BOMA San Francisco Endorses Proposition 16

BOMA San Francisco is supporting Proposition 16 because it is in our best interests as commercial property owners to have reliability and predictability of electric power service for our buildings, our tenants, and their customers and clients. Nothing is more important than reliable power. Changing the source of that power is something that should not be done without overwhelming support of all customers. That is why BOMA San Francisco is supporting Proposition 16 as it would create a higher threshold of public support for any deviation away from the current Investor Owned Utility service to one owned and managed by a local government. It will not affect the current operations of existing public power entities.

On a more local basis, BOMA San Francisco members are not impressed with the way our local city government runs most of its services. Consequently, we are not inclined to give the responsibility to the City to purchase power for our buildings. BOMA San Francisco has long recognized PG&E as a very socially-responsible good corporate citizen of San Francisco. PG&E has been a long-time member of our organization as a principal building member. PG&E has been a big supporter of our training and education programs geared toward benchmarking, energy efficiency, and sustainability, and has been (and continues to be) an integral partner on all things related to energy, energy conservation, and demand reduction programs for commercial real estate. Several years ago BOMA San Francisco and PG & E worked together to create the first commercial office sub-metering agreement, which has since been copied by both SCE and SDG&E in their rate proceedings at the CPUC. PG&E also supports our position that the rates for electricity should reflect the cost of service as closely as possible.

BOMA San Francisco has a long and trusted relationship with PG & E. To ensure that fundamentally-important electric power services are not politicized and thrown into uncertainty through the actions of a few extremists intent on disrupting the status quo, we say a higher level of public support should be required.

Therefore, BOMA San Francisco supports Proposition 16 and urges its members to vote YES on Prop 16 in the June 8, 2010 election.