MEMORANDUM

DATE: June 5, 2008

TO: City Council

FROM: Baltimore Gas and Electric/Citizen Task Force

SUBJECT: Final Report

The BGE Task Force that was established on May 7, 2007 by a resolution of the City Council commenced its work on May 30. The Task Force has been comprised of seven members representing Bowie, five members representing BGE, Mr. John Fitzwater, Assistant City Manager, along with Mr. Craig Distelhorst who served as facilitator. The purpose and functions for the Task Force established by the City Council served as the basis of the work.

In general, the issues that the City Council asked the Task Force to examine divided out into two major areas; infrastructure improvement including feeder line performance, equipment issues and tree trimming, and a wide range of customer service/communication issues. BGE established two internal task groups to look at these issues and to take into account the concerns of the City Council and the Bowie members of the Task Force. Since the Task Force presented its Interim Report to the Council on December 3, BGE has made two presentations to Council. The first on actions that it is taking to improve electric service reliability and the second on improving communications with the Bowie residents. BGE also briefed the Public Service Commission and is keeping the Commission informed on improvements that it is implementing.

On February 11 of this year, BGE briefed the Council on its Bowie Reliability Action Plan. That Plan is a three-year, $25 million program that includes equipment and infrastructure improvements to the 11 out of 21 feeder lines that are performing above the SAIFI system average for outages, as well as an extensive tree trimming program on all 21 feeder lines. Since that report, a twelfth feeder has been added to the list that will receive infrastructure improvements and another feeder line is being added for Bowie. Work has commenced on the Bowie Reliability Action Plan. Open houses are being held with customers that will be affected to explain the improvements that are being made and individual customers are being notified in face-to-face meetings of work that is about to be performed in their area that directly affects them.

The second internal task group has developed a program for improving customer service and communications with the citizens of Bowie, with special emphasis on improvements in communications during power outages. On April 21, BGE briefed the Council on the improvements that are being implemented to improve communications with Bowie residents. Many of these improvements are in response to comments from City Council Members and Bowie members of the Task Force. Those currently being worked on by BGE include improvements to the Interactive Voice Response System (IVR) to allow many more opportunities for customers to request to speak with a live representative when they call, an on-going assessment as to how BGE can provide better estimated restoration times (ETR’s) sooner when the power is out, creation of a Customer Communications Coordinator for Bowie responsible for improving overall customer communications during storms, greater proactive communications with customers including outbound calls to provide weather related warnings and reasons for outages, and educational outreach programs.

As requested by the Council, the Task Force will continue to meet on a quarterly basis to monitor the level of electric reliability improvement as a result of BGE’s implementation of the Bowie Reliability Action Plan and to monitor the effectiveness of the initiatives to improve communications with the residents of Bowie. The Task Force will also provide information to the Council on a quarterly basis regarding this monitoring effort. All of the current Bowie members of the Task Force have agreed to continue to serve in this monitoring capacity except Mr. Leonard Lucchi.

The results obtained by the Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE)/Citizen Task Force would not have been possible without the strong support and dedication of all of the individuals involved. I would like to thank Mr. John Fitzwater for his assistance and guidance, Mr Craig Distelhorst for leading us through the process, Mr. Craig Muckle who assisted me as vice chairman and the rest of the Bowie members for their contributions as we worked through the issues. A special thank you needs to be given to the BGE members of the Task Force as well as their staff for their long hours of hard work and personal dedication to engineering and devising what they believe to be the best possible solutions to our electric reliability and communications concerns. I am convinced that with the monitoring process that has been established to ensure that the proposed improvements are implemented and refined when necessary, the residents of Bowie will receive greatly improved service from BGE going forward.