June 12, 1998

Interested Persons:

Thank you for completing and returning our recent survey. We appreciate your help in the design of a stakeholder process for Study 6560 that accommodates your level of interest in meetings and your preferred level of time commitment. This letter describes the schedule and stakeholder process for Study 6560 that we developed based on your responses. The letter is also an opportunity for us to test the e-mail systems for Study communications. You should receive an electronic version of this letter and we ask that you send a return reply so that we can confirm your e-mail address. A few folks did not supply e-mail addresses; we will fax copies of future e-mails or other communications to you.

We received survey responses from 61 parties. Review of the results indicate that at least half of the parties have a high level of interest in an initial meeting that either provided an overview of the study, or an opportunity to discuss data collection. To accommodate this level of interest we will schedule the first Study 6560 meeting to be held July 8 near Seatac airport. We will convene this meeting with an agenda that combines an overview of the study with the opportunity to review and comment on the data collection instrument to be completed by the utilities. Please note, there will not be a June 19 general orientation meeting as proposed in the first mailing. We will send materials to you 7-10 days before the July meeting so that you will have an opportunity to review the materials prior to the meeting. The materials will include draft data request forms and a brief description of each section.

We will also convene at least one meeting, probably in late November, to discuss the draft report with all interested parties. The survey responses clearly identified this as the most important stakeholder event that we could hold. Nearly eighty percent of your replies identified a draft review meeting as either important or very important.

In addition, based on survey responses indicating level of expected involvement in the study subject areas, we have identified four study sections for which we will convene stakeholder meetings. We will hold at least one meeting on each of the following sections: 1) retail rates, trends affecting costs, customer demographics, 2) potential for cost-shifting, 3) service quality and reliability, and 4) investments in conservation, renewables and low-income programs. While we have not yet scheduled the dates for these meetings, we anticipate convening them between late July and early September.

The study areas involving service territory agreements and compilation of consumer protection policies received a generally lower level of interest in meetings. We will correspond electronically to the smaller group of respondents who were interested in meeting on these topics to determine an appropriate level of communication and consultation on these sections.

To facilitate communications we have created a Study 6560 mailing list that includes all of you who responded to the survey. We have also created an e-mail list for each section of the study. We will rely heavily on the section e-mail lists throughout the summer and fall. Your name was added to a section’s e-mail list if you indicated on the survey with a score of three or four that you would be either somewhat or very involved in that section. If you indicated that you were undecided about your level of involvement with a score of two, we have placed you on a distribution list to receive drafts of section reports.

We have created a URL web site for the study http://www.cted.wa.gov/energy/archive//6560. We will post correspondence and draft documents at the site. A listing of agency study contacts is always available at the site and we will list topics and dates for Study 6560 meetings. We also have a general e-mail address for Study 6560: wepg@ep.cted.wa.gov. Messages sent to this address will be forwarded to appropriate staff at both the WUTC and CTED.

We look forward to our meeting with you July 8. In the meantime, please feel free to call either of us, or the section leads, if you have questions regarding Study 6560.

Sincerely,