessment study.
Next slide please, thank you.
So the current work going on within the proceeding,
our program cycle, as mentioned last time,
the IOU submitted a joint compliance filing
to align which customer segments, treatment tiers,
and measures, it will be treating an offering
as part of the ESA program going forward through 2026.
As I mentioned earlier,
this includes some of the customer segments,
including those effected by relating to affordability ratio,
financial considerations, as well as geography,
such as customers living in disadvantaged communities.
And so the purpose of this was to get further information
from the IOUs on which of the segments
they'll be prioritizing,
which are the same across utilities,
which are different and to bring some further alignment
in terms of how the program is implemented Statewide.
But staff is currently reviewing protests and replies
to that advice letter and plans to dispose of the advice
letter shortly, the purpose of providing that advice letter
or requiring it earlier.
Most of that the IOUs can then submit their implementation
plan advice letter is for the deeper energy savings pilot.
The IOUs did that in late November PG&E and San Diego
have separate solicitations in terms of each of them
offering full third-party design and implementation
to where the bidding contractor or implementer,
what design and implement the program.
And each of the IOUs would consider the bids received
and pick the design that best adheres to the implementation
plan, the ACE and Southern California Gas Company,
because they have a large overlapping territory
are planning for a program that's designed by the utilities
and implemented by a contractor.
And so these programs plan to launch by Q3 of 2022,
based on Energy Division disposition of the advice,
letters and contracting process
for implementation of the program.
Next slide, please.
Other activities that Energy Division is involved with
regards the working groups for the ESA, CARE
and FERA programs, the main working group is the ESA
working group, which is something that is fairly new
to the ESA program, previous cycles have had various working
groups of limited duration or scope,
but the purpose of this working group is to provide a forum
for the IOUs, Energy Division, for stakeholders,
including members of the working group,
as well as members of the public to provide input
on multiple issues as part of the program cycle
going through 2026,
this includes a kind of a sub working group
or a consideration of additional measures to be included
or removed from the program.
And the purpose of this was to address some of the issues
from the last program cycle,
where measures could only be added at the beginning
of the cycle through a decision
or kind of a mid cycle process.
But in this case, if there is a new technology
or measure that contractors are really
looking to install or that customers are requesting
the IOU bring it up for consideration through the working
group, the working group can discuss
and contractors can weigh in on what types of measures
should be included or how the measures should be,
I guess, brought out to the public or to the customers.
And then the IOU can submit notification of this new measure
through their standard monthly reports.
Related to that, one of the other additional groups will be
kind of a more technical group focused on the policies
and procedures manual
as well as the installation standards manual.
So once a say, for example,
if a measure is considered and then approved through
the working group, and then the IOU's monthly reports,
then the policies and procedures manual and the installation
standards panel can then be updated by an additional
kind of technical working group that's part of the overall
working group for these manuals to make sure
that those manuals reflect those changes.
A couple of the other working groups that the ESA working
group will also encompass is focused on the mid cycle
process, that's weather the program operations,
and the goals that the decision laid out,
whether those are being met and as well as whether
additional goals should be added to the program.
And so that mid cycle process will really pick up in 2023
in preparation for any changes that occur
after that starting in the second half of the cycle
from 2024 through 2026.
-: Kapil.
-: Yap.
-: So if with these working groups,
if it's whoever would like to participate
can log in into these meetings.
So I mean, contractors and suppliers and we're having it,
it's all are welcome, is that correct?
-: That's correct, the decision does say that,
their working groups should consist of no more than two
members from each category in order to make sure
that the group doesn't get too big to be on productive,
but any member of the public, whether it's contractor,
a CBO or other organization can still participate
in the meetings and be made available of all the notes
and other presentations and discussions
that come out of this working group
for out of the working groups.
-: Okay, thank you.
-: The next item is the universal
application system working group.
And the reason this one is a little bit different
is because this working group has a very kind of sub working
group has a very specific mission to develop recommendations
for a universal application system
in order to ease the burden of customers applying
for multiple programs, and they must develop
these recommendations by July, 2022.
And so this working group has met already as opposed
to the ESA working group,
which is having a kickoff meeting in January.
And again, I think we're trying to limit participation
for the actual working group to no more than two
of each category, but again,
all of these meetings are open to the public
and we've all come additional participation.
And similarly, the ESA CARE study working group
has been formed to manage the non-statutory
ESA CARE studies.
So that includes the categorical eligibility study
that was required by the decision,
the impact evaluation studies that relate to savings
from the program process evaluation,
which refers to how the I use run the programs,
not just be focused on savings impacts
as well as the non-energy benefits study.
So this working group has already met and includes a broad
section cross section of organizations,
including Cal PA within the CPUC, other state organizations,
as well as non-profits
and ESA program participants, next slide.
In addition to the working groups,
there's also a procurement review group that is responsible
for involvement in the multifamily whole building program
solicitation, the PRG was formed by the IOUs with input
from the Energy Division,
starting with an outreach process that started in August.
And the purpose of the PRG is to advise the utility
that's leading the solicitation
on the process for the particular program.
So that there's also an independent evaluator that's under
contract to the IOU that also advises the PRG
and produces reporting on the solicitation process.
The other tasks of the independent valuator include,
working with Energy Division staff to provide more input
on the criteria that the utilities are using
to evaluate bids, as well as submitting both internal
reports to the PRG and public reports
on the overall process once the solicitation is complete.
The role of the PRG,
which consists of various members that I'll get
to in a second includes review of the draft RFP review
of the bidder information and bidder packages,
review of interview questions and the responses
to those questions from the bidders,
as well as reviewing the materials developed
by the independent evaluator.
The slide also notes the charter for the PRG,
what their scope and purposes,
and that charter was sent out to the service list
and is also posted on the cake website for anyone
from the public to view.
Next slide, in terms of who is on the PRG,
this includes, similar to the working group across section
of parties and other organizations and including the IOUs
Energy Division and California public advocates, as well as,
and this is kind of the key term is non-financially
interested parties to make sure that organizations
that are reviewing the bids that are coming in can,
kind of put their fingers and toes on the scales
to influence the process,
to benefit themselves or an organization
that they're a part of.
And so this includes non-profit organizations
and other organizations that have a lot of experience,
especially on the main energy efficiency side,
in terms of evaluating bids and participating
in a solicitation process.
And whereas the working group is focused on operations
and implementation of the ESA and CARE and FERA programs.
The PRG is more limited in scope to an overview
and review of the solicitation process.
-: So Kapil, the PRG looks at the overall process.
The independent evaluator looks at the, or monitors,
the proposed and the evaluation of the proposals
and so forth.
-: Right, the independent evaluators kind
of like a consultant to the utilities that also advises
the PRG and the PRG is a larger group that reviews
the materials that the IOUs are sending out
and receiving as part of the solicitation process.
So that there's, it's kind of, one is a typically a person,
one is more like a group,
but they both have input into how open and fair
and transparent the solicitation processes to avoid,
contracting issues or kind of tipping of the scales, or,
and to make sure that all bits they're being evaluated
fairly, as opposed to certain bids or contractors
being favored instead of others.
-: And so we heard from Anna Solario this morning
in terms about transparency of this group,
and basically asking for reports out about the work
in progress this group, and does the charter provide
for that kind of effort
or through the independent evaluator?
I mean, again, you're towards transparency.
-: Yeah, I think this process,
which is only for the multifamily whole building program,
the purpose of which is to ensure that there is a process
for re or reviewing bids and making sure
that they're evaluated fairly,
previously or in other solicitations that are not part
of this, then it's all kind of information,
stays within the higher you, or stays within the bidder
that's participating, but they don't know
how their bids maybe compared to others,
or if the process was fair compared to another bidder,
whereas this will provide more transparency,
something that's been existing on the main east side
for a couple of years has for these energy efficiency
programs, as well as what the IOUs have been doing
on their supply side or energy procurement
for many years as well.
And so the charter has been released to the public and then,
following the solicitation process in order to make sure
that the process can proceed smoothly and without bias,
the IOU produces a public report that will be available
to all parties and all potential bidders
to confirm that the process was fair based on input
from the PRG.
-: And if I can add, this is Alison CPUC,
that IOU reports part of the final submission to the advice
that the selected contract that comes out of the whole
solicitation process with PRG and IOU oversight
goes in front of Energy Division for approval
via the advice letter process.
And so that you report as part of the,
that there was a fair process,
no tipping of scales as part of Energy Division's final
review before the contract is approved.
-: And that tier two as a public document and folks can weigh
in on that is Weiss lower, yeah, okay.
Anna has indicated contrary to Commission's goals
do include different voices.
I know that in this part of the effort
that there a concerted effort to,
and the other folks like earth justice and so forth
who are not involved in bidding competing for monies,
but the working group effort is the venue for providing
a more expansive group of folks to weigh in and work on
specific guidance and attributes in bring in that what they
experienced voices through,
who they're working with is that I captured that properly
Kapil and Alison.
-: Yes, yeah, I wanted to point out that all who applied
for the PRG starting with the outreach process
that started over the summer and included information
sent to multiple service lists and outreach
by Energy Division and the IOUs that all of those
who applied were accepted onto the PRG except
for those who had a financial conflict.
So we welcomed those who could provide
that additional voice in it.
If they were not able to make it out to the PRG,
then we welcome their participation in the ESA working
group, which it's kind of like a two-step process
to where one, you go out for bid for particular part
of the program and then in order to see how that program
is running then I think the working group will provide
a better opportunity.
Whereas a solicitation process is more limited
and only occurs at the beginning of the before
even the program even starts.
So we see the working group as being able to influence
policy and direction of the utilities for a longer period
and a broader as well.
(indistinct)
-: Is somebody talking right now?
-: Oh yeah, Commissioner is the Benito there.
Do I have a connectivity problem?
-: Your voice is a little bit soft there.
If Benito was that you.
-: It was, sorry, I'll speak up.
I didn't mean to, I was asking to interject that,
I wasn't sure if you were done,
so I didn't want to interrupt you on that, so.
-: Go ahead.
-: Thank you, first this is a lot of work,
so I just wanted to say thank you could feel an analysis
because I think that's understated
some of these PowerPoints,
and I understand the goals of the PRG versus some
of the other working groups that are a little bit broader,
but I guess I didn't fully know or appreciate
that out of all the non-financially interested parties,
none of them really have at their core focus,
working with low income communities and households.
And I do remember this being very broadly advertised,
and I don't really question that,
but I'm wondering if it's possible to recruit another
organization that doesn't have a financial interest
to advise, because this procurement work is going to be
for products and services that go into low-income
people's homes and there needs to be a voice within
this space of people who work as the core of their business
with low-income people in their homes that are in,
and it's not disrespect to their work
any of the IOU or the nonfinancial interested parties,
which logically, because this is an energy savings program
lean towards the environmental focus,
but these are still going into low income people's homes.
And there's lots of details that are really important
when you're doing that.
That should be part of this working group
in policymaking process.
So it could be something we can talk more about offline.
I'm happy to help find organizations,
but I just wanted to highlight that.
-: Well, let's clarify that the National Consumer Law Center
is an advocacy group that has represented low income
households and community in communities,
disadvantaged communities, right?
So folks may not be completely familiar with some
of the work of these folks now,
and also, NRDC does have efforts in our very own.
And Maria Stamas has been very heavily involved with NRDC
and communities of color disadvantaged communities
and so forth.
But the suggestion and the chat from Anna about having a CSD
involved could be a consideration.
I don't know if there was a deadline,
this is already known or beyond adding new members.
But if there's an opportunity to spread Jason Wimbley,
even further was all things you've got to do, Jason.
-: You've just been drafted.
-: Yeah, did help out here.
Certainly CSD as a state agency has a rules of experience.
They are a state agency.
So that's all I'm saying is that it's maybe folks
just aren't that keenly familiar with all of these groups.
-: Yeah, I appreciate that.
I confess I'm not as familiar
with the National Consumer Law Center.
So I mean, if they have an expertise that I think
that might help it, I would still try to encourage opening
it up more possibly, but I appreciate the information.
-: Yeah.
-: Sorry about that.
I didn't mean to interrupt the presentation could feel,
I know you have a couple of slides, but.
-: That's a good deal.
-: Thank you, the final member list and the charter
was sent to the service list based on language
from the decision.
But, we can look into whether there is flexibility
to be able to consider additional members of the PRG,
but want to make sure that we still
adhere to decision language.
And so the next slide I had was just on next steps,
including the groups that are meeting the working groups
and the procurement review groups,
as well as the work that the IOUs are doing
on the solicitation process, including,
multiple kind of bidder matchmaking events,
supplier diversity events,
and bidders workshops related to specific RFPs
in order to make sure that large bidders
can look for subcontractors,
subcontractors can look for larger bidders to partner with
and make it easier to enable wider participation
and more awareness of all the different solicitations
and programs that are going out for bid in starting in 2022,
or that have already gone out there in Q4.
And so more information on these solicitations
and events are at the IOU solicitation websites.
If you search for any of the IOUs
and their ESA solicitations
or ESA programs, or just look on the cake website.
And this is an addition to the materials that are posted
at the CPAC docket card, as well as for the working groups,
which will be posted@pda.energydataweb.com,
the Energy Divisions, public document accents website.
And before I go to the next slide,
I wanted to pass it over to Allison Labonte
from Energy Division.
-: Yeah, thank you, Kapil.
And I wanna thank chairman Delgado also for recognizing
the effort from Energy Division.
I wanted to share that since the last low-income oversight
Board meeting, we've certainly appreciated the concerns
of the stakeholder and had many follow-up conversations
with folks individually flying after words.
And this allowed us to really understand the perspective
and concern and challenges from the contractor community,
especially which then led to our being able to ask the right
questions, bring the IOUs to the table.
Data requests the IOUs have individual conversations
with them, have joint conversations with them on things
such as focusing on they're bringing,
being upfront and the communication to ESA contractor,
existing contractor community on what is to come,
and that allowing for the contractors to be able
to plan for and make it shifts to what this new decision
has in store.
We've also made sure that we're aware of the timing of these
solicitations, asking questions about how the IOUs
can better stagger separate the timeframes
of those solicitations and be transparent
on those timelines.
And furthermore, like the given that the bidding
for solicitation or in response to solution stations
is new to the contractor community,
leveraging what we already know from challenges to bidder
community on the ease of market rate solicitation process,
to dig in to what are the terms and conditions that will be
the starting point for negotiations between the IOUs
and the bidder community.
So all this is to say that we're excited about
what the decision has as far as the shift to being
a customer centric centric approach with deeper energy
savings, these pilots, the working groups,
all the flexibility that's out there for new and good things
to come for the customer that we don't want the bidder
community to be confused or challenged.
And we want the bidder community to be able to put your best
foot forward, and so for that, in that light,
we will continue to be putting the IOUs to the task
of communicating transparently.
I think Benito shared earlier that the timeline
with all the solicitations in one place
with more granularity,
that is something certainly we will follow up
to make happen.
And also, we've already seen that we're putting other things
in place with the IOUs,
who've worked with them to have things like in networking,
partnering opportunity for bidders, and then there,
but we're going to be continuing to ask IOUs
in their bidder workshops before the RFP is released
please be very, very clear about what the contract
negotiation process is gonna look like.
Don't wait until you get around to the contract negotiation
phase, that should be shared right up front
in the bidder workshop before a single bidder even puts
the pen to trying to respond to a bid,
to know what the whole process looks like.
And to know, not have to play a guessing game around,
what's gonna be potentially negotiable terms
that they could better be able to figure out their pricing
and the costs that they should really expect
going into preparing that bid.
So thank you again to the stakeholders for,
and your contractor community for sharing the concerns,
and we'll continue to be monitoring this.
And we also appreciate the IOUs that have taken
from the hard questions that we've been asking since
the last LIOB meeting and put their foot forward
to shift and getting clear communication
to the contractors early.
So back to you Kapil or to the Board for questions on this,
ESA the segment before we go to summer reliability topic.
-: Probably have time for one or clue quick questions
or comments from members of the Board
while we go to the summer reliability overview.
-: Hello, Mr. Chair.
-: Yes.
-: Yeah, first of all, I'd like to comment,
I think what Commissioner Shiroma brought forward was CSD
was brilliant because I think that CSD runs a multifamily
program, low income specifically with a live with funding
that they've been receiving there,
certainly more dollars going into that program.
CSD has the experience over three to five years
of engineering procurement process,
it's been very thorough and extremely effective
with a program that's functioning at a very high level.
So I think that their engagement,
with the PRG would make a lot of sense and it helps
the process and it balances what I think is the demographics
in connection with the makeup.
And I know that we're asking a lot of Jason,
but he's got very talented staff.
Maybe he could assign someone to do that.
So again, I just wanted to endorse the concept
and the idea of brought forward by the Commissioner.
I think it's brilliant.
The second question I have as a point of clarification
is my understanding that carry over funds,
simply they just don't exist.
In other words, that monies dollars are allocated
given a specific fiscal year.
They're not carried over to the subsequent fiscal year.
So if that sort of assumption on my part is correct.
I want to ask a question in connection with funding
for the deep energy savings pilot programs
that are slated for fiscal 2022 from pillar to post.
If we, and again, the assumption is that we dedicate money
out of the 2022 ESA budget for these energy saving pilot
programs to be implemented.
If we don't complete that process in 2022,
but yet we assigned dollars that we take out of the program
or the pilots, and we don't execute the pilots in 2022,
are those dollars loss for 2023.
'Cause it's my understanding that what utilities will do
is stop collecting the charge that funds the program.
So it in essence eliminates the carry over and okay,
I get that, but if we don't spend the money in 2022
on the pilots, are those 2022 dollars lost to the program?
Does that make sense?
-: Yes, thank you, Board member Castaneda,
Kapil Kulkarni, Energy Division for both the pilots,
as well as the other programs,
if the funds aren't committed,
or if they aren't spent in 2022,
or they're not committed to a particular project,
then any uncommitted, unspent funds are kind of lost.
And they're used to offset collections for the following
year, so that utility either asked to spend the money,
in which case, we want them to achieve the various goals
for each of the programs and able to spend the funds
that we've allocated for them,
or commit the funds to a project for the next year.
-: Right, because again, my concern is the fellers
are lost to the community and we want to do everything
in our power to avoid that.
So I think what that means is that we're gonna have
to really keep our eye on the ball that these timelines
are executed that no one within the fulfillment stage
of what we're doing with the pilots and other
set of programs drag their feet, for example,
the same thing could be said for measures,
for the sake of arguments, take a pull pump.
If you're going to do 10,000 procurements,
you assign that number of dollars in terms of the ESA 2022
budget for those pole pumps.
The reality is for whatever reason
could be supply chain issues,
it could be other sorts of issues with actually implementing
contracts around acceptable timeline.
If it's not done by the conclusion of December 31st, 2022,
the dollars are lost to the program or to the community.
So I think it's really important for us given these new
rules and guidelines that we have,
that we're on point with kind of managing that money
and managing the process in the sense that we have actual
actual spend dollars during that affected fiscal year.
I mean, would you agree or?
-: I completely agree.
And I believe, that the responsibility of overseeing
the budgets and making sure the funds are being spent
not only falls to the Energy Division,
but also to the ESA working group.
So that will be something that the working group will
consider in their work.
-: Thank you,
-: Okay.
-: Robert, thank you for giving me credit on CSP,
but it was on the Anna Solotio in the chat who first
suggested we energy and CSDs participation, but thank you.
-: And then one we'll remember where.
-: You're brilliant anyway.
-: Right, so I just wanted to say that I totally agree
with the recommendation and so Kapil,
let's talk offline so I can better understand that,
get a better understanding of the commitment,
and then we can see how we can assess.
-: Sounds great.
-: Okay.
-: So Board members we're gonna have to call it there
for this item, our speaker for item 10 as a hard stop
at four o'clock.
So I want to make sure that it has been waiting patiently.
So I want to make sure that we allow them the opportunity,
but Kapil and Alison,
and tell your colleagues just thank you very much
as always and Commissioner, sorry,
did you have one last comment?
-: Well, sort of reliability,
two key things there as the next slide,
it's a smart thermostat rebate program included
in the ESA effort and the automatic enrollment
where if CARE customers lower their kilowatt hour usage
during that peak, anyway, they will get a financial benefit
to that, so kudos to Alison and Kapil were including
this for summer reliability that ended day,
and it could help our CARE customers financially again,
through this, well, if I've got this right,
could be all the emergency load reduction program ELRP,
automatic enrollment and a potential financial benefit.
-: Right, and apologies.
I did forget there were a few slides left, perhaps.
I know we're planning a committee meetings,
joint committee meeting the week of the 10th.
I want to say it'll likely be a next month.
So feel if agreeable, perhaps you can provide an overview
of this at that time.
-: Yap.
-: Okay, thank you for the flexibility and sorry.
We're so tight on time.
That's just kind of become a victim of presenting
at the end of the day, so I apologize for that.
And with that Gillian,
would you mind introducing Roman and elevating him
to panelists I think might actually?
-: Yes, thank you, Roman Partida-Lopez,
of the Disadvantaged Communities Advisory Group is here
to provide a brief update.
Roman, you should be able to connect your audio and video,
and I know you have limited time,
so as much as you're able to share,
and we can finish after you have to step off, thank you.
-: Thank you, Gillian, and hello, Commissioner, chair,
and LLB members, my name is Roman Partida-Lopez.
I'm vice chair of the Disadvantaged Advisory Group.
And I'm here to talk to you a little bit about
some of the priorities that we have for this upcoming year
and provide an update on some of the work that we're looking
forward to 2022 within our advisory group,
but as well as ways of coordinating our efforts
with the LIOB
and the old tech, I do have a hard stop at four,
but I already messaged my next meeting and I have a little
bit of wiggle room, so hopefully we'll be able to have
a little bit of a conversation.
So for those that are not familiar
with the Disadvantaged Advisory Group,
we're set up community members have come together
to provide guidance to the public utilities Commission,
as well as the energy Commission on the various programs,
proceedings, and others related stuff on issues that impact
disadvantaged communities and helping create more benefits
to our most impacted communities.
As I said, I'm currently the vice chair.
I represent San Diego, which is down here in the border,
is where I grew up.
And in my day job, I work at the Greenland Legal Council
for Transportation Equity.
So I believe it was last week or the week before that,
I'm losing track of time with the end of the year here.
But we came together as a group to discuss our priority
areas for this upcoming year.
We've been having these working groups for the last few
years, but now shifting to calling them priority areas.
And these are areas where we plan to engage both as a group,
but then also as subgroups to help provide again,
feedback and engagement in.
And this process was informed by them by our charter,
that we identified a couple of years ago of areas
that we want to focus in on,
but then also as well as our expertise that
each of our members brings to the group and also by guidance
from the energy Commission
and the public utilities Commission,
they shared a document of areas that overlap
for the two agencies,
but then also those that are particular to each one of them.
And we as a group came together to discuss
and prioritize which areas we wanted to work on.
So for this upcoming year where we were focusing
in on 10 areas, transportation, electrification,
building decarb and electrification,
workforce training and development, reliability,
gas transition, distributed, energy resources, epic,
hyper, affordability and customer urges
and community engagement.
And part of the reason why I'm here is that just to share
that what our priority areas are,
'cause there was definitely there's areas of overlap,
but also share with you all,
some of the work that we've been doing to,
because there is overlap of ways we're trying to really work
together because we all CARE a lot about the work
that we do.
Obviously the bringing in more benefits and more equitable
outcomes to our most impacted communities.
And because of that, the LIOB,
as well as the day CAG and the old tech
had been some meetings these last few months
to try to identify opportunity where we can collaborate
and really address issues that overlap between
all of our organizations.
And so we had a meeting about earlier this week
to kind of continue that discussion
and really try to collaborate.
And we identified a couple opportunities where we see some
overlap and those are around affordability and customer
origin, community engagement, and reliability.
And so for now we identified those three,
this upcoming year, we plan to continue to meet,
but really start honing in on ways and opportunities
that might come up to help align either be,
just align ourselves on how we're advocate
or how are we talking to our agencies that we're working
with to help advance some of this work forward.
So with that, I'll stop to see if there's any comments
or questions from the group.
-: Thank you, Roman, for the overview.
And also thanks to the Commissioner for convening
our three Boards to begin with it.
It's been fun already, just starting to convene
and coordinate and plan for 2022.
And I know our vice chair,
Maria has been very involved in that as well,
as well as the other leadership and other Boards.
Commissioner, did you want to say anything off the bat?
-: Many organizations we talk about breaking down silos
and it's partly, it's hard to do,
here with the three advisory groups that are all geared
towards low income and disadvantaged communities.
It's by having the leadership, talking to each other,
I think some real good synergies are opportunities to share
knowledge, share experiences.
So I'm just pretty pleased that folks have been willing
to take a little more extra time because everyone
has day jobs, so you all have day jobs and you take a less,
your time to spend with us is just invaluable.
Thank you everyone for attending today.
-: Echo those comments,
other comments from members of the Board.
-: Yes that's just, this is Board member Medina,
thank you, Mr. Partina-Lopez.
So I bet you had to take in a bit of our meeting and seeing
what we're dealing with and the concerns we have.
I wonder if there was any thing that you thought that,
dealing with disadvantaged communities,
or you thought that we should probably look at more,
or that you think we're hitting the nail on the head that,
because that's one thing that we are striving to all of us
understand here from the different committees
and then from the IOU and from the work of the CPUC
and ourselves, how exactly do we make it effective work?
-: Yeah, no, that's a great question.
And one of that we're gonna work to figure out,
I think there's definitely opportunity does.
I mentioned those three topic areas around reliability,
community engagement and affordability and customer
reaches, I think are opportunities where there's overlap
work that you all are doing that where we're gonna be
engaging on and we've been engaging on,
but how do we take that to the next step?
I think Benito and Maria have been providing good insights
as to the areas that you all are working on
and how you're addressing some of those issues.
But we've only met a couple of times,
I think it's twice or maybe three times now.
So we haven't gotten into the weeds yet,
but I think with now identifying these opportunities,
we'll be able to get into the weeds and start addressing
the question that you asked, right?
Like, what are some of the things that you all
are working on or doing, or like, could be worked on,
we're not gonna provide that guidance for you all,
that's the decision y'all make, but again,
where are those areas for that we do overlap, right.
And we can build on each other's work.
And I think just thinking about community engagement, right?
That's always been an issue that comes up anywhere
and all our agency, all the agencies that we work
in and the work that we probably do during the day,
and how do we better align and help ensure
that we're providing as many benefits as possible
at the same time.
So more to come on that.
And I think that's why we're really excited to come today
and present and really look forward to what's to come next
year, where we could really start aligning our efforts.
-: Thank you Roman, and any other comments
or questions members of the Board?
-: Yeah, Mr. Chair, I have sort of a comment.
Roman, I don't know if you've been following,
but there's a proceeding that's,
that's moving ahead in connection with net energy metering.
And I haven't really, as you say,
dug into the weeds here, but one of the,
there's two things that kind of jump off the page.
One is the argument by utilities,
as well as other advocates for change reform within
any all sort of circle around low income communities,
and what are the things that I see when you see numbers like
a three bucks, a $3 billion estimate in terms of shift
of funding, potentially low-income people pay,
to support rooftop solar in this state.
It kind of begs a lot of questions,
but this is where I'm coming from.
In the end, the proceeding, at least at this point
is discussing an evolution fund.
And I think if the low-income community can literally
be used as a poster child for change,
I would like to see in terms of the fulfillment
of the proceeding, the low-income community truly benefit
from the changes that are coming.
And there's a lot of ways that can happen.
But when you're talking about $3 billion,
and we're talking about affordability in terms of escalating
rates and climate impacts that caused the usage to go up,
there has to be a way to mitigate those impacts
to the communities that we serve based on this evolution
fund that would be created.
So I think that that's something that our two respective
bodies could work on in terms of providing comment
and input to the Commission.
And I just wanted to offer that to you.
-: Yeah, thank you for that insight.
this has been flagged for us,
and I think some of our advisory members are active
on a proceeding, but as a group, I think one that,
Commissioner Guzman who, as you all probably noticed
in the alarm should be moving on,
has raised this in the past with us.
And I think we'll be picking this up this upcoming year
as well, but again, going back to my initial comment
in that, I think what our goal will be to try to align
that to your point here, and how do we take,
the expertise that you all bring to the space, right?
And elevate comments like yours
and have a discussion amongst our groups,
our respective Boards, and really push that forward.
So we make sure that our low income communities are the ones
that are truly benefiting from any of the changes
that are coming forward.
-: Thank you, Board member Wimbley was your hand still up
or is that from the last item?
Okay, terrific, well, Roman, I know you have to go
to I know you have to go to another meeting anyway,
but just thank you again.
I know at our last convening, we talked,
I think about reliability affordability and rearranges
and community engagement is three initial places
where we can probably start to work together
and brainstorm ideas early next year.
So we all look forward to it.
And just thanks again for carving out the time.
-: Yeah, thank you for your time, really appreciate it.
And really look forward
to a collaborative 2022, happy holidays.
-: Okay, no, we're a little behind,
but I think the last few items would be relatively quick.
First of the remaining items, item nine,
we were coordination report on LIHEAP and CAPP.
So Jason I'll pass it to you to see
if there are any updates.
-: Right, yes, so see it on the CAPP front CSDs
implementation of CAPP is still ongoing,
for those of you that don't know,
CAPP is the $1 billion program that offers financial
assistance, but for California energy utility customers,
that help reduce passive energy bills that were accrued
during the camp pandemic, a relief period,
starting March 4th, 2020 through June 20,
I mean, June 15th, 2021.
And my last report in September are pointed out that CSD
was in the process of completing a survey of state energy
utility companies to formulate a complete picture of utility
arrearages accrued during the pandemic relief period.
And then to use that information,
to determine the CAPP fund distribution,
to state energy utility companies.
So out of the $1 billion,
there's basically two utility allocations,
694.9 million that's devoted to investor owned utility
companies and 298.5 million,
that's allocated to public utility companies
and electric cooperatives.
So building, if you could display
that allocation spreadsheet of where we are appreciated
has that being displayed.
-: But yes, we're working to get it displayed a little bit
larger for this state.
-: Okay, I appreciate it, so I'll continue on.
So the spreadsheet that I'm referring to gives you
a kind of an idea on each utilities allocation share
of CAPP funds.
So on November 8th, we initiated the CAPP application phase,
which basically marks the period where can apply
for their CAPP allocation.
Thus far, we have received and approved seven utility CAPP
applications totaling 229 million.
They're mostly from public utilities and municipal
utilities, namely sweat and lad that we peer to larger
utility smart receive 41.3 million and LEDWP 202.7 million.
So those are quite large disbursements to those utilities.
We also have 11 pending applications,
which are currently under review.
That includes two submissions from two of the smaller IOUs
PacifiCorp and Liberty,
which I think were the common term them are smudgies.
And then we're still awaiting applications
from the remaining six investor owned utility copies,
including the larger IOU Edison,
San Diego Gas and Electric, the gas company, PG&E.
I just wanted to acknowledge that the CAPP application
process for Edison STG and the PGD is more involved
due to the inclusions and considerations for CCAs
and electric load serving entities.
That requires work that requires IOU to coordinate
and interact with these entities to effectuate
a proportional distribution of CAPP funds
against customer charges owing the IOU
and those low electric load serving entities.
So we anticipate receiving the remaining CAPP applications
over the next several weeks.
And this, as a reminder, the CAPP application window
is 60 days covering the period of November 8th
through January 7th.
And according to government code CSD must disperse
all of the CAPP funds by January 31st, 2022.
So what's displayed here are the CAPP allocation
determinations for all the utilities, but I think for now,
we'll just focus on their investor home.
And what you see here across the top of the columns
are priority arrearages, project groups, one, two, three,
and four, so prior to group two represents residential
customers that are passed through and in government code,
it requires that that we prioritize benefits
to those customer groups.
So, when you look at the allocation,
for example, for Pacific Gas and Electric,
we'll use them as an example.
They didn't have any customers that were in prior to group
one, which are residential customers
that are at risk of disconnection,
but they do have a significant number of customers
that are residential customers that have delinquent balances
encouraged during the pandemic relief period that fall
into priority group two.
So when you look at their allocation amount,
if you can scroll over to the right to display
that you would see that the 300 million,
which they are basically, we represent our CAPP allocation,
we'll all go to customer arrearages in priority group two.
So it will not impact arrearages in priority group
three or four.
And also the CAPP program is not impacting arrearages
that were accrued outside of the pandemic relief period.
So anything after June, 2022, there was again,
arrearages that we're going to have to rely on LIHEAP,
AMP, and other programs to impact.
So that's kind of where the CAPP program stands
at the moment.
And as far as LIHEAP,
there's not much to report the other than that,
the coordination of the fund leveraging efforts
with the IOUs is essentially ceased as due
to the fact that we were unsuccessful to identify
any projects where we could make the fun leveraging work.
There were many challenges associated with that.
Mainly the fact that the requirements of the programs
are different to leverage funds.
It doesn't create additional work property owners to access.
And then also we were also running up against the running
out of time with the current program cycle,
which closes next June, 2022.
The good news is that the Governor's climate investment
client commits another $65 million.
So to ally with multi-family program.
So the program will continue similar to the Energy Division.
We're actively working on issuing an RFP
to facilitate the administration of the multi-family program
for another several years.
And then as part of that RFP development,
we'll be resuming discussions with the CPC Energy Division
to explore ways to best coordinate and leverage multi-family
energy investments and discuss lessons learned
from the current multi-family program coordination,
leveraging efforts, and figure out what we can do
to kind of move the needle in that space.
So I guess I just made a plug for why CSD needs
to be on that, the current working group.
Anyway, so that's my update.
-: Excellent, thank you, Jason, it looks good.
And perhaps we can bring this to the committee meeting
and also in January and look at what type of leveraging
opportunities the Board could be helpful in infringing.
-: And then future updates as the CAPP applications
are coming in, we can provide more details
on what arrearages those applications
are impacting directly.
Information displayed on this chart is dated,
it dates back to the summer when we conducted a survey.
And we know that for all the utilities,
that arrearages a constantly changing.
I mean, some cases customers are paying down
those arrearages, in other cases, their arrearages
are continuing to grow,
but that's something we need to closely monitor.
-: Excellent, sounds good.
Okay, I don't see any hands up,
so I think we're okay to move to the next item.
So the next item is just item 11,
which are subcommittee reports.
I don't believe there was anything from any
of the sub-committees that isn't covered in the agenda.
Double check, everyone seems like we're in agreement there,
as stated earlier, we'll likely work quickly
with the remainder of this week and perhaps early next week
to send out a survey to figure out when we can have
a committee meeting next year to make the,
to provide feedback in time for the February 4th filing
deadline for the pilot,
as well as the other items that we wanted to go over
the items didn't have the time for as well as anything else.
So we'll circle back with the Energy Division, Commissioner,
your office, to make sure we coordinate all of that.
The technical advisory committee, I think
border with lane I'll converse at some point
early next year,
I want to underscore one thing that was in Kapil's
presentation, which was just the UAS,
Universal Application System,
working group that came out last decision how wonderful
of a development that is.
I think that it's gonna take some time,
but it's really going to simplify the user experience
for a lot of people.
And as we heard from social services or California
Department of Social Service, Deputy Director Hernandez,
perhaps a year ago at the Commissioner's invitation,
they're doing something similar.
And so once those two things are up,
getting them to talk to each other,
it seems like a final step to have one application
to sign up for a lot of the core safety net programs.
So we'll look at ways that the TAC can support that work,
but just want to thank everyone again.
'Cause I think there's been tremendous progress
on that front.
And that gets us to item 13,
which was wrap up and closing remarks.
When we go to closing remarks,
I do know that we're still in the process of scheduling,
the next LIOB meeting, a date has not been set,
but I think we're looking at the first couple of weeks
of March, if I'm not mistaken.
So stay tuned for that.
And I know that plans are ongoing for a slightly belated,
but still being relevant and fun 20th anniversary
celebration, we obviously want that to be in person.
Robert has promised to everyone on the Board,
tuck header up no matter where we meet
and we're gonna hold him to the back.
So with that for perhaps more details on both of these sub
items and closing remarks,
Commissioner, happy to pass it to you.
-: Thank you, I want to wish all of my colleagues
and the Board have a wonderful holiday.
And Lourdes you're bringing in your grandchild early
to a participatory advisory democracy.
It's wonderful, I also want to including congratulate
our chair, Benito Delgado-Olson,
and also Board member Jason Windley on both being
reappointed by Governor Newsome,
and Benito's case it's to the IOB and prefacing.
-: Show me the points.
-: Yes, okay, did I, okay.
I think our, did I promote you Jason?
Yeah, okay, why not?
Chief Deputy Director over there at CSD.
Congratulations to both of you.
Thank you, everyone for a very thoughtful
and important discussion.
Appreciate everyone being so engaged in these efforts
and look forward to working with you in 2022,
for the folks who tuned in today, thank you for your
comments for the IOUs and all the hard work.
And we'll, we'll do more for the greater good in 2022.
Thank you, back to you Benito.
-: Okay, thank you very much Commissioner.
Before I close this out did any other members
have any comments about the meeting?
-: Well, if I'm going to kick into taquero,
I might as well throw in music.
So a commit to a mariachi as well.
And let's invite our friends over at the DK.
-: Of course, yeah.
-: Because we are looking at Sacramento I don't know, but.
-: Excellent, sounds good time.
Well, I'll be brief cause we're over time.
Just thank you again to Energy Division staff,
Water Division staff Gillian for all your coordination
efforts, to all the IOUs for all the work that went
into all of these presentations and changes
and everyone we encouraged from today,
and just thank you everyone for all of your contributions
and work, I think at beginning of the meeting,
we underscored it's by the time we meet again,
it will have been a little bit more than two years
since this pandemic started.
And so it's been a long period at times,
a little bit difficult and intense,
but still it's always wonderful to work with a collaborative
group working towards a common goal.
So just to wish everybody a very happy and safe holiday
season and happy new year,
Robert, we're gonna hold you to the music and the food.
And I'm really looking forward to that,
because it's gonna be nice just to see somebody
in person again after what will be a pretty long stretch.
So thank you everyone, and have a great rest of your week.
We'll see you next year.
-: Thank you.
(speaks in foreign language)
-: Happy holidays.
(indistinct chattering)