Relating to notice provided to a retail electric customer of the procedure for requesting vegetation management near a transmission or distribution line.

Contracts

• Print & Mail Vendors: Review agreements with third-party billing vendors immediately. Adding this notice may push customer bills to an additional page, triggering increased postage and paper fees. Negotiate "onsert" (on-bill message) vs. "insert" (separate flyer) pricing.
• TDU-REP Tariffs: TDUs must formalize the method of transmitting vegetation management procedures to REPs. While the statutory obligation exists, the operational Service Level Agreement (SLA) for how and when this data is updated should be codified.

Hiring/Training

• Customer Service Representatives (CSRs): Update scripts immediately. When customers call regarding the new notice, CSRs must be trained to distinguish between *utility-managed* vegetation (safety clearance for lines) and *customer-managed* vegetation (aesthetic trimming).
• Billing Operations: Staff must be allocated to manually override standard bill templates for the upcoming cycle if automated IT solutions cannot be deployed by June 20.

Reporting & Record-Keeping

• Audit Trail: You must maintain a log of exactly when the notice was sent to each customer. In the event of a wildfire or vegetation-related outage, your defense against negligence claims will rely on proving the customer was notified of the procedure to request trimming and failed to do so.
• Data Handoff Verification: REPs must document the receipt of procedures from TDUs. If a TDU fails to provide the procedure, the REP must document this failure to shield itself from regulatory penalties for non-compliance.

Fees & Costs

• IT Programming: One-time cost to redesign bill templates to include a new dynamic text field.
• Postage/Printing: Potential recurring cost increase if the notice length forces a page-count increase.