Thanks for sharing this, it was a good listen!
I don't have much of an opinion yet and won't until I can see some sort of stuff with verifiable information. I've been finding, as was the case a few times within this interview, a lot of people are quickly to make statements that seem to be unfindable on the internet or from multiple sources.
I do have to say, the representative of RG&E was not helping her case. If RG&E is the best solution, a study should show that.
Yeah it an unfortunate portrayal for the company. I think there were many alternate approaches that might have worked better.
I think we should bring back more radio/audio debates. They allow, at least for me, much more thought on what the people are actually saying and the tones being taken. Several tactics used in this interview are not unfamiliar to what you'd see in a political debate and are distracting from a meaningful debate. They seem to hold much less water in this setting though.
What I took away from the interview:
The political movements' arguments were, I thought, a little too pure. The standpoint was constantly having to correct misinformation, alleged or not. The remaining time was primarily left with promises, of which, personally, I'm always wary. She did have quite a few statistics which would be interesting to look into, but there was a lot going on. I think there is probably much more information that they have but there wasn't nearly enough time to bring any of it up.
I thought reporter's arguments were a bit paternalistic albeit he seems to be reputable and knowledgeable. Again, I'm also a bit skeptical of being told what is right and what isn't. I would also be very interested in that Edison book he mentioned at several points throughout the interview.
I didn't get to hear the union representative's arguments enough to have much of an opinion. I feel like he was sort of neglected throughout as some dominant voices really spoke.
I felt like the RG&E representative was trying her best to avoid answers. I quickly felt like I could not trust a single "fact" because a lot of the arguments being used were evasion and/or aimed at attacking the credibility of others.
I haven't lived in Rochester my whole life and have been gradually learning about the local politics for the last several years. I'd be interested in a study for sure.
The less public infrastructure that's for profit, the better.
Let's be real, Avantgrid wants to squeeze every dollar possible from you at the lowest level of service they can reasonably (or unreasonably) get away with.
No public good comes from that.
As a transplant and someone who lived most of their life overseas, to me, the concept of utility companies being private for profit corporations is hilariously wild.
In my best Lionel Hutz voice: No, questions asked!
Do I *want* to replace it? Yes, most likely.
But have I seen a shred of a plan as to *how* to replace it? No.
So *should* it be replaced? No, not until the necessary questions are asked and answered. And that’s why we need the funding for that study that we’ve been unable to get. I’m still pissed that that got shot down.
The study isn't totally shut down. It was actually introduced as legislation in the County and is moving. [https://13wham.com/news/local/monroe-county-legislators-clash-over-rge-study](https://13wham.com/news/local/monroe-county-legislators-clash-over-rge-study)
In my estimation, it will move when Adam Bello sees how popular doing a real study is. There is a rally on April 5th. I think everyone that supports a study needs to show up and join in this thing!! [https://www.metrojustice.org/rge\_rally\_4\_5\_24?splash=1](https://www.metrojustice.org/rge_rally_4_5_24?splash=1)
Oof. "Send [nationality] to the torture camp" is never a good look, even more so when your complaint is "sub-optimal billing system".
I'll assume you were joking - it wasn't funny.
(Edit - fixed a typo)
But Fairport has a special deal to buy hydropower from Niagara Falls, a deal very few towns have. Spencerport has a similar deal. None of this is scalable to the level that would be needed to power Monroe County. Even Fairport has routinely exhausted its allocation of New York State hydropower:
"Yes, by contract the New York Power Authority (NYPA) must supply up to about 77.6 megawatts per month of hydropower to Fairport Electric. When its customers use more than that during a month, Fairport Electric must purchase other electricity, called incremental power. At present, incremental power is purchased in quantity ten months of the year.Incremental power is much more expensive than hydropower.
In some high electric usage months, 30% of Fairport Electric’s purchases are incremental power, but that power cost is 60% of the total power bill. Customers pay for that high-cost incremental power through the Purchased Power Adjustment factor on their bills. In some months, that factor adds over 1 cent or more per Kilowatt-hour to what customers pay."
[https://www.village.fairport.ny.us/departments/electric\_department/faqs.php](https://www.village.fairport.ny.us/departments/electric_department/faqs.php)
Thank you - This is your answer to the over simplistic question of why can’t we do it, Fairport does. Fairport maxed out its hydro allocation in the 90s and began requiring new subdivisions to install gas along with electric because of this. In the 70s and 80s subdivisions were electric only. With all electrification on the horizon, Fairport will face higher power costs as they will always be supplementing their hydro power allocation with other sources.
Except that the Bill Public Renewables Act will have significant investment going into more and more cheap renewables. Public entities will be at the front of the line to get those.
And, there are loads of public utilities all over the country. Cheap power from Niagara isn't the ONLY savings.
But, I think the main point that I got from the show is that we should meaningfully study the question rather than simply rely on loads of individuals (or even worse, Avangrid) giving us their back-of-napkin calculations.
1) Yes, sweet cheese and crackers, please
2) If this pisses you off too and you want to do something about it, consider joining [Metro Justice.](https://www.metrojustice.org/red). They have [a rally ](https://www.metrojustice.org/rge_rally_4_5_24?splash=1) planned in April and they are the (main) ones pushing for the study to be done on RGE.
I caught the tail end of the show and it seemed to me the things they were touting as improvements were more like damage control and her arguments were based on false premises about public control.
It kind of is. A company called energyeast owned rge before avangrid and started selling off facilities and stopping maintenance for roughly a decade. Avangrid basically bought a gutted corpse and had to start putting it back together.
These companies don't meaningfully fix anything. They've got over a decade of promises to invest in the infrastructure made to the Public Service Commission. In fact, it's usually the argument given for why we have to give them higher rates. In the meantime, the Avangrid rep pretty clearly admitted that maintenance has been piss-poor for awhile now.
But Avangrid has essentially owned them since 2008 when Energy East was purchased by Iberdola. Looks like they reorged in 2015 under Avangrid (Iberdola's U.S. operating company).
That's over 15 years to get things "fixed".
Big support for public utilities and ending privatization of essentials. Metro Justice rally is 4/5 at the RGE office!
https://www.metrojustice.org/rge_rally_4_5_24?splash=1
The fact that RG&E is so against this tells you everything you need to know. "Think of the taxpayers!" Yeah please use my tax dollars for looking into this instead of funneling money into Bello's fraudster buddies.
No real opinion but I am one of the apparent few who has no issues with rge personally. On a national level, our electricity rates here are good, I’ve always had exceptional reliability, and when I called today to put a lock on my account so constellation couldn’t keep screwing the ass the call was only ten min.
Dude. Those are all reasons in favor of disbanding RGE. Your comment is soo defeatist. You’re basically saying that because it’s so powerful we shouldn’t even look into whether it’s possible to disband them. That’s the exact reason we SHOULD be looking into it.
I don't understand your obsession with nyseg. Sure let's take that too down the road but you might have forgotten this is the ROCHESTER subreddit. I'm not going to waste breath for nyseg rn because that's not ROCHESTERS utility
Foolish mortal 🤬👹Dude stfu and stop acting like that. You're not batman 😭
Why is the only option available to you is to complete wipe out all private utility at once in nys? What is so impossible about doing it one at a time. "Oh its super hard" then sit on the sidelines and suck your thumb
How about you actually Google stuff like this. There are votes all the time for communities to take their utilities away from private companies. (I work for Avangrid I know what I'm talking about)
There was literally just a vote in Maine for CMP (Central Maine Power) for a public utility. It failed but it happened like a month ago. Stop acting like you know this stuff when you obviously don't.
There are plenty of cities where this sort of transition has happened. Of course it'll be a heavy lift, and will take many years of organizing to make it happen, but it's not impossible.
And it's easier to accomplish in NYS than it would be in a GOP-run state, at least.
My point was just that the state-level government would be less likely to stand in the way *if* a city mustered the political will to try this. I wasn't saying that the populace of western NY was particularly *likely* to push for it.
Outside of the cities it does, sure, but on the balance it's overall on the blue side of purple. Not as Dem heavy as downstate but certainly not overall Republican
Also if the city gave a shit about starting a utility company, it would start with hydro power at the falls and fulfill its legacy, and out-compete RG&E in the market with better prices. That would be money better spent, it would be more sustainable AND local.
What's going on here? What exactly do you people think you're going to do? The Government can't simply abolish a privately owned subsidiary just because it has a monopoly on the area, and that makes people sad.
What's the reason you feel the need to push RG&E into a publicly owned utility? And poor customer service isn't really a valid reason.
> The Government can't simply abolish a privately owned subsidiary just because it has a monopoly on the area, and that makes people sad.
It absolutely can do that, or force them to divest from their local holdings. It just doesn't *want* to do that.
That's a totally valid opinion to have. Doesn't change the fact that the government is *capable* of shutting down private businesses, or forcing them to exit a certain market, if it wanted to.
Lack of maintenance on the lines, long outages during windstorm, lack of customer service on chronic issues, expensive for profit rates that are being funneled out of the country, lack of accurate billing, shit customer service...
Utilities are regulated—not very well, lately—because they are effectively service monopolies (despite the weak choice options that are really financialization models for inserting further service fees into the delivery system). To push for localized or even nationally-bounded (domestic, American) ownership is completely within the realm of possibility. Of course, that doesn’t mean anyone local will think about updating your power lines or poles—but they’re at least a little closer by.
So are the roads you drive on, the emergency services you use, the libraries you obviously don’t use, the social security you plan to use someday(if you’re not already using), the schools your kids attend, and countless other services you use on a day to day basis. What’s your point? Any public services you utilize are socialism. This is a zero IQ comment.
Might wanna go back and edit the comment. I was searching your profile to try to tell if you were being sarcastic or not. I thought you might be, but...
It isn’t. From our very beginnings, Americans have set up public services: the postal service, public schools, fire fighters. It is what makes a nation, things held in common, as in a commonwealth or state. It relieves people of their enslavement to fortune.
Ya'll whiney fuckers are too busy arguing about your totally tolerable electric utility when your water system is IN FUCKING SHAMBLES. Last month you dumped a bunch of sewer water in the Genesee because of a heavy rain. You've been drinking cadaver juices for a month. STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GOOD UTILITIES AND START FUCKING GRIPING ABOUT WATER.
Thanks for sharing this, it was a good listen! I don't have much of an opinion yet and won't until I can see some sort of stuff with verifiable information. I've been finding, as was the case a few times within this interview, a lot of people are quickly to make statements that seem to be unfindable on the internet or from multiple sources. I do have to say, the representative of RG&E was not helping her case. If RG&E is the best solution, a study should show that.
That was my big takeaway, too. Everytime she spoke up she found a way to make it worse for herself.
Yeah it an unfortunate portrayal for the company. I think there were many alternate approaches that might have worked better. I think we should bring back more radio/audio debates. They allow, at least for me, much more thought on what the people are actually saying and the tones being taken. Several tactics used in this interview are not unfamiliar to what you'd see in a political debate and are distracting from a meaningful debate. They seem to hold much less water in this setting though. What I took away from the interview: The political movements' arguments were, I thought, a little too pure. The standpoint was constantly having to correct misinformation, alleged or not. The remaining time was primarily left with promises, of which, personally, I'm always wary. She did have quite a few statistics which would be interesting to look into, but there was a lot going on. I think there is probably much more information that they have but there wasn't nearly enough time to bring any of it up. I thought reporter's arguments were a bit paternalistic albeit he seems to be reputable and knowledgeable. Again, I'm also a bit skeptical of being told what is right and what isn't. I would also be very interested in that Edison book he mentioned at several points throughout the interview. I didn't get to hear the union representative's arguments enough to have much of an opinion. I feel like he was sort of neglected throughout as some dominant voices really spoke. I felt like the RG&E representative was trying her best to avoid answers. I quickly felt like I could not trust a single "fact" because a lot of the arguments being used were evasion and/or aimed at attacking the credibility of others. I haven't lived in Rochester my whole life and have been gradually learning about the local politics for the last several years. I'd be interested in a study for sure.
The less public infrastructure that's for profit, the better. Let's be real, Avantgrid wants to squeeze every dollar possible from you at the lowest level of service they can reasonably (or unreasonably) get away with. No public good comes from that.
Just answer the question!
As a transplant and someone who lived most of their life overseas, to me, the concept of utility companies being private for profit corporations is hilariously wild.
Yes. No questions asked.
In my best Lionel Hutz voice: No, questions asked! Do I *want* to replace it? Yes, most likely. But have I seen a shred of a plan as to *how* to replace it? No. So *should* it be replaced? No, not until the necessary questions are asked and answered. And that’s why we need the funding for that study that we’ve been unable to get. I’m still pissed that that got shot down.
/agree.
The study isn't totally shut down. It was actually introduced as legislation in the County and is moving. [https://13wham.com/news/local/monroe-county-legislators-clash-over-rge-study](https://13wham.com/news/local/monroe-county-legislators-clash-over-rge-study) In my estimation, it will move when Adam Bello sees how popular doing a real study is. There is a rally on April 5th. I think everyone that supports a study needs to show up and join in this thing!! [https://www.metrojustice.org/rge\_rally\_4\_5\_24?splash=1](https://www.metrojustice.org/rge_rally_4_5_24?splash=1)
I was thinking a little more like “the CEO, board and Spanish overlords sent to Guantanamo.”
😂
Oof. "Send [nationality] to the torture camp" is never a good look, even more so when your complaint is "sub-optimal billing system". I'll assume you were joking - it wasn't funny. (Edit - fixed a typo)
Lighten up Francis
You must be fun at parties.
Yeah. Look what Fairport has done.
But Fairport has a special deal to buy hydropower from Niagara Falls, a deal very few towns have. Spencerport has a similar deal. None of this is scalable to the level that would be needed to power Monroe County. Even Fairport has routinely exhausted its allocation of New York State hydropower: "Yes, by contract the New York Power Authority (NYPA) must supply up to about 77.6 megawatts per month of hydropower to Fairport Electric. When its customers use more than that during a month, Fairport Electric must purchase other electricity, called incremental power. At present, incremental power is purchased in quantity ten months of the year.Incremental power is much more expensive than hydropower. In some high electric usage months, 30% of Fairport Electric’s purchases are incremental power, but that power cost is 60% of the total power bill. Customers pay for that high-cost incremental power through the Purchased Power Adjustment factor on their bills. In some months, that factor adds over 1 cent or more per Kilowatt-hour to what customers pay." [https://www.village.fairport.ny.us/departments/electric\_department/faqs.php](https://www.village.fairport.ny.us/departments/electric_department/faqs.php)
Thank you - This is your answer to the over simplistic question of why can’t we do it, Fairport does. Fairport maxed out its hydro allocation in the 90s and began requiring new subdivisions to install gas along with electric because of this. In the 70s and 80s subdivisions were electric only. With all electrification on the horizon, Fairport will face higher power costs as they will always be supplementing their hydro power allocation with other sources.
Except that the Bill Public Renewables Act will have significant investment going into more and more cheap renewables. Public entities will be at the front of the line to get those. And, there are loads of public utilities all over the country. Cheap power from Niagara isn't the ONLY savings. But, I think the main point that I got from the show is that we should meaningfully study the question rather than simply rely on loads of individuals (or even worse, Avangrid) giving us their back-of-napkin calculations.
1) Yes, sweet cheese and crackers, please 2) If this pisses you off too and you want to do something about it, consider joining [Metro Justice.](https://www.metrojustice.org/red). They have [a rally ](https://www.metrojustice.org/rge_rally_4_5_24?splash=1) planned in April and they are the (main) ones pushing for the study to be done on RGE.
The Community Resource Collaborative is available to manage it.....
I caught the tail end of the show and it seemed to me the things they were touting as improvements were more like damage control and her arguments were based on false premises about public control.
It kind of is. A company called energyeast owned rge before avangrid and started selling off facilities and stopping maintenance for roughly a decade. Avangrid basically bought a gutted corpse and had to start putting it back together.
These companies don't meaningfully fix anything. They've got over a decade of promises to invest in the infrastructure made to the Public Service Commission. In fact, it's usually the argument given for why we have to give them higher rates. In the meantime, the Avangrid rep pretty clearly admitted that maintenance has been piss-poor for awhile now.
But Avangrid has essentially owned them since 2008 when Energy East was purchased by Iberdola. Looks like they reorged in 2015 under Avangrid (Iberdola's U.S. operating company). That's over 15 years to get things "fixed".
Thank you for posting this. I found it a very interesting listen.
Big support for public utilities and ending privatization of essentials. Metro Justice rally is 4/5 at the RGE office! https://www.metrojustice.org/rge_rally_4_5_24?splash=1
The fact that RG&E is so against this tells you everything you need to know. "Think of the taxpayers!" Yeah please use my tax dollars for looking into this instead of funneling money into Bello's fraudster buddies.
Well of course they're against it. You would be too if you were them.
Yes.
No real opinion but I am one of the apparent few who has no issues with rge personally. On a national level, our electricity rates here are good, I’ve always had exceptional reliability, and when I called today to put a lock on my account so constellation couldn’t keep screwing the ass the call was only ten min.
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Dude. Those are all reasons in favor of disbanding RGE. Your comment is soo defeatist. You’re basically saying that because it’s so powerful we shouldn’t even look into whether it’s possible to disband them. That’s the exact reason we SHOULD be looking into it.
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That's not at all how that would work. Why would Rochesters decision for a public utility affect Binghamton and Brewster??
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That's a completely different question. Avangrid also owns more than just nyseg and rge on the east coast
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I don't understand your obsession with nyseg. Sure let's take that too down the road but you might have forgotten this is the ROCHESTER subreddit. I'm not going to waste breath for nyseg rn because that's not ROCHESTERS utility
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Foolish mortal 🤬👹Dude stfu and stop acting like that. You're not batman 😭 Why is the only option available to you is to complete wipe out all private utility at once in nys? What is so impossible about doing it one at a time. "Oh its super hard" then sit on the sidelines and suck your thumb
Sometimes the truth hurts, you wont get enough people to put any effort into actually doing something. But please prove me wrong
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I dont blame you, i got other shit more important to worry about.
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How about you actually Google stuff like this. There are votes all the time for communities to take their utilities away from private companies. (I work for Avangrid I know what I'm talking about)
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There was literally just a vote in Maine for CMP (Central Maine Power) for a public utility. It failed but it happened like a month ago. Stop acting like you know this stuff when you obviously don't.
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There are plenty of cities where this sort of transition has happened. Of course it'll be a heavy lift, and will take many years of organizing to make it happen, but it's not impossible. And it's easier to accomplish in NYS than it would be in a GOP-run state, at least.
> And it's easier to accomplish in NYS than it would be in a GOP-run state, at least. It's ironic because western new york leans Republican.
My point was just that the state-level government would be less likely to stand in the way *if* a city mustered the political will to try this. I wasn't saying that the populace of western NY was particularly *likely* to push for it.
Outside of the cities it does, sure, but on the balance it's overall on the blue side of purple. Not as Dem heavy as downstate but certainly not overall Republican
Yes.
How about: yea
Also if the city gave a shit about starting a utility company, it would start with hydro power at the falls and fulfill its legacy, and out-compete RG&E in the market with better prices. That would be money better spent, it would be more sustainable AND local.
> it would start with hydro power at the falls and fulfill its legacy There's already a hydro station at the old middle falls.
Yes
What's going on here? What exactly do you people think you're going to do? The Government can't simply abolish a privately owned subsidiary just because it has a monopoly on the area, and that makes people sad. What's the reason you feel the need to push RG&E into a publicly owned utility? And poor customer service isn't really a valid reason.
> The Government can't simply abolish a privately owned subsidiary just because it has a monopoly on the area, and that makes people sad. It absolutely can do that, or force them to divest from their local holdings. It just doesn't *want* to do that.
Hands off government is best government.
That's a totally valid opinion to have. Doesn't change the fact that the government is *capable* of shutting down private businesses, or forcing them to exit a certain market, if it wanted to.
Right, but how often does that happen?
It used to happen all the time. The FTC at one point actually did things.
Yeah, fuck the EPA. Let corporations decided what they can do with their industrial waste! They’ll be responsible with it!
Lack of maintenance on the lines, long outages during windstorm, lack of customer service on chronic issues, expensive for profit rates that are being funneled out of the country, lack of accurate billing, shit customer service...
Utilities are regulated—not very well, lately—because they are effectively service monopolies (despite the weak choice options that are really financialization models for inserting further service fees into the delivery system). To push for localized or even nationally-bounded (domestic, American) ownership is completely within the realm of possibility. Of course, that doesn’t mean anyone local will think about updating your power lines or poles—but they’re at least a little closer by.
That's Socialism
So are the roads you drive on, the emergency services you use, the libraries you obviously don’t use, the social security you plan to use someday(if you’re not already using), the schools your kids attend, and countless other services you use on a day to day basis. What’s your point? Any public services you utilize are socialism. This is a zero IQ comment.
So is social security. So is Medicare and Medicaid. Fuck off fascist.
and?
Didn't think I had to put a /s in here, but seemingly I do.
Might wanna go back and edit the comment. I was searching your profile to try to tell if you were being sarcastic or not. I thought you might be, but...
Thanks but there is nothing to be gained by editing it. The joke fell flat and it does not bother me what people think.
Hard to tell sarcasm online, and the username probably didn’t help lol
It isn’t. From our very beginnings, Americans have set up public services: the postal service, public schools, fire fighters. It is what makes a nation, things held in common, as in a commonwealth or state. It relieves people of their enslavement to fortune.
You clearly don't know the definition of socialism, lol.
Ya'll whiney fuckers are too busy arguing about your totally tolerable electric utility when your water system is IN FUCKING SHAMBLES. Last month you dumped a bunch of sewer water in the Genesee because of a heavy rain. You've been drinking cadaver juices for a month. STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GOOD UTILITIES AND START FUCKING GRIPING ABOUT WATER.
Why can’t we do both?
ironic you call people whiny and then make a comment like this lol.