Just a bit late posting this…
I have been following the Whole Cheap Energy for Great Falls, for economic growth and prosperity for all! WhooHoo! How can we not support this? It will bring jobs to our community. It will give our City freedom from the tyranny of the money hungry Power Lords who reign supreme! SME is our Partner. They are good! We entered into a Joint Venture to build this plant, nothing will go wrong! How long have we been hearing that? The City wants to sell power to its residents. They want you to have a choice! Wait, no, takeback. They don’t know if they are going to try to sell power to the residents. But you should have a choice!
There is no reason to put the plant to a vote. Why, they don’t even know how they would phrase a question so people could vote. There is no risk, all the i’s will be dotted and the A’s will be covered. (Isn’t that what Lawton said?)
I suppose I should link to things that support all those statements, because even though they sound sarcastic, our City has made statements to that effect. (Well, maybe not the money hungry Power Lords, and maybe not in those exact words, but come on. I want to see Lawton stand up at an ECP board meeting and state “our asses are covered!”)
For some time now, GeeGuy has been attempting to attain some type of documentary evidence regarding the relationship between SME and ECP/City of Great Falls.
And some financial stuff, like the City has any history of, perhaps, not managing its money to achieve the best results.
He managed to get a Development Agreement Draft. Now, I cannot even attempt to interpret most of this document. I read it several times, and it is way to much for my little brain. All I can give you is petty sniping at something that jumped out at me.
Section 4.2 (a) It is the intention of the parties that this Agreement shall not create a Partnership or Joint-Venture agreement between the Parties.
Huh? What? I think I remember a Joint Venture.
This “Draft” has purportedly been in the works for some time. Why did the City not say in oh, maybe December, or January, that they did not have an actual document that formed an agreement, but they were working on it. Look on the dates of those posts, and requests, and possible scenario’s that GeeGuy wrote. Consider the answers the City gave. How did GeeGuy get the Joint Venture bone to go after?
By the way, this is the only link I have for you. I will happily leave further interpretation of the content of this document to others.
I do notice Exhibits A & B are an excellent read, and Exhibit C seems to state the City has until May 15 to have letters of intent or power sale contracts in place and copies of the contracts provided to SME and Electric City’s prospective financing party.
By May 31, 2007 The Project Agreements should go before our City Commission. Our elected officials will, I am sure, vote in the best interest of the people.
And next election, after the plant is approved, or not, we get to vote on our public officials, and let them know if we support the decision they made.
Ahh, do we still have a choice?
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