Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
P. O. Box 3711
204 Broad Street
Martinsville, Virginia 24115
276-638-8801
Toll Free: 800-234-6575
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| Monday, council members hear no support |
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007
By MICKEY POWELL - Bulletin Staff Writer
Martinsville officials said Tuesday they have not heard any support for the city investing $3.5 million a year for 40 years to invest in three power plant projects.
Four city council members said no city residents with whom they have discussed the issue has voiced support for the investment.
City Manager Clarence Monday estimated that about 50 people have stopped him on the street or called him in recent weeks to voice their opinions on the issue.
He said on a recent day off from work, people stopped him several times.
“The community is interested” in the issue, he said. But “I haven’t spoken to the first person yet who was in favor of” investing in the plants.
People have told him it is too big of a risk for the city to take since there is no guarantee it would be a good investment, he added.
At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, the council will hold a public hearing on the power plant issue at the municipal building on West Church Street. In the council’s agenda packet are copies of resolutions — with Thursday’s date — that the council must adopt to invest in the plants.
City staff plans to make a recommendation to the council on whether the city should invest. Monday would not say what the recommendation will be.
“I’m not going to discuss it publicly before I give it to the council,” he said.
However, he said that public input will be taken into account in whatever recommendation is made.
The city is considering partnering with American Municipal Power-Ohio, an agent through which it buys wholesale power, and about 85 other member cities to build and operate three Midwestern power plant projects and use electricity those plants produce, according to city officials.
By investing in the power plants, the cities could buy wholesale power for less than they could buy it on the market, officials have said.
Two projects, one in Ohio and one in Illinois that already is being built, are coal-fired power plants. The other project is hydroelectric plants that would be built on three existing dams in Ohio.
By spending $3.5 million a year for 40 years, the city’s total investment would be $140 million. That would include purchasing power generated by those plants as well as the debt service, according to city officials.
Based on their comments, Vice Mayor James Clark and Councilman Ron Ferrill have talked with more people than Mayor Kimble Reynolds Jr. and Councilwoman Kathy Lawson.
Lawson said she is surprised that she has heard from so few people, which she estimated at less than a dozen, about the issue. None of them has supported the investment, she added.
Clark and Reynolds said they are leaning toward voting against the investment.
Having to consider such a large investment over a few weeks is “too quick of a rush to make such a dramatic decision,” Clark said. He indicated council members would need about a year to consider the investment properly.
“I have some serious concerns,” Reynolds said, about “subjecting future councils to this type of commitment.”
Referring mainly to coal, he said that other types of energy sources may arise in the future that are more efficient.
Ferrill said he wants to learn more about the plants before deciding how to vote. But he is “not as comfortable” with the coal-fired plants as he is with the hydroelectric plants, he said, because in 40 years coal may not be as practical of an energy source as it is today.
“Trying to predict the situation 40 years from now is tough,” he said.
Lawson said she has not yet decided how she will vote and still is studying information she has received about the projects.
With so much money being spent over such a long period of time, she said, “it makes you investigate it thoroughly before you make a such a decision.”
Councilman Mark Anderson could not be reached Tuesday. |
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