Price of natural gas is not the only reason for spike in electric bills: Letters
Price of natural gas is not the true reason for electric price hikes
Dec. 28 — To the Editor:
Sam Evans-Brown’s piece “Your electric bill just went crazy” has some good tips for reducing your electricity bill, but I would take issue with his saying natural gas prices are the cause of the rate hikes given to Unitil and Eversource. These utilities contract for power every six months. The prior rates for June through November were contracted in May. Natural gas prices on the commodities market in May ranged from $8.30 to $9.50. The electricity rates beginning in December were contracted in November. Natural gas prices in November ranged for $6.20 to $8. If natural gas was the culprit electric rates should have dropped. On Dec. 28, natural gas for delivery in January is listed at $4.78 and $4.02 for delivery in May.
Maybe the problem is how the price for electricity is set. If a utility company says it needs 100 units of power and producers of 99 on those unit asks for $4 a unit, but the producer of the last unit asks for $8 all the producers get paid $8 a unit. Maybe the utilities would be better off buying 3 months of power instead of 6 or buying less than they think they need to get a lower price and buying the rest as needed. Even if the rest is 3 or 4 times as costly the net expenditure would be less.
Walter Hamilton
Portsmouth
I take Duffy's comments on ethics with a grain of salt
Dec. 14 — To the Editor:
Most of the time, I do not consider Gerald Duffy's numerous letters to the editor and op-ed pieces to be worthy of comment or response. But when he starts preaching about ethics and transparency (Gerald Duffy, “Pitting developers versus residents doesn’t help city,” Letters to the Editor, 12/8/22), I simply can’t contain myself.
This is the same Gerald Duffy who, when he was soliciting donations for his pro-development political action group, Progress Portsmouth, asked that all donations be made in the amount of $99, for if they had been in the amounts of $100 or more he would have been required to report them pursuant to the campaign financing disclosure requirements of our local ordinance, and he didn’t want anyone to know who was funding his organization. (Don’t try to deny it, Gerry. We have a screeenshot of your Facebook posting, even though you subsequently took it down.) So much for transparency.
This is also the same Gerald Duffy who circulated a campaign flyer in the last City Council election, in which he falsely credited the candidates whom Progress Portsmouth was promoting with having been the driving force behind the effort to persuade the state to install sound barriers in the Interstate 95 corridor running between the Panaway Manor and New Franklin School neighborhoods. The flyer stated: “The time for sound barriers is now! The next council will work hard together to secure state funds for this important project. Choose 9 of 10: [listing Progress Portsmouth’s 10 preferred candidates]."
In reality, the Progress Portsmouth-endorsed candidates had had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the effort to secure those barriers, other than to show up to “see and be seen” at the on-site neighborhood meetings which then-City Councilors Esther Kennedy and Petra Huda had organized. Councilor Kennedy and then-Mayor Rick Becksted were the ones who had traveled to Concord to meet with Gov. Chris Sununu and ask him to use his influence to procure the sound barriers and the funding for same. In addition to organizing the aforementioned meetings, Ms. Kennedy and Ms. Huda were also the ones who recruited citizen speakers and made sure that a contingent of Portsmouth residents was dispatched to appear at public meetings with the state’s executive councilors, in order to lobby them for funding for those barriers.
Progress Portsmouth’s endorsees had had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. In short, Mr. Duffy’s campaign mailer was a sham, falsely claiming credit for the work that had been initiated and done by others.
It is for these reasons that whenever I see the likes of Gerry Duffy pontificating about ethics and transparency, I begin to understand why the ancient Greek figure Diogenes is said to have carried a lantern in the daytime, looking for an honest man.
Duncan J. MacCallum
Portsmouth
We can do better than MAD nuclear deterrence policy
Jan. 1 — To the Editor:
With all the pressing issues, including global warming, facing our nation and the world, most of our citizens are unaware of the fact that we are all in danger of annihilation from nuclear weapons. Our government's doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is indeed MAD, as in crazy.
Here are some suggestions that have been offered by, for example, the Union of Concerned Scientists, to address this problem:
Our government should say that our nation will never again launch a nuclear first strike.
2. If it looks like we are under attack, it should take three authorized people, our president, a designated member of Congress and a civilian secretary of defense to authorize a nuclear response.
3. As a history of near misses and the launch-on-warning posture has shown, our land-based missiles are especially vulnerable to a tragic mistake. Given our nuclear-armed airplanes and submarine-based missiles, the land-based missiles are more dangerous than useful to us and should be removed.
As citizens we are responsible for telling our leaders in government to do everything possible to address this urgent issue without delay.
Neal W. Ferris
Durham
We should consider special parking areas of pickup trucks
Jan. 2 — To the Editor:
Pickup trucks are the car of today for young and old and in between. They are on TV ads and in all the newspapers. This type of vehicle can climb mountains, jump over hills, make a lot of dust on deserts, and bounce over streams and boulders. They are also handy to go to local stores to pick up construction supplies and large articles. Maybe I’m just jealous that I don’t own one, but, wait, the color I would have would be red for sure if I did get one!
Pickup trucks sit higher than regular cars and their bright lights can be blinding. Truck ownership has been steadily growing across the nation and you can’t miss them in parking lots at all of our stores. My smaller car, and even an SUV, has become difficult to find at the grocery store parking lot and not because I forgot where I parked! Backing out of a space becomes treacherous and unsafe when parked next to a truck. Remember when there were spaces designated for compact cars? Could we do the same thing for pickup trucks so we could have a safer environment in our parking lots.
Just a thought for the New Year!
Bob and Natalie Hassold
Newmarket
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Natural gas cost is not only reason for electric rate hike: Letters
