Thank you so much. It is really my honor to be here today. Listen, ladies and gentlemen,
this is not some crazy takeover scheme. This is about the environment and it is about protecting
the rights of San Franciscans and their rate payers. Let me tell you something, San Franciscans.
Generations before us, we built this wonderful system that comes from Hetch Hetchy and it
produces power in the high Sierra and transports it 167 miles to power a lot of buildings like
the building behind me and the police stations and the hospitals and muni and it produces
about 20% of the power in this city and a number of power in the Central Valley and let me tell
you about that power. It moves, as I said, 167 miles. Do you know it comes about 140 miles
including the cost of generating that power? That cost to move it 140 miles is a lot less than
the last 27 miles and you know why the last 27 miles cost so much because PG&E controls that
last 27 miles. They all produce power. They in fact use our right-of-way to bring that power up.
So this is about defending our legacy and about the work that has been done generations before us.
So that's just a little bit of the economic piece of it. This legislation includes us taking back
what is ours, what the ratepayers have paid for. That's the economic piece. Let me tell you about
the environmental piece. You know we're talking about solar trough and geothermal and there's a
lot of good happy talk coming out of this building and all over about that and I think the people
behind me really believe in it because if you really believe in that solar trough, if you really
believe in that geothermal right outside, you know, in the Central Valley right outside the coast
range, then comes that problem again. How are you going to move that power in? We won't be able to
move that power in because of the exorbitant rates that PG&E now charges to move that power the last
27 miles and in 2015, Katie barred the door because they're going to jack up their rates even more.
This is about defending the environment. It's about defending our ratepayers. We need to get
out from under the grips of a monopoly that is not allowed the expansion of renewable energy as it
should be in this city. So I hope you all join me. I hope the supervisors put this on with a
supermajority and I plan to work to get this measure past the November. I hope you all join me.
Thank you very much. Thank you so much. I want to bring up now the original sponsor of this
legislation and an absolute champion in this movement, a veteran in this movement, Supervisor
Ross Mercurimi. Thank you very much. I want to say how delighted I am and pleased and honored,
frankly, to be surrounded by so many of the city's elected family and, of course, of the city
advocates who have been working very hard to pushing for real clean and green energy. With
all the proclamations and pledges even by the most well-intentioned politicians and even maybe a
utility company here and there that suggests that this is the time to go green. It's meaningless
in San Francisco unless we are able to chart our own energy destiny here in San Francisco. And to
do so, that means to share control of what San Francisco's energy future is. And quite simply,
that is what the thrust of this Trotter Amendment is about. It is not a hostile takeover. This is
not a four million billion dollar graph. What this mandates is a feasibility study to determine
how San Francisco should be shared in the driver's seat and how we can deliver up to 100% green and
clean renewable energy over the next 25 years. We know the technology is there. We know the
capacity is there. But we are also well reminded about the hurdles that are there, certainly
because of the franchise that PGDE has in perpetuity. In other words, they have a monopoly here
until planet Earth dies. In essence, they are following the same right-wing policies, energy
policies of the George Bush agenda. And we cannot live and coexist with that same, what I think,
perilous course. It is incumbent upon us, of all politicians, quite frankly, that if we care about
just exactly how are we going to respond in the most measured way, not in a cavalier gratuitous way,
despite the preemptive campaign that we've already seen by PGDE and their allies, but in the most
measured way, and how to answer the question about the environmental crisis, degradation,
that certainly involves not just this area, but this world, and the energy crisis, which we see
no reversal, that it is only obligatory that we step up. The glacial pace in which our federal
government has moved and which the state governments have moved, despite the best intentions,
only deflects to the responsibility now of smart municipal governments. There are over 900 cities
in the United States who have opted by the vote of the people to decide that they want to chart
their own energy destiny, either through complete municipalization or some reconfiguration. We're
not even approaching the embryo of that consideration. This charter amendment is a feasibility study,
and it's no wonder just that alone would scare the hometown company to be just absolutely so
mesmerized that they would have to spend tens of millions of dollars in lies and innuendos to
thwart what should be the indigenous right of San Franciscans. Thank you.
