June 18, 2025
Chair Balch and Directors of Ava Community Energy
1999 Harrison Street, Suite 200
Oakland, CA 94612
Re: Item 6 – FY2025-2026 Budget - Local Development Strategy and Investments Dear Chair Balch and Honorable Directors of Ava Community Energy, On behalf of the CCA Workforce & Environmental Justice Alliance, we write to urge your Board to continue its support for local development Investments that benefit the climate, community, local unionized workforce, and Ava’s resilience and resource diversification.
We appreciate Ava’s foundational and long-standing commitment to local development, as demonstrated by the Local Development Business Plan, significant annual contributions to the local development fund, and the active and ongoing development of innovative programs.
We ask the Board to support the incremental contribution of $10 million to the local development fund this year, as proposed by staff, even as Ava faces significant financial uncertainty. Additionally, after staff completes its mid-year budget review, if the budget is healthier than projected, we ask the Board to prioritize additional contributions to the local development fund. Over the longer term, we ask that your Board adequately fund both the Reserve Fund and the Rate Stabilization Fund so that the Local Development Fund is more insulated from future budget uncertainty.
We understand from CEO Howard Chang that Ava will embark this year on a strategic planning process to guide local development priorities and investments over the next five years. We look forward to participating in that process and would like to be involved from the outset.
As the Board and staff look towards strategic planning for the next phase of local development investments, we ask that you prioritize programs that are high-road by design, and invest in under-resourced, equity-priority communities most at risk to extreme weather and other impacts of climate change.
Building on the success of our prior work together adopting leadership Workforce and Environmental Justice project selection standards for clean energy projects, we look forward to continued partnership on supporting strategic development and continuous improvement of Ava’s local development investments.
Sincerely,
Eric Veium, Tim Frank, & Leslie Austin
Co-directors, CCA Workforce & EJ Alliance