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Commissioner Halkiotis said it appears that Scott Gardner wants the Board of County Commissioners, the Board of Education and the taxpayers of this county to run a power line to serve future customers. He considers this one of the most outrageous things he has ever heard. He understands it is a business for Duke, but Orange County is in acash-strapped environment in this county when it comes to our schools. The Orange County Schools do not need this extension. Scott Gardner said that in the effort to provide electric service fairly and equitably to all citizens of North Carolina in a safe, low-cost and reliable manner, they have established some service regulations and an underground utility extension plan. The underground plan says that new bulk feeders necessary to serve new developments will be installed overhead unless the customer desires to have them installed underground. This applies to everybody. Duke Power is providing an opportunity for the schools and the county to have this capability added at no cost. If they want to put it under ground it is a lot more expensive. He said that $0 °~ of what Duke Power installs on a daily basis goes in underground and it is relative inexpensive. Once you get into a residential development you can direct bury the conductors. So a single-phase primary line that serves a transformer can be direct buried. That is simple - a one man trenching crew can do that. But to install bulk feeders which most always run along the public right-of-way, you have a lot activity with water and sewer, natural gas and other major facilities and they cannot afford to have those lines direct buried. If a residential development subcontractor digs into it, you are only knocking out 50 customers. If you have a subcontractor dig into a bulk feed you may be knocking out 2000 customers. The majority of outages that occur on a daily basis are underground outages. But these have been restricted to a very small numbers of customers because of the design we have built over time. Commissioner Jacobs asked Scott Gardner if extending the line in front will increase their customers and Scott Gardner said that the Board of County Commissioners would determine what growth comes down the road. He said that their growth projections are based on Orange County's Planning Department information. He is not aware of any growth development at this time. Dr. McFarley said that it could be ten years ar more before this three-phase loop is extended around Efland. Superintendent Carraway said that in the meantime the County or Schools would have to pay and their School Board's contention is that if they give Duke an easement, then they as the customer should have some say so as to what this looks like and the OCS is asking that they do it underground. The school's special use permit (SUP) calls for the power to be underground. So if it is above ground, then the School District will have to came back to the Commissioners for them to give the schools some kind of leeway to be able to do that. Either one of those things require more time than we have. She said that they are under some pretty severe time constraints if they are going to have power to that site by January 1, 2006. Commissioner Jacobs asked Scott Gardner about the a-mail he had sent to Dr. McFarley about the option to run along the backside of the property that according to Mr. Gardner was not acceptable because Duke Power was unable to secure an easement from NCDOT. Commissioner Jacobs asked how that would have worked. Scott Gardner said it would come along either DOT property or the school property and he understood that DOT would not give them easement to run this on their property. Commissioner Jacobs said that they would still have had the looping issue and it would have been along the road. Mr. Gardner said that was correct. Commissioner Jacobs said that Mike Mills informed them as a Board that DOT had agreed to that. Scott Gardner and Dr. McFarley said this is news to them. Commissioner Jacobs referred to the "Report to the Public Staff' from the North Carolina Natural Disaster Preparedness Task Force in 2003 on the feasibility of placing electric distribution facilities underground. In summary (page 3 tap) it says, "that the investigation also