Power struggle; 'Best Town' award; where's Kate?; and zipping up 'Monty'

If you haven’t yet received notice, you will soon have a choice of electricity provider: the default option being Sonoma Clean Power (SCP), the County’s own agency, or PG&E, which used to be Latin for ‘monopoly.’ Now that there’s competition, the business rivalry is starting to heat up accordingly. First to amp up the rhetoric is SCP, which says it has uncovered billing errors made by PG&E to some customers shared by the two companies. “We’re not happy that PG&E has tried to prevent Sonoma Clean Power from contacting customers about the problem,” said CEO Geof Syphers. “We are reaching out to make sure our shared customers know exactly what happened and that the problems are being resolved.” … PG&E admitted the mistakes and misprints. In some cases, charges for electricity generation were omitted from SCP’s customers’ bills. As a fix, according to PG&E, clients will either receive a supplemental bill or have their electricity charges added to next month’s bill. In other cases, inaccurate wording lead some customers to think they had been double billed, a printing error Syphers slammed as “unacceptable,” adding ““We won’t allow PG&E to prevent us from providing excellent service to customers.”

“Travel + Leisure” rates Sonoma among the Top 10 (at number 8) towns for celebrating the Fourth of July 4. An honor, to be sure, but bettered by Flagstaff? Bend? It’s downright un-American… Event details are on page 27, but for a cool and comfortable spot to watch the parade, members of the Sonoma League for Historic Preservation, as patriots and fundraisers, suggest the porch or garden of the Maysonnave House. Bring a picnic, lemonade provided. $35, tables of 10 available. Call Anne Silverman at 343.1945.

Wherefore art thou, Kate Kennedy? The drama queen (in a good way) is directing her a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Cazadero, through June 28. The invite came from the owners of the Cazsonoma B & B (formerly known as the Cazanoma Lodge). “It was like, ‘I have a Shakespeare company’ and then they said, ‘We have a barn, let’s make it happen.” Of course, the inn isn’t a barn, Kennedy says “but a beautiful setting.” Her Avalon Players include Sonoma-known names Kyrie Dawson, Delaney Brummé, Aaron Bremmer, Jim Kent, Nathalie Tedrick and Kathryn Del Chiaro… You can catch Kate and her Players closer to home later this summer at Buena Vista Winery, in “The Taming of the Shrew, Thursdays-Sundays, August 7 through 25. Info and ducats at Sonomshakespeare.com.

The Stony Point Ramblers play a free 2 p.m. concert at the library this Saturday. Ernie Noyes, on mandolin, says the trio plays traditional Old Time music, which is different than bluegrass. As he explains it, “Well, the bluegrass guys all have a bumper sticker that says ‘No Money on Board, I’m a Bluegrass Musician.’ The Old Timey guys can’t afford the bumper sticker.”

“The Full Monty” zips up this weekend. The show is great fun, but for one viewer, perhaps a shade long. As she put it, “I’ve never waited so long for a man to get undressed.”