1/9/2017 Gmail - (no subject) David Sherwood (no subject) 2 messages Michael R. Goodwin Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 2:40 PM To: "David Sherwood (davemcpir@gmail.com)" Cc: "Jonathan R. Youde" , "Jed Davis (jed@mitchellanddavis.com)" Good a ernoon David, Below please find our comments on your bulleted outline of your ar cle you provided to us last Thursday. The comments roughly follow the order of your bullets, however some of the comments do apply to mul ple points. The Maine PowerOp ons program is a completely voluntary program run jointly by the Maine Municipal Bond Bank and the Maine Health and Higher Educa onal Facili es Authority. The authority to operate the program was granted by the legislature to provide an aggrega on service to all non- profits in the state. We cannot stress enough the program is completely voluntary. Pricing is provided to members as requested with no risk to them. They are free to explore all other op ons available to them. We are but one of those op ons. The electricity supplier for MPO is selected through an RFP process every 3-4 years. You have been provided all available materials regarding those processes. The IAC is an advisory body. It has no decision making authority but can make recommenda ons. The program staff listens to the IAC as representa ve of its membership and makes its decisions accordingly. All decisions are made by the program staff. No decision made by the program is legally binding to any member. Members are free to par cipate or not. MPO is a program run jointly by the Maine Municipal Bond Bank and the Maine Health and Higher Educa onal Facili es Authority, both en es being tax exempt by statute. MPO provides a voluntary op on for our members to u lize when analyzing who provides their power. We do not make those decisions for them. The savings associated with u lizing our program can come in many forms, from achieving a low rate for power to saving me and money by u lizing a uniform contract with favorable terms. We provide our members with a choice. We have hundreds of members, most of which have repeatedly u lized our program. We would hope your story includes informa on gathered while discussing the program with our members. You had agreed to provide a list of our members who you have interviewed but to date we have not received that list. To the extent there are more points to your story than those included in your outline, we would appreciate the opportunity to comment prior to publica on. Thank You. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=3ececd1baa&view=pt&search=inbox&th=158d0805afa19957&siml=158d0805afa19957&siml=158d096b6a77d46e 1/2