At 7:23 PM:
Audience Member: My question is regarding the power plant.
Roger Dickinson: Yes
Audience member: What are the benefits of having FPL in the Elverta community?
Dickinson: The question is what are the benefits of having Florida Power and Light site a power plant in Elverta. And I think what they would suggest are the benefits are what they would contribute to the community, above the terms of, specifically, community benefits that could be worth multi millions of dollars. They would suggest that some of the employees they use either for construction or operation of the plant could well come from Rio Linda or Elverta, and that people who work on building the plant or who operate the plant may choose to do some shopping, eating or activities of that kind in Rio Linda and Elverta. I think on a larger level they would argue that there’s a benefit to us as Sacramentans and Californians by having a greater power supply available so that we’re not faced with the prospect of rolling blackouts or worse. I think that’s what they would say.
Audience member: Except it’s not to be for Rio Linda or Elverta only, it’s going to be for others. They’re not supplying power for us.
Dickinson: Her comment is they’re not supplying power for us. It goes elsewhere. They would be what’s called a merchant power plant, meaning they could sell their power to whom they chose. They could sell to SMUD, in which case it would come directly here, they could sell to PG&E, if PG&E’s still around, they could sell it to anyone else who have the interest and the capacity to buy it. Even if they sold it to someone else, for example, the way electricity is distributed, the fact is, if we have a need, we need to buy power which SMUD does, for example in the summer months, the power that they might sell that could go to PG&E might actually be sold back to SMUD and come here for example. Cuz’ we’re all on one grid.
Audience member: My other question I had is: I read in the newspaper that Governor Davis received a $25,000 contribution
Dickinson (interrupting): That’s what the newspaper said.
Audience member continues: from FPL. Does the Board of Supervisors, will they be receiving any money from FPL? Or, have they?
Dickinson: The comment is that she read in the newspaper that FPL had made a $25000 campaign contribution to Governor Davis; the question is has any member of the Board of Supervisors received a campaign contribution from FPL or do we anticipate receiving one. Well, I can’t speak for the other members of the Board, I don’t know what they’ve received or what they anticipate receiving. I can only tell you I have not received any campaign contribution from FPL; I have no reason to believe that they will make any.
Audience member: Could it be under a fictitious name?
Dickinson: It couldn’t be under a fictitious name, without them
violating the law.
Jay O’Brien: Roger, On October third, at your Board meeting, at the end of the Board meeting you attacked our CPAC Chair Debbie Byrne, and I was very irritated at what you did. I wrote you an email about it. You explained that you really weren’t responding to what she said during the meeting, but that you were responding to a document that she gave you during the meeting that was not public. I asked you to make that public. You responded. Your response was, to me, not satisfactory, I sent you a response, and you didn’t respond to that. In three weeks I sent you a follow-up letter and you didn’t respond to that. Don Flesch, who I think is still here, he felt that it was a good enough letter; he made it the “letter of the week” in the November eighth issue of the News. My question to you is, first, do you intend to respond, and second, do you intend to apologize to Debbie.
Dickinson: Well Jay, I think I responded fully and completely already. You chose to mischaracterize that response, I’m not going to spend time people have given here tonight to go through this when there’s something more that should be said or needs to be said, then I will say it.
O’Brien: Do I take that then, to mean that you don’t respond to my emails in the future?
Dickinson: You can take it that way, that’s not what I said.