 So we still have a minute and we'll start right at 6 o'clock. All right. Please come to order. On the record, this is the time and place set for the public participation hearing for the general case application, GRC application of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, PGE, application A18-12009. Good evening. My name is Elaine Lau. With me is Judge Rafael Liraig. We are the assigned administrative law judges in this proceeding. So there are five commissioners at the California Public Utilities Commission, CPUC. These five commissioners will be the people who vote and decide whether to approve PG&E's request or some other dollar amount in this application. With us today, we have Commissioner Leanne Randolph, Commissioner Clifford Breckschaffen, and Commissioner Martha Guzman Assevis. Commissioner Randolph is the assigned commissioner in this proceeding. Commissioner Randolph, would you like to have some opening remarks? Yes. Thank you, everyone, for coming out this evening to hear information and share your thoughts with us. It's really important to hear from the customers of the utility. I'll just take a moment. The judges are going to spend a little more time talking about the process, but I'll kind of give a brief summary myself. As Judge Lau mentioned, the five commissioners ultimately will decide on this case. I'm the assigned commissioner, which means I'll work closely with the judges to manage the proceeding and gather information and help form the initial decision that the commissioners will then need to vote on. This is a general rate case. These happen every three years or so, and basically it's a proceeding that decides the budget for the utility for a period of time. It will decide how much money the utility is allowed to collect from ratepayers, and it will decide what they are allowed to spend the money on. It's a fairly extensive process. It usually takes over a year for us to go all the way through. There are about 15 parties to the proceeding. There's the applicant themselves. There are various organizations that represent different types of ratepayers, so residential ratepayers, industrial customers, renewable energy providers. There's a lot of different entities that have interests in the outcome of this proceeding, and they're all going to participate, and they're going to submit evidence, and then the judges will be holding evidentiary hearings, and will be basically picking apart the application and trying to understand the utility's request, and maybe arguing for or against various aspects of the utility's request. The judges will manage all that process, and they'll get all that testimony and create a record, and that's the record on which they'll base their decision. So it's not an automatic process by any means, and there's going to be a lot of back and forth and give and take. So the public participation hearing process is an important part of that, where we have the opportunity to go out into the communities throughout PG&E's territory and hear from customers. So we're really happy that you came and took the time to be here tonight. So thank you very much. Thank you, Commissioner Randolph, Commissioner Rick Shoffin. Thank you very much, Judge. I just want to echo our thanks for being here and taking time out of your data to come to this hearing. Many of you have been deeply affected by the activities of PG&E and are very concerned about their activities and their rate increases, so we do want to hear about that. As Commissioner Randolph indicated, we have a formal process in which 15 or so parties are participating, that is a legalistic process, quite formal. But this is an opportunity for us to hear from people who are not the traditional parties and what your thoughts are and your input. We do consider public comment in all of our decisions, so your comment will be factored into the decision. It will be considered by all three of us, the judges, the other commissioners, and staff, so be assured that it will be part of the process. I would also encourage folks, if you're interested in other activities or things that the PUC does to see the folks at the head of the room, because they can give you more information about how to follow some of the work we do in energy, telecommunications, transportation, and other areas. So thank you very much, and I look forward to the discussion tonight. Thank you, Commissioner Guzman Asadis. Thank you, everyone. Good evening, Buenas tardes. I am just really glad to be here to have the opportunity to listen to folks for your input and your concerns. And I hope we can really delve into some of your key issues as we move along. And I know we'll talk at the end again that this is not the end of your opportunity to provide us input. Thank you. So before we begin, I'd like to have a quick safety message. In the event of an emergency, we have our CHP officers in the back and they will coordinate and lead our evacuation services or any other emergency services if needed. The purpose of today's hearing is for us to come listen to you. We are here today to listen to your comments on PG&E's application. We want to hear about how PG&E's application affect you, your family, your friends, and your community. Your comments will help the commission gather information to determine whether PG&E's proposed increases are reasonable. So for those who are tuned in at home today, either through the telephone or via webcast, you can send us comments by emailing the public advisor's office. Their email is publicpublic.advisor at cpuc.ca.gov. Judge Lirak and I have already received a lot of comments from the public through the public advisor's office. So the public advisor's office is at the back of the room and the table at the back of the room. And they have a fact sheet about the application that has a lot of details regarding what PG&E requested in the application. And if you have any questions regarding the commission or our processes, please hesitate to go find them after the meeting. In the back also is a table manned by PG&E customer service representatives. If you have any questions regarding your gas or electric bill, please also do not hesitate to find them after the meeting. So now I'd like to go over some ground rules. If you'd like to speak today, please sign up at the public advisor's table in the back. We'd like to hear from everyone that wishes to speak. So as a courtesy to others, please refrain from calling out or interrupting any speaker. Please direct any comments to us. We'd like to hear from you and not to PG&E. Please also keep your comments to about five minutes. At this moment, I'd like to remind everyone to check your cell phones to make sure they're put on silent. With us today are some court reporters. They have the very important job of documenting your comments into the record. So if you, when you come speak at the podium above, please speak slowly, speak facing us so that the court reporters can fully capture your comments. Our court reporter will prepare a written transcript of today's hearing and that transcript will be available to all five commissioners and also to the public on our website. At this time, we'd like to invite PG&E who will give a brief presentation. Good evening, Judge Lirag, Judge Lau, commissioners and community members. Thank you for attending tonight's public participation hearing on PG&E's 2020 general rate case proposal. My name's Herman G. Hernandez and I've been working for PG&E now for 13 months. And as one of the team leaders here for our service area, I have the privilege of serving Lake and Sonoma County's as their local public affairs representative. This is one, I feel it's important to note that this is one of 17 hearings being hosted by the CPUC throughout our 70,000 square mile service area. At each location, representatives from PG&E are here to assist customers. We actually have a couple of our team members here in the back. So, and for customers who are participating remotely and have questions about their service or bill, they can actually call our 1-800 number, which is 1-800-743-500. Your feedback in this process is incredibly important because the application outlines a series of critical safety investments to help address the state's growing wildfire threat and further protect people and communities that we serve. It's also important to note that this process is one of many forms that the CPUC provides for our customers to give input on the GRC and other regulatory filings. Again, thank you to everyone for being here this evening. We truly appreciate the opportunity to learn and hear from our customers. And now I'd like to introduce John Simon, PG&E's executive vice president, who'd like to share a few words. Good evening. Thank you, judges Lerag and Lau, for giving us this opportunity to participate in today's hearing. Thank you also to commissioners Rex Shoffin, Randolph and Guzman Assevis for being here. It underscores the importance and it underscores the importance of hearing from our customers, something we're here to do today. We recognize where we are tonight. We know wildfires have impacted this community and people's lives, people in this room tonight. At our earlier meeting today, we heard pointed feedback about PG&E, even anger. We shouldn't turn from it, we can't, we have to accept it. Personally speaking, it motivates me and many of my colleagues to work even harder to try to make our system safer with a sense of urgency. We also know, many have said, it's our actions that matter, not our words. You will and should judge us by our actions. That's our responsibility. We acknowledge there's a deficit of faith and trust in our company right now. It's going to take time to change that. I wish I could change it faster. Every day at PG&E, we are at it, dedicated to show our customers through our actions, we can be different. As Herman said, my name's John Simon. I've been at PG&E since 2007. I've had a number of different jobs. Today, I oversee our law and public affairs related functions. Part of my job is supporting PG&E's most important responsibility, which is the safety of our customers and our communities. One way we do that is through our GRC proposal, which outlines our plan to upgrade our technology and infrastructure when it comes to safety, especially our safety operations. Our proposal is designed to further strengthen wildfire prevention, risk monitoring, and emergency response. It will add new safety measures, increase vegetation management, and harden our electric system to help further reduce wildfire risk. This includes installing more fire resilient poles and covered power lines, increasing the rate and breadth of line clearance amidst an ecosystem of 100 million trees, and expanding our network of weather stations and high-definition cameras we can then make available to first responders. As Judge Lau indicated, under our proposal, we are requesting about $1.1 billion in increase over our currently adopted revenues in the first year. More than half of the proposed increase would be directly related to wildfire prevention, risk reduction, and additional safety enhancements. If approved by the CPUC, and there is a process, it would increase a typical residential customer bill by about 6.4% or about $10.57 per month, much of which is for electricity-related work. While we are requesting funding on important safety measures, we are not requesting any funding for PG&E executive pay, and we are not requesting any funding for wildfire claims involved in our Chapter 11 proceeding. We recognize this is a difficult time and our GRC proposal is a significant request. Our commitment is to keep customer costs as low as we can while meeting our responsibilities to safely serve, even as changing climate presents significant new challenges. Our funding proposal is subject to the CPUC's thorough transparent review and its process, inviting feedback from a wide range of people and groups. We welcome it, and we thank everyone too for being here to provide that feedback we can hear. Thank you. We are ready to invite people to come up and speak. I'm going to read the names of three speakers at a time in the order that they will speak. If you hear your name being called, please come towards the podium and be ready to speak. So the first speakers for this evening are Wayne Gibb, Bill, Biel, Thomas Ells. Mr. Gibb, can you please make your way to the podium? And please correct me if I'm wrong. Your last name is spelled G-I-B-B. That's correct. Thank you. Hi there, I want to thank you again for adding to the thanks for coming here and holding this hearing and for hearing us. I wanted very much to be the first speaker to provide a bit of history around PG&E to provide some context to its requests for over $2 billion in additional rate payer income. Beginning in 1952, PG&E dumped 370 million gallons of wastewater laced with Chromium-6 into unlined waste ponds near several Central Valley towns, including Hinkley and Kettleman City. PG&E lied to the residents and failed to inform the local water board of the contamination until December 7th, 1987, that's 35 years later. The Chromium-6 caused cancer, birth defects, and other health problems for the residents of these small towns. PG&E blamed everything but its own behavior for the poisoning and its health consequences. In 1996, after years of expensive litigation, PG&E finally agreed to pay $333 million to 665 people it had harmed by this malfeasance. In 1994, while still fighting the Hinkley and Kettleman City victims, PG&E sparked a devastating wildfire in the Sierra. On June 19th, 1997, a Nevada County jury found PG&E guilty of 789 counts of criminal negligence for failing to trim its trees near the power lines. And at Christmas in 2008, a PG&E gas line exploded in Rancho Cordova in Sacramento County, leaving one dead and five injured. PG&E paid a $38 million fine for this explosion, but this fine was not sufficient to prevent further explosions because in June of 2009, a PG&E vault exploded in downtown San Francisco, leaving thousands without power. The following year in 2010, a PG&E gas line exploded in San Bruno, killing eight and destroying 38 homes. The pipeline was at least 54 years old. PG&E paid a $1.6 billion fine. It was convicted, the company PG&E was convicted of six felony counts, felony offenses for violating federal law, lying to regulators and obstructing justice after causing a gas explosion that killed eight people, as I said, and destroyed a San Bruno neighborhood. It's also interesting to note that PG&E had requested from the PUC and been granted money to evaluate this exact pipeline, but did not spend the money in that way and spend it instead in executive bonuses. That is what the PUC president, I believe his name is Michael Peavey, at the time reported. It also appears to me in light of this that the PUC lacks a formal method of following up when they grant a rate increase to ensure that the money is in fact spent as it was said to before. So I'm not sure whether that's still the case, I suspect it is. Okay, let's see. In December 2011, the nonpartisan organization public campaign criticized PG&E for spending $79 million on lobbying and not paying any taxes during 2008 to 2010, despite making a profit of $4.8 billion and increasing executive pay by 94% to 8.5 million in 2010 for its top five executives. PG&E received $1 billion in tax rebates. In 2014, PG&E power lines burned down much of Butte County. In 2015, the California Public Utilities Commission audit showed PG&E was years behind in its vegetation management on the North Coast. PG&E appears to have done little to change its behavior given the recent history, more recent history. In October of 2017, while PG&E was serving criminal probation for its convictions arising out of the San Bruno explosion, PG&E power lines and other equipment ignited numerous fires throughout much of Northern California. The California Forestry, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, prevention rather, has found PG&E responsible for 16 of these fires. I think that's probably all I have to say, so I hope you'll keep this in mind. And if you could look into the ability or the willingness of the PG&E to follow up to make certain that PG&E in fact spends the money as it claimed it would, maybe we can avoid another San Bruno, thank you. Judge, can I just respond to Mr. Gibb on the question you just raised? The PG&E has adopted rules that require PG&E and other utilities to document how much they are spending on risk mitigation and safety mitigation measures and the extent to which they vary from the amount that they've said they're gonna spend the money on and they have to report that to us now. So we do have a system in place now. For those items, how about other rate increases? I can't speak to what we've done more generally, but for safety-related expenditures, we now have a process for tracking those and comparing them to what the utility has proposed and gotten approval for. And that was done when? Roughly. That's been done over the past few years and the most direct requirements were imposed at the end of last year. I see. Okay, any other comments or questions? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gibb. And if you want more information regarding the proceeding, you can find the public advisor's office. Mr. Beale, correct me if I'm wrong. Your last name is spelled B-E-A-L. Two L's. B-E-A-L-L. Correct. Thank you. As you just mentioned, my name is Bill Beale. And my name is Bill Beale and I was born and raised in Northern California. Just to mention in 1964, I actually fought the Hanley fires of volunteer while I was in college here. That same footprint is the Tubbs fire that destroyed a major portion of Santa Rosa. I'm not here to condone or condemn PG&E's actions. I'm here to try to say whether I'm for this increase or against the increase in a reason why. Since the firestorms of October, 2017, I've read every available article that was published about California's wildfires in the almost daily articles chronologically tracking PG&E's fight to survive. I've read most, if not all, of the so-called expert solution to California wildfire. I found most extremely disappointing so much that I wrote a book that was published last month. I'd just like to say that I'll mention it right up front. I'm against this increase and I'm against it for the reason that I actually think that it deters as a deterrent to wildfire prevention in the state of California. The reason being is is that where the money is gonna be spent. I am for hardening their system, their grid, and I think that's all while spent money. But on January 9th, Judge William Alsop, a federal judge that's actually supervising their probation of PG&E from the San Bruno Piasco. Proposed a wildfire prevention plan that would impose more deliberate blackouts. A few days later, actually five days later, well actually a little longer, on January 23rd, PG&E blasted the judge's plan. And he said that de-energizing power lines is a tool of last resort, last resort, because it presents significant public safety risk. Also, because PG&E's transmission lines are part of a multi-state grid, the judge's plan could lead to blackouts in large parts of Western United States and Canada. So they blasted this. Now, on February 6th, PG&E filed its wildfire safety plan with California Public Utilities Commission to comply with the state law enacted in response of the wildfires of the 2017. The proposal, as submitted, the number one prevention, was could temporarily shut off the power to more than five million customers as part of the plan. They turned around and blasted it. A month later, they more or less adopted it. And now we're getting all this public stuff, safety, power shutoffs, all of this. Well, that's not only economically, it's very unsafe, it is economically disastrous. It totally reduces our standard of living in California. I think the solution is being missed totally. The, you can harden the system, improve the lines, spend the money there, but you can't control a broken equipment or this or that. The problem is, is we need to remove the fuel that's sparked by those lines. We've got, how do we do that? We've got easements on our transmission lines. There's usually 150-foot easement. They can totally clear those trees, clear the dried up vegetation, the brush, and keep it clear to the ground. Now, you might think 150-foot easement is ugly. Well, I'll show you ugly. Take a look at Coffee Park, take a look at Paradise, take a look at Portions of Malibu after the fires. This is a wildfire epidemic and this is an emergency. So, using those easements, we can over a period of time, it's not gonna be in a year or so, and the areas just outside of the easements can be a little forest management. The money's there, there's cap and trade money available that's being used for the high-speed rail, which more could be allocated. It doesn't have to be taxpayers' money, that's being, there's cap and trade money. California's rainy day fund right now is fat. We can get people out to start on the most hazardous areas. And I think this is where we're missing the point. There's not gonna be any miracles. We've got to address the actual cause of the fire and now we have the spark. If the spark has nothing to burn, we have no fire. All this money's going into the warning systems, to cameras, to weather stations, to all of this, but very little is going through. And tree trimming, tree trimming is a joke. It hasn't worked even if it was kept up as trimming. In those areas, we have to get rid of the fuel. That's all I have, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Beale. Next we have Mr. Thomas Els. Mr. Els, please correct me if my spelling is incorrect. E-L-L-S? Yes, correct. Thank you. Well, thank you for coming here and thank you for the opportunity to speak. This is a very important issue, as Mr. Beale mentioned. It's a wildfire crisis, period. My background is I'm a civil and environmental engineer for many years and a geographer, anthropology geographer, as well as I have, just as a background, do forgive me, a master's of science in tax law and a master's in finance and accounting. So when I look here at the information that's provided, we see that one of the expenses is a 29% depreciation based on a projection of the quarterly income that was reported recently, that it seems like there's $2.2 billion a year in profit and $17.6 billion a year in revenue. So of the revenue, 29% is $5.1 billion in depreciation. That's a capital cost recovery factor. It's not an expense. It's when you spend, the other factor here is capital cost, 24% per year. So they spend 24% on capital and they also recover an additional 29% per year on top of that to recover their expense. So two separate things, they're here in, categorized as a total dividing the pie of the revenue. But the reality is the 24% is the capital expense. And if you expend 24% of your revenue, so that's $4.2 billion. You have $68 billion in total assets. That would include goodwill and many other things. So you should be able to recover all of that asset, the entire asset value of PG&E in 15 years. Separate from all the profit. The profit is 12.5% per year. Back at the time before the collapse of, with the dot bombs and at the same time we had the power crisis, if you remember, annual profits were capped at 6% per year. It's doubled since then. Along with the actual revenues, then in fact you have four times, a factor of four times, the actual profits. Gone up 400%. So you can receive, you have the receiving of the depreciation as a cost recovery and the expenditure of capital costs. Total 53% of the actual revenues are assigned already to those things. It doesn't behoove them to ask for more, the $6 billion of a plan that I might add is asked for 600 cameras. That's $10 million a camera. I can get a camera real cheap. Perfect cameras, wonderful cameras, fantastic cameras, digital cameras, incredible cameras. You can look for miles, great focus. They don't cost $10 million a camera. Weather stations, 1,300 weather stations. That's $500,000 a weather station. Completely unrealistic expenditures for these things. It's true, they need to do. They need to add cameras. They need to add weather stations. It doesn't amount to $6 billion. They already have a 12% profit. This is last year's profit. After the expenditures of the legal expenses and the other things have been deducted. Not all of the, not all of the corrective aspects of the lawsuits have been incorporated, but they have made provisions for those losses. And still have a 12%, 12.5%. These are exorbitant profits in a time when interest rates are 1.5% or 2.5%. Even in a 10-year Treasury bond, it's like 2%. They have 600% times that profitability above. And that's, it's a difference that you look at between say a bond that's for a corporate bond and a bond that's a Treasury bond. And you look at that difference. Here's what their return on investment is that is bond investment could be compared to bond investment or risk investment or capital stock investment, but either way. I mean, this is just an enormous gap, 12.5%. I remember the time when Treasury bonds were 15% a year. If you could think about that, that's what this is. This is that kind of a return. This is a massive return on investment. And to think that they need to ask for more money from people who cannot pay or who have been damaged by these fires or who are at risk of these fires, it's unconscionable. I do forgive me. Thank you, Mr. Elf. The next set of speakers we have is Michelle B. Marvel, followed by Benjamin Vogel and Gail Outlaw. And Michelle B, if I spelled your last name incorrectly, please correct me. It's M-A-R-V-E-L-L. That is correct. Oh, Mr. Shelby, I'm sorry. Miss, but thank you. Sorry. Thanks, my name is Shelby Marvel. I'm a PG&E rate payer and a longtime Sonoma County resident. I am here as a representative of the Sonoma County Workers Benefit Council to demand the California Public Utilities Commission fulfills your mandate to protect rate payers, deny the entirety of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's 2020 general rate case application, and impose a moratorium on disconnection of utility service to customers with income below 300% of the federal poverty level. We are a membership delegate body of over 6,000 families in Sonoma, Lake and Napa counties. I speak for thousands of local residents and hundreds of local businesses in this region who do not agree we should shoulder the weight of PG&E's negligence. The four domestic workers, farm workers, service workers, independent contractors, and temporary workers, along with elderly and disabled people, our survival is a daily battle. We do the work that is vital to the tourism, caregiving, and wine industries, yet we struggle to afford the rapidly rising costs of gas, food, utilities, and rent, plus every other basic necessity. Most of us have already seen our utility bills skyrocket within the last year, and many are in our communities are saying we already paid PG&E to do it right. Why should we pay them more for doing it wrong? Since the tubs fire, 7,000 residents have left Sonoma County, yet only 2,000 of those were fire victims. We don't need to speculate that most have had to move away for purely economic reasons. According to the data outlined in the attachment one of the order instituting rulemaking, R.18-07-005 issued 7,20, 2018, titled California IOU Disconnections and Reconnections. In 2017, PG&E disconnected homes at least 213,254 times as a conservative estimate. More than 90,000 of those were disconnections imposed twice or more for inability to pay. That averages 17,771 per month, or 592 PG&E disconnections per day. The CPUC shows, allows this, yet is mandated to protect customers. The significance of the data is that the large majority of disconnections in all categories were of homes with customers not on the CARE program, showing that most families were working, making income above the eligibility for CARE, yet not making enough to cover their basic costs, such as utilities. 2017 had a total of 886,000 disconnections when combining gas, electricity, and water across the state. Living without a basic utility is the last thing you want your family to bear next to an eviction and shutoffs kill. Furthermore, PG&E's profits in 2017 were $1.66 billion, double their 2013 profits. Monthly, that's $138 million, or about $4.5 million per day in profits. Meanwhile, PG&E cut off nearly 600 homes per day. Each time PG&E is granted a rate increase, there is a proportionate spike in numbers of homes disconnected. Please note. Ms. Michelleby, slow down a little so our court reporters can capture your comments. Thank you. Furthermore, PG&E's, oh, I mentioned that. Please note that PG&E paid no federal income tax from 2008 to 2015. And for about that same period, the federal government has cut home energy assistance to low income by a third so that only 25% of eligible families receive assistance before funds run out each year. In regards to accountability for wildfire safety, the CPUC granted PG&E's requests to delay for nearly a decade the production of maps designating wildfire hazards and areas at high risk for fires. Two days before the Tubbs fire struck this region in October 2017, the CPUC granted PG&E another 74 day extension to the due date for these maps. These were hazards PG&E knew existed and the CPUC knew were a threat to the lives of Californians because of the fires sparked by utilities in Southern California 10 years before in 2007. These continued extensions allowed PG&E to delay brush management, maintenance of electric lines and the creation of fire prevention plans. And now Northern California is contending with the raging Tucker fire. Delays kill. It should be clear in this context that if PG&E is officially declared negligent, so should be the CPUC. According to a July 17th, San Francisco Chronicle article, a recent inspection of the company's infrastructure found 9,671 broken, damaged, burned or corroded electrical parts. This was along with structural support equipment that was no good or out of standard. Polls that had become decayed or rotten and various parts that were broken or damaged. 1,000 were tagged as most urgent and most of the power line problems were within Sonoma, Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties. This all could have been managed how the CPUC demanded it of the company. U.S. District Judge William Alsop has acknowledged a recent Wall Street Journal article showing that the company knew parts of its electric system were aging and posed to safety risk even before the deadly campfire. Neglected infrastructure, lack of state prioritization for forest maintenance and fire prevention along with the impact of climate change leading to fires breaking records in size, intensity and deadliness is not just the actions of one company. It is the decisions made by the CPUC along with all other governing bodies who have delayed proper forest management. Yet it is clear that as profits for utilities have risen so has the risk of wildfires and now PG&E's investors want ratepayers to give them more profits. With expansion and growth of wildfires caused by power lines a solution cannot be to impoverish more working and disabled people. On top of that we now have the largest hedge funds trying to take over the majority of PG&E's shares at a cheap price to maximize profits. According to a July 23rd, San Francisco Chronicle article Abrams Capital Management, Redwood Capital Management and Knighthead Capital Management all bought millions of PG&E shares around the time the company and its subsidiary Pacific Gas and Electric Co filed for bankruptcy protection. Their plan is to become PG&E's new controlling owners. A 19 billion and 20 billion dollar equity investment would give the bondholders an 85 to 95% stake in the company according to court papers they filed last week. This is a money grab by huge financial interests. In addition, ratepayers were already on the hook for a 21 billion dollar wildfire response fund per state assembly bill 1054 where half of the 21 billion dollars will come from ratepayers and the other half from utilities. Most of us are having a hard time figuring out how the other half will come from utilities since the utilities really get their money from ratepayers. Investors just lend money to them. And to close, we call upon the CPUC to acknowledge that the United States along with 192 other member states of the United Nations endorsed in 2015 the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as the priority for governments across the world to reach full protection of people and our planet, starting with eliminating poverty in all its forms everywhere. Goal number seven is to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. We call on the CPUC to heed this urgent call. The CPUC's mandate is to protect ratepayers. Anything other than rejecting all pressure from ulterior motives in decision making is a dereliction of your duty. CPUC must fulfill their responsibility and hold investor owned utilities that profit at the expense of the environment, the health and the wellbeing of the people of this state accountable. Lives are lost in the immediate and long-term by all of these neglectful actions. The CPUC must stop allowing profits to rule their decisions. Do your job, deny this rate increase. Do not allow a single disconnection. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Marble. Next we have, can I ask about Shelby? Could you repeat your first recommendation on the 300% of poverty level? Yes. So, let's read it. I demand that the California Public Utility Commission fulfills your mandate to protect ratepayers, deny the entirety of Pacific gas and electric companies 2020 general rate case application and impose a moratorium on disconnection of utility service to customers with income below 300% of the federal poverty level. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Marble. Next we have Benjamin Vogel. And I'm gonna spell your last name as a V-O-G-E-L. Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Thank you. Excuse me. My name is Ben Vogel. I'm a recent high school graduate and my father is a PG&E rate payer. So I volunteer on door-to-door canvases in low-income neighborhoods to reach in-home care workers and recipients of in-home care and other low-paid workers. When you raise the rates for electricity and gas, who does that impact? How does that fit into the budget of a worker who is already working multiple jobs and still cannot afford food, rent and other basic necessities like school clothes and supplies for their children? No one should have to live in fear of having their power disconnected or their gas turned off. Every time you allow PG&E to raise rates, the most vulnerable in our community are impacted. With temperatures rising and the danger of smoke from fires, air conditioning is no longer a luxury but essential, especially for the elderly and small children. When homes go cold or children cannot do their homework for lack of electricity, the whole community is affected. You're destroying the lives of those who labor, cleaning homes, taking care of children, harvesting the fruits and vegetables we eat, working in the tourism industry. I am here today to say no to any of PG&E's proposed rate hike. We know the San Bruno incident killed eight people and destroyed 64 homes. What many of us don't know that is only four years later, the CPUC rewarded PG&E with a 6% rate increase which quadrupled shareholder profits and the CEO got an 8% raise. That year, they cut off the power to 300,000 homes. Why? In the aftermath of the 2017 wildfire sparked by PG&E's failure to maintain their equipment, now in 2019, PG&E wants protection for 16% profits. That's a 4% jump from the national average for utility returns. That is unacceptable and doubly so in light of PG&E's extreme negligence. Are you CPUC representatives going to reward utility profiteering with more profits from the pockets of struggling rate payers or will you stop the rate hikes now? Do not allow any more disconnections. Do not reward negligence. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vogel and Gail Outlaw. And it's O-U-T-L-A-W. Yes. Thank you. My name is Gail Outlaw. I live in Santa Rosa and I'm here to address the impending rate increase for PG&E. Okay. I am here to demand that the CPUC not allow any more rate hikes. That was the opening. Oh, thank you. That was the opening paragraph of a speech I gave a hearing before the CPUC on July 12th, 2018. So what has changed since? Well, a great deal has, mostly for the worst. And here we are again considering another rate increase for PG&E. PG&E finds itself in a terrible position having to file for bankruptcy because of another year of ruinous fires probably caused by the utility's lack of oversight of its equipment. So you say, well, let's raise the rates again and make the rate payers share the pain. Well, I say no. Last year, we made it clear that the pain was too great for many rate players, payers. Low-income people, the disabled, the elderly who are barely making it on social security. Many had their gas and electricity turned off because they couldn't afford the rates. Then they had to pay a fee to have the utilities turned back on. Are things better this year? Well, let's imagine that the minimum wage has actually reached $15 an hour. A 40-hour week would mean that they were making $600 a week or $2,400 a month before taxes. The wife probably also works, but then they have to pay childcare. The cheapest apartments I could find listed in Santa Rosa were at the Alexander Apartments on Apple Creek Lane where one and two-bedroom apartments were offered at $17.95 to $2,300. The cheapest house I saw was offered in Santa Rosa at $1,875. The next cheapest was $2,200. Paging any figures that typical resident uses 500 kilowatts per month would see their bills go from $113.64 to $122.37. I believe that's a pretty low estimate and then add to it the cost for gas and all the taxes and other fees. Sonoma County residents are struggling now. In an article in the Press Democrat on July 28th, 2019, Fish, Friends and Service here, a group that provides food for low-income people said that they are feeding 6,000 people a month. They said the demand for food jumped with the firestorm of 2017 and has remained high. These days, 24% more people are coming to the pantry than came the year before. Karine Lee, the unpaid director of the 47-year-old food dispensary for people in need, said it's an amazing uptake. Many recipients can pay their rent and they can't pay for their utilities, but they run out of money for food. PG&E is already priced out of the market for many people. Gas, lights and water used to be something we could count on having, but this is not so true anymore. If the utilities keep raising rates, there will be a whole level of people who won't be able to count on having light, heat, cooling, water, or a way to cook their food. Are we gonna go back to the 1800s because thousands of people can't afford their utilities anymore? We will not stand by and allow you to turn off the lights, the gas, as a penalty for being poor. I think it's time for you to come up with answers besides raise the rates. Things are looking very dire for very many people. Please stop the rate hikes, stop the shutoffs. We demand a moratorium now. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Outlaw. The next set of speaker is Sam Richter, Lanita Johnson, and Will Abrams. Mr. Richter, correct my spelling if I'm wrong, R-I-C-H-T-E-R. You're right. Thank you. I'm gonna pass, okay? Thank you. Okay. Ms. Lanita Johnson, and I will spell your last name, J-O-H-N-S-O-N. Is that correct? Yes. Thank you. It is the customary spelling on Johnson. I have to say that, first of all, I'm looking at these pictures of these people over here on this wall who represent the history in no small part of Sonoma County in the North Bay. And I'm mildly, but not horrifically surprised there's nobody there that looks like me. But that's not why we're here tonight. I'm here because I'm a volunteer with California Homemakers Association, which PG&E may be familiar with or may not. However, I'm a native of the East Coast and the oldest of nine. And education, education, education was a big part of my growing up. I was the first to go to college in our family, going to Boston University, mostly on scholarships and grants, and had the dream of being a reporter and broadcast journalist, which has been part of my background. And also, I worked as a volunteer almost everywhere I've lived on the East Coast and here on the West Coast, and overseas in Germany, where I worked for a brief time with the Associated Press. I say that just to give a little framework of who I am and why I'm here this evening. I am perplexed that the CPUC has to determine whether or not to grant one more red cent to PG&E. We'll live on a very fixed income today because I suffer from a brain tumor and I'm on disability. I may not look like it, but I am a senior. And if you had told me when I went to Boston University and had this idea of what my future would look like, I would have never dreamed that I would not be able to work and be in the physical condition that I meant. It's hard being disabled sometime because people look at you and they don't see it right away. Nevertheless, I have a very fixed income that I live on. And even though my income is dwindling in the face of rising costs here living in the North Bay, my fixed utility rates aren't fixed at all. They keep rising and I hear these horror stories about PG&E being granted the monies that they are that I know pay significant salaries to the people that run this joint. And by the time I pay my rent, which goes up every year, my income doesn't, but my rent does, barely able to forget going to the movies or the theater or anything like that, that's a luxury that I just cannot afford. And I know many people here in this community live on a lower income than I do. And I work furiously to wage a war, if you will, against companies like PG&E who have what appears to be absolutely no compassion for what we're going through. Yet, I get rate increases. I don't get increases in my social security disability, but I get increases in my PG&E bill. And instead of having the lights on when I come home, which most times I come home and I wonder if I flick the switch, is the light gonna come on? And I'm a single person, I don't have any children. I raised my eight siblings and I'm done. And here this evening, on behalf of the California Homemakers Association and other organizations in this community who are severely impacted by the actions of organizations like the CPUC when it comes to companies like PG&E, I'm looking for a little part-time job, even though I have a disability, and it's just been unbelievable. And then I look at the executives around here who run this joint and they're the difference between night and day. I know there are a lot of people in my situation, as I say, who are retired, disabled, and who cannot afford higher utility rates, period, along with many other low income workers and elderly people who can't retire because they can't afford to. I urge you, do not allow any more rate increases and do not allow any more shutoffs of poor people who are struggling day in and day out with very limited incomes. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Next we have Mr. Abrams. I'm spelling your last name as A-B-R-A-M-S. That's correct. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming to my hometown here in Santa Rosa. It's great to see the CPUC here, to hear from residents. I am an intervener in other matters, but wanted to make a trip here to talk about this rate increase. I spoke earlier in the day about making sure that a return on safety, similar to a return on investment is incorporated in terms of how we monitor the funds, as was brought up in an earlier comment, to ensure that whatever these funds are, are not only going to safety, but are tracking risk reduction, so use of risk reduction ratios and measuring how risk has been mitigated and reporting out on that, so residents can understand, does this $1 billion get us 2% safer or 10% safer? And understanding what that is and tracking towards it is going to be very important. Another concept that I wanted to address here this evening was something called a customer harm threshold. So through the cost recovery proceeding that has since closed, one of the things that would help with that is something that can be applied here to this rate increase. So part of the reason why this is a difficult decision is that unlike in competitive industries where you have price elasticity being determinative in terms of what that price point is, so you're, typically when you increase prices, you lose customers, right? And so companies are very sensitive to how much they can increase prices and still retain good customer service and the number of customers. We don't have that in this case. PG&E is a natural monopoly, as you know, and there are reasons for that, but as a proxy to that, we really need to think about what is that customer harm threshold? How much will insurance rates go up? How much will we be able to afford the homes that we live in? How much will we be able to keep insurance in the state? Rent increases, as you heard, spoke to earlier. All of those things are very measurable and should be guiding how much rate increase should be provided. Without that and without some way to measure what the impact is on residents, we have no way of determining why, you know, how this is going to be implemented in the infects on residents. So I would encourage everyone to think about those things as proxies so that we can understand what the impacts are on residents because clearly there's a lot of need out there to keep rates low. And this is not the type of thing where you can keep increasing rates and we can keep having residents in the state of California being able to afford their rent and to be able to afford their homes and insurance companies are certainly keeping an eye on that as well. The other reason why I wanted to speak this evening is I was happy to have my son, Leo, join me this evening here at this proceeding. You know, one of the reasons why I've switched some of my career and work priorities is because of him and his sister and the general understanding which I know we all feel is that, you know, we all have a choice of how we deal with these issues but certainly my son, his sister and our kids will not have any choices about how they're going to be addressing the impacts of climate change. Will not have any choices is how they're going to be dealing with wildfires. This is something that they're gonna have to deal with as a part of their lives and we have choices and one of the things that my son, after we ran from the fires in October, 2017, one of the questions that he asked me was are we going to be rebuilding out of brick? And I asked the question, why are you asking that question? And he had read a book that was, I survived the Great Chicago Fire. And from that reading, he understood that after the Great Chicago Fire, they mandated that all homes be built out of brick. He remembered that through that reading, you had to have certain roof and you had to increase the size of the water main in the city of Chicago. And then I did some reading based on his advice and found that it actually was the second Chicago Fire. There was the Great Chicago Fire, I had to look it up again, but 1871, by the way, the date was October 8th. Same date as the fires that ravaged our community here. And it wasn't until two years later when the second Chicago Fire hit that these things started to move forward, right? But here we are in the state of California. It's not two fires, I've lost count. It's way too many fires. And we still haven't gotten the will to be able to move these issues forward. And part of that is because we've advanced our bureaucratic processes, we've advanced our corporate processes. And so to get things done and to get everyone in a room to collaborate on these issues ends up being very process-oriented rather than results-oriented. And I would just say that we're beyond that. We have wildfires in the Arctic right now. These are issues that we need to be addressing now. We need to be streamlining processes, both at the CPUC within our corporations and amongst our citizens and the local efforts here in Santa Rosa. I've been very heartened by being a part of the CPUC processes and being an intervener. And so I would just say that I would encourage everyone who's feeling passionate about these issues as I have to really to get engaged. These processes are very bureaucratic, but I would encourage anyone who has contributions around these issues to go through the processes and to get engaged, because certainly it's gonna take all of us in the room to be able to move these issues forward. And so hopefully even though we're called interveners, that this is more of a collaboration. And that's really what I'm looking for in my engagement around these issues. And thank you very much. Mr. Abrams, I just, I wanted to thank you for your advocacy in many of our proceedings. I know you've done this on your own time and it's been very constructive. And I also wanna let you know, I think you do know this, but we are considering some of the ideas about performance-based metrics, result-based metrics in a variety of proceedings. So continue to participate in those because we are trying to grapple with those going forward. Thank you, Mr. Abrams. Next we have two speakers. The first one is David Sandin. And then following him is Paul Chappelle. Mr. Sandin, I'm gonna spell your last name as S-A-N-D-I-N-D. That is correct. Thank you. Excuse me. I'm gonna speak for the victims of PG&E's negligence. I lost my home and my next door neighbor died in the fire and I have 84 neighbors that lost their homes. And it's through PG&E's negligence. When you have a corporation, the corporation is run by the president and board of directors. In Oakland, we have a case of the ghost ship fire and the owner and manager are on trial for manslaughter. I don't understand why the same doesn't apply to the corporate officers who make the same kind of bad decisions that affects us. We didn't have any say really in whether or not they spent money on cutting trees or not. Now they're talking about cutting trees. They didn't follow the law, they didn't follow the rules and many of us are suffering because of it. You also, as a board, have not done your responsibility. You were put in the public trust to watch PG&E and you have proven that you aren't able to do it. I think the answer to this is the corporate officers be held criminally liable. That's the only way this will stop because as long as it's just a matter of going to PUC for more money and for maybe not paying the dividends and bonuses to the greatest extent, this will continue. They have to be personally responsible and know they'll be personally responsible before this sort of thing will stop. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Mr. Saneen. Next we have... Next we have Mr. Paul Chapelle. Mr. Chapelle is the spelling of your last name, C-H-A. Yes, Chapelle, C-H-A-L-P-E-L-L. Thank you. Please name Paul. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen for the privilege of being here this evening. I've been in and around Sonoma County for a long time. I started out as a young boy. I was a coal miner when I was 17. Mr. Chapelle, would you mind slowing down so that our court reporters can capture your comments? Slowing down a little bit. Thank you. Lower it down. Slowing down, yes. Okay, thank you. And I went, I was in the World War II, I'm a World War II veteran, served the 57th Combat Engineers with the 182nd Infantry of the American Call Division in the 180th Sectors from Massachusetts in the American Call Division. For over 40 years, I've been a certified treatment plant water operator and for the Stuart's Point Rancheria, for the Kusaya Pomo Indians, the Stuart's Point. Mr. Chapelle, can you speak louder? Louder? Yes. Yes, ma'am. I thought I was speaking too loud. Yes. And so I was a certified water plant operator for the Kusaya Indian Tribe of Stuart's Point here in Sonoma County. And I was over 40 years as a certified operator and we have one of the best little plants in Northern California. It's a membrane treatment plant filtration system. And I was in the early days of 1960s, I was with the old PEO, People for Economic Opportunity. I was administrative liaison to start with and then I was the area manager and working in the western part of Sonoma County taking lots of surveys. And as a result of that, I was able to gather enough information through those surveys that I helped the Kusaya Tribe get the clinic that they have that's over here on Stony Park Road. I called the first meeting of all American Indians living in the Sonoma County regardless of where they came from. And there was a lot of people and Hugh Cotting gave me the building to hold a meeting in. So I've been working with people like that for a long time. And right now, what people are interested in now I'm with the Sonoma County Homemakers Association. I'm a member of that association. And because of the rates and because of the terrible disasters that we've had and that took out a lot of trees and the fire, and all the high winds. And in the area where we operated the plant we had falling trees through the winter and the pine trees or fir trees up there was falling every winter is an ongoing thing. And PG&E did us a good favor at that time in that area that we were able to operate and I never run out of water once during that length of time. But on this unprecedented firestorm that we've had here, it was tremendous. And the people that are low income already hitting it hard financially. And right now I would consider a huge raise and the fees for electricity would be the hardship on them. And I would appreciate more if we could do some other state or federal agencies and find funds to assist PG&E during this time which they, it was uncontrollable with a high wind and fire. We've had lots of winds and we've had lots of trees down but not with a fire with it because it was in the wet weather. But this one was, everything was dry and it drought season and it affected a lot of people. So ladies and gentlemen, I think that I would be opposed with this tremendous raise and fees on the people and find ways and means that we could alleviate that by getting monies elsewhere for PG&E for the things that they may need. And I thank you very much ladies and gentlemen and I hope that this here will turn out favorable that these low income people will not be up against the wall in trying to have electricity in their homes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chappelle. Thank you for your service to this country. At this time, I don't have any more signed speakers. Is there anyone else in this room who'd like to speak? Yes, if you want to give further comments please head to the podium, introduce yourself and spell your last name. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I spoke earlier, I wanted to clarify my words. My name, Thomas L, this is the last name spelled E-L-L-S. I wanted to mention just right here in the PG&E 2020 GRC. I didn't mention this before, 40% of the revenue is allocated for operation of maintenance. That would be $7 billion, that would include the maintenance which was not done, which is the tree trimming. So part of that was shunted over to additional profit. In addition to the 12.5%, there's money that becomes profit that comes out of the company when the maintenance is not done. As I understand it, the PG&E essentially contracts and caps the profit at a certain amount. But in fact, if the expenditures as they're saying are not spent for what they're contracted for, those end up being in profits. And the point is, is that they already had operation of maintenance costs included, which the maintenance wasn't done. Now, they wanna have additional maintenance expenditures and fees charged so that they can catch up on that maintenance that they already had built in to their fee structure, right? And what I didn't make clear was that the 29% and the 24%, the 29% depreciation is capital recovery and the 24% are capital costs. Those are on top of each other, meaning that there's already an expense for capital and there's an additional expense for capital recovery. So it's 53%, it's actually $9.3 billion a year if these numbers are correct, if these percentages are correct. And so the return to the assets would be far sooner and would only be about seven years in the total recovery of all the assets, a PG&E including all the dams and all the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plants and all of that would be recovered in just seven years. So my point is, is that there's certainly funds available with the 12.5% of profitability to accomplish 600 cameras in 1300 weather stations which shouldn't cost $10 million apiece. There's just absolutely no way. That's a golden hammer or that was used for the astronauts, if you recall. That's not a $600 hammer, that says $10 million hammer. And there's no need for those types of costs in any kind of plan that would involve 600 cameras in 1300 weather stations. A typical vineyard has hundreds of weather stations currently on there in order to gauge the soil moisture and the weather on their vineyards right now. To have 1300 weather stations is not a $6 billion program, thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the room who'd like to speak? Please introduce yourself and spell your last name. My name is John, J-O-N-Deevers, Diaz and David, E-A, Diaz and Victor, E-R-S. I really wasn't planning to speak again tonight. I certainly don't have it in me to go through what I told you about earlier today. I can only hope that the commissioners who are here this evening will take the time to review those transcripts. I don't have it in me to go through what we went through when we lost my partner's mother, Linda Tunis. But something was said earlier tonight and I felt it needed to be addressed. And that was when you were discussing the issues of oversight and how changes were being implemented with regards to how oversight is administrated to PG&E and their reporting and the financing and they had to report and then to compare it to what was projected, et cetera. I just have to get up to tell you that's not good enough. It's not gonna cut it, not now. It would have in a normal situation. If the CPUC was a normal organization, a state entity, and if PG&E was a normally operating utility. Neither of you can claim that. The five people in front of me may be the noblest souls to grace this plan up, but the reality is you represent a tarnished organization. As I stated earlier, the CPUC has demonstrated itself to be an organization that is susceptible to manipulation and corruption by the utilities they are charged with overseeing. And it doesn't end. I mean, whether it was the actions of Mr. Peavey or the actions of Commissioner Florio and he's still carrying water for PG&E. I mean, when they were trying to push before 901, he made a point of putting an editorial in the paper where he said that we all need to race to bail out PG&E with bonds that they could then pass on the cost to the customers, to the ratepayers. Which was rolled into a legislation by assembly member Cuaracu just by coincidence, his son works for PG&E. Those are the types of sickening coincidences we have been routinely faced to force to swallow. But in the case of this CPUC, that's your reality. Just two months ago, we got another one where PG&E, and you know PG&E does not reveal anything unless they feel it cannot come back on them. Where it's too late. Or two months ago they said, here was another ex-CPUC official being paid $25,000 a month by PG&E to try and get their fines reduced or eliminated. Years after the fact that came out, former CPUC Commissioner Kennedy was engaging in ex parte communications with the current safety head of the CPUC at the time. So you see, it's not good enough. You can't expect us to once again have you say, ah, we're on it now. You have to be more transparent than that. And this is regarding PG&E. The saying is, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. We are so many countless times past that with PG&E. So when it comes to the oversight, it's what I said earlier. No, no, they have to start the work first. You can't go through this process, this cycle again and again, where they tell you how they're gonna get it right this time. They have to show the work. What they say has no meaning. It's what they do. And the problem is, you're there, still there are overseers, and we can't trust you. Under the circumstances, why should we? So that's why, that sort of transparency, the onus is upon you to demonstrate that what you do is on the up and up and demand greater accountability from the utility. Because God knows how many more infractions we're going to find. I mean, the history was that. If there was an exploit available to the utility, they will take it. I'll leave you with one other point. I attended one of the 901 commission hearings. This was the one in Ventura, where a representative, PG&E, was nowhere to be seen, but their presence was felt. But representative from another company said, not as some sad acknowledgement of the vagaries of fate, but as a defense, as if it was exculpatory, he told the commission, you're never gonna get to 0% negligence. And not one member of that commission had the decency to say what should have been said. And it is this, maybe not. But if that's not your goal, if that's not the vanishing point on the horizon that you are fixed upon like the North Star, if that is not what guides your operation, then you have failed. You have failed in the safety mandate that came with the authority to operate in the first place. PG&E's history has demonstrated that's not what they've done. And it's not what they're going to do unless you compel them. You have to do better. Show us we can trust you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Deverts. Please introduce yourself and spell your last name. Hi. My name is Eva Granahan. My last name is G-R-A-N-A-H-A-N. I just have a brief comment. Something that has been personally upsetting to me that I have witnessed. It relates directly to many comments. I heard several people talk about the biggest issue being tree trimming and harm and risk reduction and safety issues. And ironically, the first person to spend a significant time talking about that was PG&E itself. My friend, a neighbor out in Joy Road in Occidental in the Redwoods, his occupation was walking the power lines and assessing trees that needed to be cut. And his job this last year was cut because the company that employed him went out of business because PG&E's situation and their debt to this company put it entirely out of business. The company is Western, I think Western Union, Western, not, that's a bank, okay. Well, I'm forgetting the full name of the company, but so this Western job that he surveys all around Sonoma County and even further, their primary job was to assess the power line safety based on the trees and their growth and that job no longer exists, he no longer works there. So I don't know who is expected to do these things or how they're rationalizing more money when they're still owing people money for doing the work that they see and we see as the most important. So basically, I'm upset about that and I'm not sure the rationalization behind it or if I or any one of us can trust the future plans of this organization and they sure need to prove themselves and I definitely think that rate increases is not the solution. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Grenahan. Do we have more speakers? Ms. Johnson, can you introduce yourself again? Lenita, L-E-N-I-T-A, Marie Johnson. I just really felt compelled to come and say what I forgot to say earlier regarding the fires that occurred here a few years ago, a couple years ago. I was impacted by those fires. My house wasn't burned down, but I know many people who suffered the loss of their homes and the loss of their loved ones. What did happen was I lived in the area near Spring Lake and I would find myself going out in the evening when it was getting dusk and I could see this glow because the fire was approaching. And my friends were calling me, neighbors were asking me, where are you gonna go? What are you going to do? And I had no idea. I was paralyzed, literally. And I'm still occasionally going out on my deck and looking over towards Spring Lake and wondering if the fire gonna happen again or what's going on over there. And that kind of paralysis almost never leaves you. When I was two years old, I got up out of bed and I was just really learning how to kind of walk on my own and had to go to the bathroom. And we lived in a house and we had a fireplace in our home. And when I came back from the bathroom, I had on a long nightgown and I went up to the fireplace because it was the middle of winter and it was really cold. And I just put my hands out to the fireplace and this was before fire retardant clothing which shows you how old I am. And all of a sudden I turned and my father was standing at the doorway looking at me. And I just, I was a flame, my nightgown caught on fire. And I didn't even really know the enormity of what was going on. I was just standing there and he grabbed a blanket off of our sofa and came and threw it around me and he brand me to the Children's Hospital in Massachusetts. And I spent almost two years in that hospital having to learn how to walk again. I started in a wheelchair. I'll never forget those years in that hospital. And my mother never came to visit me. She was in such shock, she couldn't handle it. And I think, even though I believe she's in heaven right now, her and I never were really close because I don't think she could afford to get really close to me. And I'm certain that fire had a lot to do with it. And I'm sharing that with you because it's not a story I talk about. It's not something I think about often. I have to tell you that I am shocked that you don't have anyone here representing you and championing your heart in asking the CP to give you more money than you already have that looks like me. And I'm certain there are people that work for PG&E who look like me, but I'm almost embarrassed for you that you don't even have the dignity to do that. Have one token. Almost every business does that when they go public. They have at least one token that looks like the audience they're gonna be addressing. So I just say shame on you for that. And I really have to implore you in making your decision. These are people who are interested in one thing and one thing only. And it begins with the letter P and it's not the public, it's profits. Thank you. Commissioners, do you guys have any concluding remarks? You go ahead. I just want to thank everyone again for coming out. Gracias por venir esta noche estar aquí con nosotros. I did want to offer Shelby and your colleagues a little more information perhaps after about the proceeding that you referenced and acknowledged that some of the suggestions that you're making there. I know one of your colleagues mentioned the need to get rid of deposit fees and certainly the affordable bills are both issues that we're looking at in that disconnection and reconnection proceeding. So I would really love your input as we're getting to a point to try to make a decision on that a very important proceeding. So I look forward to talking to you after. And just want to really thank everybody for being here and sharing your personal stories and the stories of your community. And we will be taking this very much into consideration as we continue our deliberation. Thank you. I also want to thank everyone for your time and your deeply personal thoughts, suggestions, commitment and criticism tough and otherwise it's very important for us to hear that. Thank you. And I'll just add my thanks and appreciation for hearing from all of you. And I encourage you to keep following the proceeding on the website and taking advantage of opportunities to share additional thoughts. Thank you. Judge Thirak. I just want to thank anyone that listened in remotely. Again, please send us your comments to public.advisor at cpuc.ca.gov. We'd love to hear from you as well and your comments affect the proceeding. And we read each and every one of these comments that we receive on that website. Thank you. So thank you for taking the time out of your evening to come and share your comments with us. If there are no additional speakers, we are now adjourned off the record. Thank you.