Regarding my last post, I believe the date SME is supposed to commence operations is December, 2011. Montgomery is looking at June, 2009. I think.

So anyway, we have this dispute, which currently involves four energy projects and NorthWestern Energy, with PPL in there too. We have fairly assured litigation regarding zoning. We have the environmental issues, which already have and may again involve legal disputes of some nature. This will be expensive, and one would assume that the members of SME are going to share the burden of the legal expenses.

The City, despite investing a fair amount of money in project development, apparently has no contract evidencing any actual ownership of what it has been sinking money into. Great Falls now has an electric utility, which continues to lose money, and which cannot sell power to any residents of the city, except the members of the pilot program.

While some remain optimistic that the Highwood project can locate financing, others look at the current financial climate and think that available financing will put the price tag out of reach for competitivly priced power. Add in the price of the legal bills, and perhaps cost based power costs a bit too much in this instance.

Knowing a fair bit about the huge volume of information regarding this whole issue, it doesn’t really surprise me that many people only know the basic, mostly Tribune circulated, information about this project. But I feel an endevor of this magnitude has created a very difficult situation for our City government.

Should our Mayor and Commissioners really be expected to have, or gain, the knowledge they need to effectively represent the City in this project?

My question stems in part from a discussion over at ECW.

just as an example, John Rosenbaum is a contractor. He knows a lot of people, and is informed about many things going on here. In a lot of ways, he is a very good person to have discussing zoning, and where we should put in sewers, and annex areas and things of that nature. He knows about the things that make the City work. However, he does not know how to build a coal plant. Neither do I. Neither does any boardmember of ECP. Why should they?

I find it kind of a shame that these people, who could probably do a fine job of managing basic city functions, are in a position where they are, simply, out of their league. This thing is a runaway train, and it has the potential to harm alot of people that shouldn’t even be involved. I think Mary Jolley can attest, the City Commission has a lot on it’s plate, and being educated and informed about everything they are involved in is a difficult task.

Many of these things are not what I believe our city government should be spending its time and money on, and while I believe Fire and Police may very well need more funding, I personally have no intention of voting for any more of my money to go to the City while there is so much money on the line for projects I do not agree with. We have an extra $1.4 million allegedly sitting in an account as security for our power contracts. There’s a start for the $4.2 million in requests.

So they can go ahead and charge .5o cents to park downtown. That extra quarter will go along way toward paying back the water debt to SME, right?

6 April 2008 | Life | Comments