[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: FW: DRAFT energy future survey

[kohls at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Ageton, Suzy

From: Ageton, Suzy
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 11:27 AM
To: Huntley, Sarah; Cowles, Macon; Osborne, Susan; Gray, Crystal; Wilson, Ken; Becker, KC; Appelbaum, Matt; Karakehian, George; Morzel, Lisa; Morzel, Lisa
Subject: RE: DRAFT energy future survey

Here are my thoughts on the draft energy future survey.

Introduction - let's be honest, this is a survey about Boulder's energy future, let's just say that and walk our talk about transparency..

Q.3 - I would create a couple extra coding categories to get more value out of this question by creating separate codes for snow removal (now in #8 with road repair/construction) and non-energy taxes (now in #3 with economy, jobs, etc.)

Q.8 - I think this is a poorly worded question.  The City is focused solely on Boulder while Xcel has a broader jurisdiction to serve.  What we want to know is the level of confidence/trust people have in each of the two entities to meet their commitments and responsibilities to the community.  Here's a substitute question that I believe will get at the same issue but in a fairer way:

How much confidence/trust do you have in each of the following organizations to meet its commitment and responsibilities to the community ?

Qs 11-13 - Reliability is not included for comparison, why?  It is one of the key factors we are seeking to insure and should be compared against the other three.

Q. 14 - maybe part c is intended to get at reliability but it is quite obtuse.  Why not just ask the question directly such as Delivering reliable energy service

Q.18  and Q. 25 - I think we need to very clearly separate the start up costs question (Q25) from the asset purchase costs (which I think is what Q18 is trying to get at).  I like Matt's idea of placing the two questions next to each other is good.  Q 18 needs more work  to give better understanding of what bonding means in terms of time and costs including that no new taxes will be required..

Q21 - Again I agree with Matt.  Two recent articles in the NY Times have made it very clear that there is a lot of debate about natural gas pricing and that if anything it is liking to increase, not decrease b/c of the difficulties and expense of extracting it from shale through "fracking."

Q.26 - I would delete this question.  The fact that some Colorado communities have run local power utilities for some time is meaningless without knowing the cost, challenges and relevance to Boulder's situation.  We could just as well have asked a question about the number of communities that have failed in their attempts to municipalize and ask how this information would affect our residents vote for municipalization.  Neither question is very useful without a great deal more information than can be provided in a short survey.

Q.27 - There is one other option which is not included here: the status quo, i.e., simply remaining out of franchise with Xcel.  Since the Occup. Tax runs for four more years, we would buy ourselves some time to better analyze the late Xcel Wind Proposal and see what new energy technology emerges or what new legislative energy policy we might help create.  I personally would like to know whether this option has any appeal to our community.

Suzy
From: Huntley, Sarah
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 4:15 PM
To: Cowles, Macon; Osborne, Susan; Gray, Crystal; Wilson, Ken; Becker, KC; Appelbaum, Matt; Karakehian, George; Ageton, Suzy; Morzel, Lisa; Morzel, Lisa
Subject: DRAFT energy future survey

Dear council members,
The city will be conducting a telephone poll in early July to determine how voters are feeling on several topics related to our ongoing discussions about Boulder's Energy Future.  We anticipate that the poll will begin late next week. The findings and conclusions will be presented to you on July 19. Several council members have asked to see the questions that have been drafted for the telephone poll; therefore, I am attaching what staff considers to be the second to last version for your review.

We have had several in-depth conversations with our consultants at National Research Center (NRC) about how best to capture the type of data that is most essential to informing the decisions you will be making over the next several weeks. As you know, there are lots of reasons to conduct phone polls, and the questions you ask, as well as how you ask them, depends on what you are trying to measure. The recent Xcel poll is a perfect example. It was not written to determine whether municipalization would pass or fail; instead, the questions appear to have been formulated to determine what messages might help Xcel in any campaign against municipalization.   This is not the intent of our survey.  Rather, we must make sure that the results of the survey will provide you with meaningful information about how the middle-of-the-road voters are feeling about this issue.   As a result, we focused on crafting questions that are based on accurate information and are in context. We are also striving, per our consultants' advice, to keep the poll to 15 minutes or less. This means we cannot add any questions without taking a corresponding number away.

With these factors in mind, we most certainly welcome any suggestions you might have. As with everything on this project, we have a very tight turnaround. NRC needs to have this survey finalized by noon this Thursday so they can program it into their system and run some test calls. As a result, I would appreciate your feedback no later than 3 p.m. tomorrow. Thanks very much.

Sarah


Sarah Huntley
Media Relations/Communications Coordinator
City of Boulder
303-441-3155
huntleys at bouldercolorado.gov