Electricity
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oliver welters
Feb 6, 2022, 9:30:27 PM2/6/22
to headwater
Hi Gwen,
I thought it would be a good time to settle the electric and internet bills. Especially considering I have 3 months of measuring (since November 7th). It has been 649 Kwh. So that comes to $136 for 3 months. How do you think we should resolve the last bunch of years where there was a financial gap between what was paid for the electricity and what it really cost? The amount drawn is somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-$50/month in total (minus $21 a month), so the difference is about $20-30 a month for as long as you were connected. I also don't know how we should fairly deal with the fact that your internet and electricity was paid for by Headwaters which none of us were aware of until recently and was never talked about. Lets add that to the agenda to the upcoming meeting. I'm sure it's all very simple to square away, we just need to do some basic math and see who owes who how much, etc.
I'm not sure when your house will sell but I think it best to make clear exactly when I will disconnect. Just so that you have some time to come up with an alternative power solution, and there are no last minute surprises that could get messy. I don't mind leaving it hooked up for a few months longer if John is still there or if you just need to keep your basic systems running until you have a hooked up solution. Regardless, I just want us to be financially caught up to date and the monthly payments to represent the actual costs.
With good planning I believe we can do all this smoothly and make sure it doesn't become a hindrance to any of the other processes going on. I just want the best possible transition for all of us. I hope your well and enjoying the winter.
Best, Oliver
Gwendolyn Hallsmith
Feb 10, 2022, 11:50:59 AM2/10/22
to oliver welters, headwater
Hi Oliver –
I got your note, it has taken me awhile to figure it out. If I understand you correctly, you want me to 1) retroactively pay for electric bills you believe I have not paid enough for, and 2) pay the HHA back for the utility bills the Corporation has paid. Is that right?
You are also apparently proposing to use the last three months as a baseline, presumably because you think that they represent typical monthly energy use over the last six years? They don’t. John is living in the guest house and we are running the heaters since we’re not there (they have fans that use power). That, combined with the period being the darkest months of the year, makes them very atypical, in fact. When the days are longer, we use much less electricity, typically going as long as three days without using any power from you. Perhaps we paid too much for those months. Can you let us know how you plan to figure that out? It seems the calculation of exactly how what we have used differs from what we have paid is going to be difficult without a lot of estimates and assumptions.
That said, we are happy to pay for the actual unpaid costs you have paid on our behalf. We hope you are willing to do the same. Please send us photos of the meter readings you are using and copies of all the electric bills you are proposing we pay, including information about how much other people at Headwaters, like the Kings, paid you for each bill toward the electricity in the meadow. Maybe they pay you $21 per month? You cite $21 as a figure, I don’t know what it represents.
You have been paid $47 per month as a direct deposit to your bank account for six years for electricity at our house which is metered for you, and internet which is not. We have had to use our phone data for the internet a lot because it seems we are on the very tattered end of the collective line. A high cost for the internet we get from you, in other words, is not justified. So if in the winter we use more power and in the summer we use less, I’m sure the cost of the internet is in there during the sunny months. $136 for three months means we have owed you $45 per month during short days with high demand. It’s still less than we pay you, so forgive me if I can’t follow why you think we owe you a lot of money.
The idea you are proposing also has a reciprocal side. If you want a check for unpaid electricity, you in turn need to be willing to pay retroactively for costs I have borne on your behalf. These include the unpaid costs of your home site, 1/3 of the cost of my well, plus your share of deficits we have incurred over the years you have lived here that I have paid. This currently totals $12,220.29. It includes $6,731.65 for the home site, (not including the additional interest you should have paid for the three year delay in paying me back for the loan I provided for your home construction), $1,733.67 for 1/3 of my well, and your share of the deficits since you’ve lived here. I’m sure it will be fairly easy to subtract the cost of electricity from that, once we agree on a methodology for doing so.
As for the switch for our back up power, we plan to do that in the spring. It can’t be done before the ground can be excavated. The cost of making the switch will be added to the price I am willing to accept from the HHA for my shares in Headwaters, since it is an unexpected and duplicative infrastructure cost. I can imagine it will be in the $12-15,000 range. That is unless a buyer is willing to deal with it. Someone else might like a different and less expensive solution. I have included the need for the switch in the disclosures I provide potential buyers and have explained the options in some detail to Daiki.
As far as paying the homeowners association back for the electricity, I’m of course willing to do that if everyone here pays their share of the deficits that we have incurred since they have lived here. That way, it will be crystal clear that the HHA actually paid for the electricity, instead of me paying for it when I’ve covered the deficits. Since 2018, the totals each household would owe me for the deficits (if you lived here then) are as follows:
Deficit 2018 $645.46 (Welters, King, Vondra, Gerbex)
Deficit 2019 $249.11 (Welters, King, Vondra, Gerbex)
Deficit 2020 $2,348.04* (Welters, King, Vondra, Gerbex, Tina, Morelli)
Total $17,666.52 (multiply each figure by the # of households paying)
*this includes subtracting the income from the hoop house grant that came in 2021.
So as soon as everyone gets me a check for their unpaid fair share of our annual operating costs since 2018, I’ll be happy to cut a check to the HHA for the electricity, which would be a total of $3,384.00. Six years @$47 per month.
As you know, Oliver, I have pestered you several times over the years about the cost of the power, including the experiment you and I did when you got that new software on your phone. I also asked several times when we were replacing the batteries last summer if your bill had gone up, since we were running our entire house all day off your electricity that month (usually we do the charging at night when our demand is very low). I offered to pay more at the time, you said everything was OK. We took you at your word.
We agree that with good planning, problems can be avoided. Let’s plan for a good ending.
Gwen and Mike
I got your note, it has taken me awhile to figure it out. If I understand you correctly, you want me to 1) retroactively pay for electric bills you believe I have not paid enough for, and 2) pay the HHA back for the utility bills the Corporation has paid. Is that right?
You are also apparently proposing to use the last three months as a baseline, presumably because you think that they represent typical monthly energy use over the last six years? They don’t. John is living in the guest house and we are running the heaters since we’re not there (they have fans that use power). That, combined with the period being the darkest months of the year, makes them very atypical, in fact. When the days are longer, we use much less electricity, typically going as long as three days without using any power from you. Perhaps we paid too much for those months. Can you let us know how you plan to figure that out? It seems the calculation of exactly how what we have used differs from what we have paid is going to be difficult without a lot of estimates and assumptions.
That said, we are happy to pay for the actual unpaid costs you have paid on our behalf. We hope you are willing to do the same. Please send us photos of the meter readings you are using and copies of all the electric bills you are proposing we pay, including information about how much other people at Headwaters, like the Kings, paid you for each bill toward the electricity in the meadow. Maybe they pay you $21 per month? You cite $21 as a figure, I don’t know what it represents.
You have been paid $47 per month as a direct deposit to your bank account for six years for electricity at our house which is metered for you, and internet which is not. We have had to use our phone data for the internet a lot because it seems we are on the very tattered end of the collective line. A high cost for the internet we get from you, in other words, is not justified. So if in the winter we use more power and in the summer we use less, I’m sure the cost of the internet is in there during the sunny months. $136 for three months means we have owed you $45 per month during short days with high demand. It’s still less than we pay you, so forgive me if I can’t follow why you think we owe you a lot of money.
The idea you are proposing also has a reciprocal side. If you want a check for unpaid electricity, you in turn need to be willing to pay retroactively for costs I have borne on your behalf. These include the unpaid costs of your home site, 1/3 of the cost of my well, plus your share of deficits we have incurred over the years you have lived here that I have paid. This currently totals $12,220.29. It includes $6,731.65 for the home site, (not including the additional interest you should have paid for the three year delay in paying me back for the loan I provided for your home construction), $1,733.67 for 1/3 of my well, and your share of the deficits since you’ve lived here. I’m sure it will be fairly easy to subtract the cost of electricity from that, once we agree on a methodology for doing so.
As for the switch for our back up power, we plan to do that in the spring. It can’t be done before the ground can be excavated. The cost of making the switch will be added to the price I am willing to accept from the HHA for my shares in Headwaters, since it is an unexpected and duplicative infrastructure cost. I can imagine it will be in the $12-15,000 range. That is unless a buyer is willing to deal with it. Someone else might like a different and less expensive solution. I have included the need for the switch in the disclosures I provide potential buyers and have explained the options in some detail to Daiki.
As far as paying the homeowners association back for the electricity, I’m of course willing to do that if everyone here pays their share of the deficits that we have incurred since they have lived here. That way, it will be crystal clear that the HHA actually paid for the electricity, instead of me paying for it when I’ve covered the deficits. Since 2018, the totals each household would owe me for the deficits (if you lived here then) are as follows:
Deficit 2018 $645.46 (Welters, King, Vondra, Gerbex)
Deficit 2019 $249.11 (Welters, King, Vondra, Gerbex)
Deficit 2020 $2,348.04* (Welters, King, Vondra, Gerbex, Tina, Morelli)
Total $17,666.52 (multiply each figure by the # of households paying)
*this includes subtracting the income from the hoop house grant that came in 2021.
So as soon as everyone gets me a check for their unpaid fair share of our annual operating costs since 2018, I’ll be happy to cut a check to the HHA for the electricity, which would be a total of $3,384.00. Six years @$47 per month.
As you know, Oliver, I have pestered you several times over the years about the cost of the power, including the experiment you and I did when you got that new software on your phone. I also asked several times when we were replacing the batteries last summer if your bill had gone up, since we were running our entire house all day off your electricity that month (usually we do the charging at night when our demand is very low). I offered to pay more at the time, you said everything was OK. We took you at your word.
We agree that with good planning, problems can be avoided. Let’s plan for a good ending.
Gwen and Mike
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