Sun Flowers

Although I thought the article by Kera Abraham (“Monterey County was poised for a rooftop Renaissance. Then Fannie and Freddie crashed the party,” July 29-Aug. 5) was revealing about the workings of organizations encouraging governmental support for funding clean energy, I believe that a promising note was excluded from the article.

Currently the state and federal government IS assisting people with funding their home solar installation. We took advantage of these “refunds” in tax 20 credits in December 2009 and saved about 30 percent of the total solar installation costs.

Sure it was a difficult decision, but now about 90 percent of our energy costs are being generated by the sun.

Many people, until the recent economic crisis occurred, were buying cars with the home mortgage equity, not solar panels.

“Dumb” Meters

Once again, Kera Abraham tells it like it is with her report on the PG&E Smart Meters (“Smart Meters coming to Monterey County despite health and financial concerns,” Sept. 2-8).

Your paper providesnecessary service to the Central Coast community with its in-depth, investigative, proactive reporting on community, political and environmental issues.

Hopefully, you will motivate more citizens to be less accepting and more inquiring and involved.

In addition to problems with billing and health, PG&E has a history of other problems – among them, public relations. In your article, PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno says, “We were directed to deploy Smart Meters to all our customers.” This sounds like a military operation, and we have no vote.

To help stop this and for more information, attend “Are Smart Meters Really Smart?” at 7pm Wednesday, Sept. 15, at the Live Oak Grange, 1900 17th Ave., Santa Cruz.