Senior News
May, 2001
Vol. 20. No.  5

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

May is Older Americans Month

Dan Hauser: Government Chat ignites some electric issues

Remembering Spirit: Life on the Railroad

Senior Softball: Classics tournament team wins the silver medal at Redding games

Cat Man of Old Town

Washington School: Preservation Week honors old school buildings like ours

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Dan Hauser
Government Chat ignites some electric issues
By Barbara Clark

Arcata City Manager Dan Hauser spoke to seniors in the Humboldt Senior Resource Center's monthly Government Chat in April.

Top on his list of interests that week were the renewal of the public access television franchise with Cox Cable and the possibilities of a municipal/county utility district which could bring power production closer to local users.

Hauser is in a unique position to create future solutions to the power crisis-he was a member of the state assembly when the now controversial deregulation legislation was passed almost unanimously by both houses.

Now, initiated by Supervisor John Woolley, Hauser, Woolley, Eureka City Manager Dave Tyson and staff members are meeting to consider a possible public utilities district here. Hauser said the district could generate its own power and eliminate the fluctuations in both price and supply that exists in the state-wide grid operated by PG&E. Ukiah and Redding have their own power generation and are not subject to the price increases and power blackouts the rest of the state experiences.

Hauser said that the Texas company Enron has proposed a natural gas power generator. "But unless we reopen the natural gas wells at Tompkins Hill and Loleta, that gas supply isn't available locally."

Hauser wants to reinstitute the idea of a Municipal Solar Utility that existed back in the 1980s. "Tax credits are no longer available for this. The federal government has eliminated any tax credit for research and development of alternative energy sources." In the municipal utility, people installed the solar panels on their homes and paid for them over time, a $15 monthly charge tacked on to the water bills that saved more than $15 at the time for heating and hot water.

"My system at home was installed 20 years ago and still works today," he added. "I believe, given the technology, we could set up a solar voltaic utility with city and county revenue bonds. We'd have the systems installed on our homes and pay them back over 15 years. On bright sunny days, we'd be putting energy back into the grid.

The biggest drawback to that idea, he added, was that the supply of photo voltaic equipment may not be available to meet such a demand.

Hauser was once a city council member and mayor of Arcata before serving 14 years in the California Assembly. How did he feel about going back to the trenches of city management from the citadels of state power?

"I'm the ultimate in recycling," he grinned. Term limits forced him to leave the legislature, after which he served two years on the Northwest Railroad Authority.

"I have the ability to carry out a lot of things we put in place at the state level, and that gives the city an advantage in working with the state," he said. He also has been invited by the League of California Cities to join the Housing and Community Development committee, to which he brings the nine-year chairmanship of the assembly H&CD committee.

Then there is his close relationship to present State Senator Wes Chesbro. "Wes and I go back to when we ran together for city council in 1974 and ran again in 1978. We get together regularly to talk about what we need in small towns that can be helped at the state level."

Barbara Clark is editor of Senior News.