Hero of the Day: Apartment Manager Blocks Smart Meters

Photo: CLARK COLEMAN / Monterey Herald

An apartment manager in Marina, California is our smart meter “Hero of the Day”. Tobie Cecil has managed the Marina Meadows Apartments for 18 years. In February, he had his maintenance staff build cages to cover all the electric analog meters on the property in order to keep Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) from installing smart meters.

There are 70 families in Mr. Cecil’s complex and he said none of them wanted the smart meters. The town’s fire chief approved the cages which allow the meters to be read, but not touched.

The reason Mr. Cecil (and the owner of the complex, too, who had to approve and pay for materials to build the cages) are our heroes of the day is that they are fulfilling their business & moral responsibility to protect the health, safety, and financial well-being of their residents. They could have decided to do nothing because 1) they didn’t want the expense of paying for the materials, 2) they didn’t want to risk a “hassle” from PG&E or other real or imagined sources, and 3) they didn’t need anything to add to their already busy schedules. Plenty of people and businesses come up with lots of excuses to justify not doing the right thing and Mr. Cecil is not one of those people.

It is every person’s own responsibility to protect their own well-being and that of their family. It’s not the government’s job, or a neighbor’s job, or an employer’s job. But when the individual’s ability to protect themselves is restricted, those who are doing the restricting become responsible. Apartment residents don’t have much right to go installing things around apartment complex electric meters themselves. That’s why the responsibility and duty lies with the apartment complex. And Tobie Cecil and the owner of his complex have courageously fulfilled their responsibility to protect their residents.

See the full story here.

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