The meeting was called to order at 6:05 PM by Acting Chair Sousa.
The time has come to elect a new Chair for the advisory committee and I was blessed enough to have this wonderful group of people in the AVA Advisory Committee nominate and choose me to be their next chair. I believe that there were wonderful candidates besides me, and I will work hard to pave the way for the next leader of the committee who may be someone who you may know, the new Vice-Chair Indira Balkissoon .
My goal for the year is to better understand and make progress on how the advisory committee can serve both AVA staff, and especially the Board as we all know that your time and energy is divided between this very important board, and the cities that you serve. Most importantly, we want to be a focal point for community information and needs, keeping an ear to the ground so that we are always in a continuous path of improvement and growth.
Our meeting was joined by Jessica Tovar from Local Clean Power Alliance. She stressed that we cannot forget that our communities are already suffering from wildfires and issues related to climate change. She also thanked AVA for opposing corporations that are working with ICE, and the important of building resilience in communities.
The committee was pleased with the added benefit of AI generated minutes, and note that some names are misspelled and other potential errors. We agree with AVA staff that the AI generated minutes are solely for the use of enhancing chair and administrative note taking. These minutes and the minutes given from staff were approved.
As far as our synopsis of the last Board meeting, it was noted that the committee was disappointed in the reduction of renewable investments and the removal of the on-bill credits.
I will reserve the two items:
1. IRP overview
2. Customer Bill Updates
for later in the meeting as they are presented.
As for the rest of the committee meeting, we discussed streamlining using Ad Hoc communications using categories such as: risks community concerns, legislative, and opportunities. Although as chair, my knowledge is limited, we have on the committee people who have worked since the inception of AVA Community Energy as well as in the sector of energy, legislative policy, advocacy, and have connections to organizational heavies such as The Sierra Club, UC Berkeley, who have large legislative staffs.
We wanted to point out as an example that it would be prudent to join forces, perhaps using the advisory committee or a board Ad Hoc to fight the PCIA reform which comprises the majority (please correct me if I am wrong) of our 2026 $250 million deficit.
We also would like to have an update on the idea of bringing the call center back into a local jurisdiction, but we are still working on our update from staff.
1. IRP overview
ACA expressed gratitude that the IRP has been brought in-house and we are especially concerned about how the projections impact customer bills, how the PCIA is affecting the IRP, and how data center demand will affect AVA. It bears mention that especially in the realm of the 3 time demand growth targets should include actions by AVA to fight for legislation around data center energy demand to deter the imminent detrimental impact to our current customers. And, if done with prudence, we may be able to partner with these potential customers offering our expertise on how to build a clean energy future and growing AVA in the process.
2. Customer Bill Updates
We were glad that Annie had a plan to express these bill changes to our customers. and emphasized that we need to distinguish between the PG&E charges versus the AVA charges.