Hi all,
Last Tuesday, March 11, (though some of us the week before succeeded in
getting a 7-4 vote to send the Mayor/SFPUC's solar grant program back
to committee), Mayor Newsom and The SFPUC announced that they were
proceeding with a 1 year pilot of the program anyway. They were joined
in the announcement by former PG&E PR director Guillermo Rodriguez,
who has just been appointed as head of the Mayor's City Build and
'Green Collar Jobs' programs, and who spoke about his role which will
be supposedly bringing jobs to the Bayview Hunters Point through the
solar program.
The Mayor also said in the announcement that he thinks he has swayed at
least two of the Supervisors who temporarily rejected the long term ten
year version the program (which was what was sent back to committee) to
reconsider on future votes, so the Mayor's maneuvers are still looming,
and it is crucial that we get the Supes to only give a pass to the
program with the firm condition that it must first be vetted through
the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) in regard to its impact
and interaction with the Community Choice Energy project (CCA).
I would strongly recommend watching this particular Mayor's press
announcement, because in it he and the other speakers very clearly
reveal their overall strategy on this issue, and show that they are
going to continue to ramp up their playing of the race card on this
issue.
You can see the video by going to:
http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=18
and clicking on Launch
of Largest Municipal Solar Program in United States across from the
3/11/08 press conference date.
CCA, which really -will- be the Largest Municipal Solar Program in the
World within the next year, was of course never once mentioned once
during the press
conference...
peace
Eric
--
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara