368 



couple of people in the area office and within a range of param- 

 eters, the^ve got quite a bit of latitude to move forward and move 

 with some flexibihty to get the thing done. 



I would hope that we're going to see that example replicated 

 around the region, along with the idea of the conservation power 

 plant at the signing last week. 



Mr. Hardy. That is clearly our intention. We have a number of 

 things working in the pipeline right now, such as the third-party 

 financing negotiations with Tacoma and Seattle, CARES, and the 

 Emerald PUD conservation power plant we signed last week. 



We would hope that we're simply not going to put things on hold. 

 In this interim period, well move forward as aggressively as we 

 can, while, in the meantime, tiying to streamline these things as 

 best we can and not simply wait around for some new rate struc- 

 ture before we take any action. That being said, I think we can 

 continue to move ahead. 



In the near term, we probably cannot satisfy all the expectations 

 that our utihty customers have, but we'll try to meet as many of 

 those as we can. Again, when you look at the growth from 1994 to 

 1995, in particular, there's another significant step up in funding 

 that will help us meet those expectations in 1995 to a much greater 

 degree. 



By then, we'll have a better idea of what direction we want to 

 proceed in terms of rate structure changes and market segmenta- 

 tion changes, even though we will not have implemented those yet. 

 I think those two will go hand-in-hand. 



Mr. DeFazio. Again, I appreciate that and I would hope it works 

 that way, too. My concern is if you have a structure that hasn't 

 been working particularly well and that structure now begins to 

 look out and worry about the changes that are coming, I'm afraid 

 that it might induce some short term paralysis. 



You're going to need some extraordinary effort to deal with this, 

 I think. 



Mr. Hardy. Let me ask Sue to speak to a couple of the specific 

 things that we are doing. 



Mr. DeFazio. If I was doing a job and someone had just come 

 in and said, well, there's going to be reductions in force and you 

 haven't been doing a very good job and this is all going to change 

 in 12 or 18 or 24 months, just being somewhat aware of how orga- 

 nizations work, I'm afraid that what that means in the short term 

 is that even less happens because people are jockeying and worry- 

 ing about how thej^re going to position themselves to still be there 

 when the changes come about. 



That's human nature, but I think also as a manager, that's some- 

 thing you have to deal with very aggressively. 



Ms. HiCKEY. Actually, we've started a couple of things even as 

 long as a year ago that were designed to deal with this problem. 

 One of the most powerful ones was that we've asked each of BPA's 

 area offices for the first time to develop a local utility plan for each 

 utility that would talk about the kind of conservation they would 

 be developing in their service territory over a ten-year period. 



We're about a year into that and those things are coming to fru- 

 ition over the next several months. That's going to enable us in a 

 way that we have never had the capability to do before — to know 



