PORA Board of Directors Seats Available
PORA Board has three seats available.
The 3-year term starts July 1, 2025.
Candidate applications are available at the PORA office.
Voting will begin May 20th through May 22nd.
Announcement of filled positions will be on May 28th
PORA Bylaws Updated
The PORA Board has updated the bylaws. Click here to read the updated bylaws.
Announcement to PORA Members
STATEMENT OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
APRIL 7, 2025
The PORA Board of Directors (the “Board”) is issuing this statement to correct several recently published false statements and to address some of the rumors in the community.
UPCOMING ELECTION: It has been rumored that PORA will not be holding an election this year. This statement is false. There will be an election held in May. The ballots for the upcoming election will be due by 3:00 PM on Thursday, May 22, 2025. Ballots may be dropped off in person beginning Tuesday, May 20, 2025. There are three (3) director seats that are coming open. PORA will be soliciting candidates for the open board seats for the May election. All PORA Members are eligible to run for and serve on the Board of Directors.
CURRENT BOARD IS “ILLEGAL”: There is a misconception that the current board is “illegal.” Most of the current directors were either duly elected by the Members or duly appointed by the Board to fill vacancies. The appointments of the other directors by the Board were not timely contested by the membership via formal action. As such, the directors may fill out the remainder of their terms.
PLAN B: There was another false statement published about PORA’s plans relating to the Building, i.e., that it formally proposed plans to Sun City West Recreational Center to divest PORA of ownership of the Building and/or merge with another entity. The Board did not formally propose any plans to the Sun City West Recreational Center to divest PORA of the Building. The conversations have been informal to brainstorm various ideas regarding PORA’s future. These false statements are creating confusion among PORA Members and the Sun City West Members at large. The Board asks that Members seek information through meeting minutes, Board statements, or from the PORA website instead of listening to rumors, misinformation from disgruntled former directors, and other unverified sources.
MEMBER APPROVAL REQUIRED: Regarding the Building, there has also been fear-mongering by some misinformed Members that the PORA Board intends to take action regarding the Building without Member approval. This is false. Any action to divest PORA of the Building would require Member approval.
GENERAL MANAGER: There is a rumor that PORA is operating in violation of its Bylaws because there is no official “General Manager.” Be advised that although the Bylaws call for a General Manager, and there is no one with the official title of General Manager, all of the functions required to be performed by a General Manager are being performed. Furthermore, there have been significant cost savings to PORA with not having to pay the salary of someone having the title of “General Manager.” Again, all duties required to be performed by a General Manager are being performed in accordance with the Bylaws.
DOCUMENT REQUESTS: Many Members are emailing individual board members asking them for various corporate documents. Be advised that all PORA members are entitled to inspect the records of the corporation. However, the appropriate process is to contact Rodney Bertram directly at rbertram@porascw.org to request either: (i) a date and time to inspect the documents; or (ii) copies of specific documents. Be advised that PORA may charge a reasonable fee to compile and copy the records. Also, upon sending a written request, PORA has five (5) business days to respond to such requests.
DEFAMATORY STATEMENTS/HARASSMENT: Lastly, in addition to false statements, misconceptions, and rumors, several Members are inundating individual board members with emails containing accusations about specific directors that rise to the level of defamation, which is legally actionable. In addition, the efforts to malign individual board members and the Board, as a whole, are becoming increasingly harassing. Be advised that the Board intends to take legal action against any individual who is defaming, harassing, or otherwise trying to intimidate individual board members with false statements designed to cast those directors in a bad light in the community.
THANK YOU! The Board would like to thank all the supportive Members who share the Board’s desire to keep PORA a respected part of the community.
PORA – Board of Directors
Announcement to PORA Members
Dear PORA Members,
The Board has received numerous inputs from the members regarding several upcoming PORA matters. The Board will review all communications received and will provide a consolidated factual response document no later than April 7, 2025
Announcement of Bylaw Amendment
As result of difficulties attracting new Board candidates and retaining experienced Board members an amendment to the PORA by laws is proposed.
NO TERM LIMITS: Board members are elected to one 3-year term. To serve another 3-year term the member must be re-elected. There is no limit to consecutive terms served.
PORA Governmental Projects
PORA and in its Governmental capacity will closely monitor the BNSF project and report factual information to the members when new developments are available, bearing in mind that the project as massive as it may be, will not come to fruition for many years,
Other roads and traffic projects nearby are of immediate concern because they are more urgent to the present development in Surprise and Peoria. The US 60-SR 303 interchange, including the 163rd access project, is now in progress. The SR 303 to SR 74 corridor on US 60, the El Mirage extension from SR 303 to Jomax Road, and the SR 303 interchange options from US 60 to El Mirage are coming soon.
Thank you for understanding how PORA is “Looking Out for You.”
Gallery First Friday Gala – April
April First Friday Event – Friday, April 4, 2025 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm
The del Sol Gallery in Sun City West is thrilled to announce that Masato Tachi will be our special guest musician at April’s First Friday Gallery Gala!
Known for his soulful performances and captivating melodies, Masato’s unique fusion of classical and contemporary styles promises to elevate the evening with his mesmerizing sound. Do not miss this unforgettable experience as he adds a harmonious touch to the gallery’s celebration of art and creativity!
Tachi, a Japanese born artist whose mastery of the ukelele, bass, and guitar will captivate the art-loving audience with his unique style. Tachi served as a music therapist for the State of Arizona, focusing on providing support to children with autism and disabilities. Tachi tours the Valley, performing at a variety of venues and taking part in folk festivals across the state. He is certainly busy! In addition, he teaches ukelele, guitar, and bass at Musical Surprise in Surprise, Arizona.
Seamlessly transitioning between genres to create an atmosphere that complements the gallery’s stunning displays, the last First Friday Gala of the season promises to be a unique celebration with a musical performance that will add an unforgettable soundtrack to an evening of breathtaking art.
How a simple fix could double the size of the U.S. electricity grid
But experts say that there is a remarkably simple fix: installing new wires on the high-voltage lines that already carry power hundreds of miles across the United States. Just upgrading those wires, new reports show, could double the amount of power that can flow through America’s electricity grid.
“This is something that could be a triple win,” said Brian Deese, an innovation fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who headed the White House National Economic Council under President Biden until early last year. “A win for the electricity system, a win for utilities and a win for consumers.”
Since Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022 — pouring hundreds of billions of dollars toward the build-out of clean energy — experts have warned that without a dramatic increase in the size of the electricity grid, most of those new wind and solar farms won’t be able to plug in.
Many renewables are stuck in the “interconnection queue,” a long line of projects waiting to get connected to the grid. According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, more than 1,500 gigawatts of power, mostly renewables, are waiting for approval to connect. (That’s more than one-third of all the power produced in the United States.)
One of the main reasons for that long wait is that the nation builds transmission lines — those giant, high-voltage wires that carry power across large distances — extremely slowly. The average transmission line takes about 10 years to complete, and the country has been building even fewer lines recently than it did a decade ago.
Without enough power lines, there is nowhere for new solar, wind and battery power to go.
“We have to be able to integrate all this low-cost, renewable energy fast,” said Amol Phadke, a scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
That’s where replacing the country’s power lines — or “reconductoring,” as engineers call it — comes in.
Most of America’s lines are wired with a technology that has been around since the early 1900s — a core steel wire surrounded by strands of aluminum. When those old wires heat up — whether from power passing through them or warm outdoor temperatures — they sag. Too much sag in a transmission line can be dangerous, causing fires or outages. As a result, grid operators have to be careful not to allow too much power through the lines.
But a couple of decades ago, engineers designed a new type of wire: a core made of carbon fiber, surrounded by trapezoidal pieces of aluminum. Those new, carbon-fiber wires don’t sag as much in the heat. That means that they can take up to double the amount of power as the old lines.
According to the recent study from researchers at UC-Berkeley and GridLab, replacing these older steel wires could provide up to 80 percent of the new transmission needed on the electricity grid — without building anything new. It could also cost half as much as building an entirely new line and avoid the headaches of trying to get every state, city and even landowner along the route to agree to a new project.
“You’re not acquiring a new right of way; you’re not building new towers,” Phadke said. “So it can be done much faster.”
High voltage power lines run through a substation along the electrical power grid in Pembroke Pines, Florida. The grid is strained by increasing demand from electricity-hungry data centers and electric vehicles, as well as extreme weather events.
If stringing new lines is so easy — and cheap — why hasn’t it been done already? Part of the problem, experts say, is that utilities profit more from big infrastructure projects. Routine maintenance or larger-scale upgrades of the electricity grid don’t help utilities make a lot of cash compared with building new transmission lines.
Deese compares it to having leaky pipes in a building — building managers don’t get rewarded for fixing all of a building’s problems, but rather for just keeping things running as long as possible on a limited budget. “You patch and plug rather than thinking systematically,” Deese said.
Duncan Callaway, a professor of energy and resources at UC-Berkeley and one of the authors of the recent study, said that many transmission engineers are not used to thinking of rewiring as one of their tools. “But it’s a much faster way,” he said.
Some changes are already underway to encourage this approach. For a long time, utilities had to undergo lengthy environmental reviews if they were rewiring a line longer than 20 miles. Earlier this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced that those would no longer be necessary if utilities are simply replacing wires.
And last month, the Biden administration announced a goal to upgrade 100,000 miles of transmission line over the next five years — which could include rewiring the lines.
“We actually need stuff that can cook right now, right away,” Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate adviser, said Tuesday at a White House summit on grid modernization. “And the way to do that is by deploying grid-enhancing technologies, by reconductoring the lines that we have already strung up or buried across the country.”
This doesn’t mean that new lines don’t need to be built. “In the longer run, newer lines will play an important role,” Phadke said. But as new demand surges onto the grid in the short term, upgrading the nation’s wires could help keep clean energy flowing until those new lines can be built.
“We have the potential to achieve all of these things with just taking new technology and running it through old lines,” Deese said. “It’s pretty cool.”
del Sol Gallery First Friday Event
Come join in the celebration of the Holidays at the del Sol Gallery at the Deck the Halls Gala!
Browse the gallery and discover one-of-a-kind handmade gifts for everyone on your list.
First Friday Gallery Gala
Friday, December 1, 2023
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Del Sol Gallery 13815 W. Camino del Sol Sun City West AZ 85375