< 8 A clean break < 8 Newsgrams owners calling themselves the San Geronimo Valley Stewards say overly strict building regulations infringe upon their rights as property owners. The Sammy the Salmon campaign was inspired by fire safety officials as an educational vessel to promote both fire safety and fish safety at creekside residences.
Grand jury morgue proposal DOA County officials are all but tying a toe tag on a grand jury proposal for a state-of-the-art county morgue. In a report released June 7, titled “Marin County Morgue: Where Do We Go From Here?,” the Marin Civil Grand Jury took the Marin Board of Supervisors to task for sitting in limbo in the wake of previous grand jury calls for better morgue operations. But in a response from the supes, along with County Administrator Matthew Hymel, which is expected to be officially endorsed by the board on Tuesday, county officials are saying the grand jury’s recommendations are simply too pricey at this time. Or, to put it in morgue terms, the grand jury is asking for a 20-gauge steel casket, when all the county can afford right now is a pine box. Currently, the vast majority of the 100-plus autopsies performed each year by the sheriffcoroner’s office are conducted within a rotation of three local funeral homes, with a handful of cases being referred to the Napa County Morgue. The grand jury ultimately called for the supes to “approve retrofitting a Marin County owned space for a morgue in either the Marin Commons building or the Civic Center” and, in the meantime, have all the county’s forensics needs served in Napa. But in a letter addressed to Marin Superior Court Judge James Ritchie, the supes say it wouldn’t be cost effective to place a morgue in the Marin Commons or the Civic Center, or to use the Napa morgue for all the county’s forensics needs. “We estimate that a County morgue [at Marin Commons] would cost approximately $2 million in one-time costs to outfit and include significant ongoing operating costs to staff the morgue,” write the supes. The county would also lose out on revenues from current plans to lease space at the Commons. The Civic Center, meanwhile, needs its extra space to house other county departments, say county officials. The Napa County Morgue is “cost effective and convenient” for special forensic cast autopsies, states the letter, but “for over 95 percent of autopsies performed by the Coroner in 2011 that were not special cases, the overall costs to the taxpayers would more than double if all autopsies had been performed at the Napa County Morgue.” Despite the stiff response to the grand jury’s morgue manifesto, the county isn’t resting peacefully on the topic. According to the board,“the Sheriff-Coroner is in the process of selecting one mortuary in Marin for most of the autopsies.” “The selected local Marin mortuary facility will provide the benefits of being a single, secure facility with all upgrades being requested...provided by the mortuary at no cost to the County,” states the letter.“The selected local mortuary has the incentive to treat all remains respectively with consideration given to the family of the deceased.” The benefits of choosing a single local mortuary as the morgue include local proximity, more security and lower overall costs for service, according to county officials. Fairgoers enjoy funnel cake; fair enjoys record revenues The Marin County Fair was indeed fresh and fun for the locals this year—as 122,000 attendees helped push the fair’s 2012 revenues to a recordbreaking $1,400,586. While attendance represented a healthy 1 percent growth from last year’s numbers, the revenues saw a 12 percent increase, according to festival officials. As anyone who waited in line to feel the bite of the Viper or a spin around on the Wacky Worm could tell you—it was a very busy fair. Fair director Jim Farley called it a “banner year.” “The community came out in full force and created some truly wonderful things from art chairs to cherry pies, to amazing quilts to spectacular chicken coops,” says Farley. In addition to gate admission revenues, the fair pulled in $110,922 in parking revenue from folks not willing to hoof it from further up North San Pedro Road. Meanwhile, food and beverage sales reached $1,175,162. The dates for next year’s fair have already been set: The carnies will be barking from July 3 through July 7. Marin property values up 0.82 percent One percent is the new 15 percent—at least in Marin County real estate assessment circles. While the days of huge gains in property values may be a distant memory, hopefully so are the days of devaluation in county homes. The Marin County Assessor-Recorder’s office has released the 2012-13 “preliminary 10 PACIFIC SUN JULY 13 - JULY 19, 2012
Weisz, executive officer at MCE. Some people trying to opt out simply were not dialing the initial 1 in front of the phone number (1-888-632-3674). “In other cases, the account number being punched in wasn’t working.” Remaining potential MCE customers will be enrolled automatically this month on the date for their meter reading. Customers who choose to opt out also can visit https://marincleanenrgy.info. “Clearly, absolutely, there was no intent to make it difficult to opt out,” says Weisz. “Quite the opposite. We were trying to be as proactive as we could with an automated system. We just had some glitches, so we reverted back to live operators.” Another perennial charge against the concept of community choice agencies that focus on a clean, renewable product centers on the nature of the energy grid. All electricity travels over the same lines, say critics of clean-power programs. No one can tell whether the electricity that comes out of an outlet in a home was produced by a clean source, a solar installation for instance, or by a dirty fossil-fuel source. Paying any premium for clean energy is a rip-off, say critics. But that position fails to take into account the nature of the power supply and the power grid. The late Supervisor Charles McGlashan, a champion of community choice, played an instrumental role in creating Marin Clean Energy as a way to reduce the county’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. He said the electrical grid is like a pond. Following his analogy, electricity is like water in the pond: Putting dirty water (fossil-fuel generated electricity) into the pond dirties the entire pond; putting clean water into the pond (the electricity grid) cleans its entire contents, displacing dirty water with clean—or dirty electricity with clean. The most important thing is what goes into the pond, McGlashan would say. If producing a cleaner energy grid is the goal, supporting companies that produce clean electricity and supply it to the grid is the means to that end. Air quality is another analogy that works: We reduce vehicle emissions to improve air quality, even though the air we breathe doesn’t necessarily come from the vicinity of our vehicle. It’s a common goal toward a common benefit. Critics also have said running a small clean-energy utility is a proposition doomed to failure because the investor-owned monopoly utilities can beat small community choice providers into rate submission. That, however, has not proved true. New PG&E rates took effect July 1. An average Marin residential customer uses about 540 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. According to MCE calculations, most residential customers this summer will pay $3.85 more per month for MCE electricity than PG&E’s product. Part of that premium for MCE electricity comes from additional fees that PG&E imposes—
thanks to the community choice law—on MCE customers to protect the PG&E business model as customers depart. That additional amount will decrease over time. Using the new rates, the average residential customer with PG&E will pay $89.66 in July for an electricity product that is a hair over 20 percent renewable. The MCE customer will pay $93.51 for a 50 percent renewable product. And Marin customers who choose to purchase the MCE deep-green option will pat $98.91 for a 100 percent renewable electricity product. MCE’s average commercial customer uses 1,312 kilowatt-hours of electricity during a summer month. That average customer will pay 91 cents less than PG&E customers for a 50 percent renewable product; the deep-green commercial product will be $12.21 more than PG&E. In other words, premiums for MCE light green and deep green (if any) are relatively inconsequential, and they deliver a much cleaner product than PG&E currently offers. MCE now has a rate calculator on its website, where residents can determine specifically how much PG&E and MCE will charge. The differential in rates could decrease if the state Public Utilities Commission grants a PG&E request for a 15.6-percent rate increase by 2016 to make its gas and electricity infrastructure safer and more reliable. A portion of the increase would go on the electricity generation portion of the bill, according to the request filed with the PUC. That means PG&E customers would pay the generation portion increase while MCE customers would not. Although it’s unlikely the PUC will grant the PG&E request without alteration, any increase in the generation rate at PG&E will fall in favor of MCE. Another recurrent charge has resurfaced during the July enrollment period. Critics say MCE has increased its green portfolio by using what are called renewable energy credits rather than “real” renewable energy. Although hard-core advocates of clean energy would prefer to eschew the use of energy credits, they acknowledge that they can be a legitimate way to subsidize renewable energy. And that’s an especially important point in light of report after report substantiating the critical need to increase renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible. It’s no longer an option, say reputable scientists. But what can be done when the capacity to produce clean energy cannot yet meet environmental demand? In essence, renewable energy credits provide a stimulus mechanism for the renewable energy industry. When a wind farm, for example, produces 1 megawatt-hour of renewable energy, it gets one renewable energy credit (REC). It can sell the energy along with the one REC. The REC proves that the energy was produced from a renewable source. RECs can be sold along with the energy or decoupled and sold separately. They