Public Utility Advisory Board in lockstep with City, deaf to citizens’ concerns on smart meters

by Kathleen Sloan | April 25, 2020
5 min read
​As if the City’s $1-million purchase of smart meters is a forgone conclusion, the Truth or Consequences Public Utility Advisory Board took no notice of local residents’ push to ban them while discussing if utility-bill payers should be allowed to opt-out of having one. 

“Discussion related to AMI Smart Meters and option for customer to opt-out” was on the Dec. 16 agenda. 

The City doesn’t provide the public with PUAB agenda packets, but it was evident the board’s packet didn’t include the people’s ordinance seeking a 10-year moratorium on smart meters within the City’s utility jurisdiction.  The PUAB appeared unaware enough people signed a moratorium petition to force the City Commission to consider the ordinance, putting the smart-meter purchase in question. 

The City Commission will choose to adopt or reject the moratorium at the Jan. 7, 2020 meeting, making the PUAB’s opt-out discussion premature.  

The Sierra County Sun spoke with PUAB Chairman Jeff Dornbusch before the meeting, asking why opting-out was being discussed now, in light of the ordinance. 

“I don’t know about that,” Dornbusch said. “The City can purchase whatever it wants. We’re just an advisory board.” 

In the last few months, City Officials have blamed the people for being uninformed that the City wants smart meters. 

City Manager Morris Madrid and City Commissioner George Szigeti have said the PUAB have considered all the angles and have been discussing it for five years. The people should have attended those meetings, they said. 

Szigeti was PUAB chairman until Steve Green resigned a year ago from the City Commission. Green stayed on to pick his successor, Szigeti, and his fellow-board members approved the choice. Szigeti’s seat is up for election March 3, 2020. Candidates must declare they are running on Jan. 7, 2020, the same day Szigeti will vote on the smart-meter moratorium. 

Even though Szigeti sat on the PUAB during the five years it considered smart meters and recommended their purchase, he did not recuse himself at the Aug. 27 meeting when the $1-million purchase was passed by mere motion.  

Another PUAB member demonstrated he’s in lockstep with Szigeti and Madrid. During the last City Commission meeting, PUAB Member Ron Pacourek spoke during public comment. “Where has everyone been for the last five years,” he chided the public. 

“Blaming the public” resident-activist Ron Fenn said, during public comment at the PUAB meeting, really bothered him.   

He “spent the weekend,” going over PUAB agendas and minutes. Over the last five years only four agendas referred to “Discussion of AMR,” Fenn said, which did little to inform the public or to “entice them” to attend PUAB meetings.  

The minutes revealed only three people made public comment, Fenn said, and he was among the three. In addition, there were no public hearings on smart meters over the five years.  

Pacourek questioned Fenn’s statements. “As far as I know, the minutes aren’t available online,” 

Minutes were posted for the first time on the city’s website a few months ago, demonstrating again how little information the PUAB is given by the City. 

Pacourek also responded to Fenn’s comments made last month. The PUAB isn’t a citizens’ advisory board, it doesn’t have the people’s interests in view, it isn’t a check-and-balance on the city, Fenn said. It represents the City’s view. It has three former City employees sitting on the board. 

“We don’t lean to one side or another,” Pacourek said. “This board is more open than in the past.” He claimed Ed Williams (once the director of the electric department), Gil Avelar (once the director of the electric department) and Don Armijo, (once the director of the roads department), were retired and utility rates would affect them “the same as anyone else.” 

Pacourek, on the PUAB for three years, admitted prior-City Manager Juan Fuentes controlled the board until he was fired a year ago for unstated reasons. “He had final say on what was on the agenda” and what they talked about. 

Carole Borsello also gave public comment at the PUAB meeting, explaining how smart meters are a health risk because they send “micro-bursts” of radiation 24 hours a day. 

In addition, Borsello said the micro-bursts “can blow out every appliance in your house,” and few can afford to replace everything from their refrigerator to their toaster. 

“Smart meters are also very hackable,” Borsello said. 

PUAB Member Ed Williams dismissed the electro-magnetic radiation concerns, claiming “my cell phone gives off more radiation.” 

Moving on to the opt-out agenda item, Dornbusch again demonstrated the city hasn’t informed the PUAB there is a delay in purchasing smart meters due to the initiative ordinance. 

“I thought all the meters were being replaced with smart meters,” Dornbusch said, and opting-out would mean the customer’s new smart meter would be read manually, he said. 

No, opting-out meant no smart meter, he was told. 

“We need to develop solid criteria for opting out,” Madrid said. “It can’t be a free-for-all,” not indicating if health, fire, hacking and other concerns brought by the public were sufficient to opt out. 

“There will have to be a set-up fee [for billing separately from smart-meter accounts] because the old way of billing will not be available,” Madrid added. 

Ed Williams said people wanting to opt-out should pay “a $150 set-up fee and $20 a month” to cover the meter being read manually, claiming at the same time “It shouldn’t be a money-maker for the City.” 

Pacourek didn’t state a price, but said “Opting out is a premium service,” and people should be charged accordingly. 

It was decided Madrid would come back next meeting with electric-department costs, such as vehicle fuel and maintenance, the meter reader’s salary and benefits, to determine how much each meter reading should cost the opt-out customer. 

By the time the next PUAB meeting is held, the City Commission will have decided whether to accept or reject the 10-year moratorium on smart meters. If it does reject the initiative ordinance, then the City Commission is supposed to pass a resolution by Jan. 12, which is supposed to set a special election within 90 days, letting the people decide if they want smart meters. ​

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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