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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Sunday, February 24, 2008
By MICKEY POWELL - Bulletin Staff Writer
Martinsville City Council on Tuesday will hold another public hearing on whether the city should participate in power plant projects proposed by American Municipal Power-Ohio.
The council will meet at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the municipal building on West Church Street uptown.
A previous public hearing on the issue Jan. 22 drew numerous speakers, most of whom opposed the idea. The council then abandoned the idea after no council member made a motion to take part in the projects.
Since then, GDS Associates Inc., the city’s consultants on electricity issues, has recommended that the city take part in the projects. It originally had given no recommendation.
GDS executive Jack Madden told the council Feb. 12 the recommendation was based on an updated feasibility study of the projects that shows capital costs. He said the study includes information from contractors showing that construction costs are low enough to make the power plants the city’s best option for obtaining electricity in the future.
Madden said that information was not available when GDS first examined the plants on the city’s behalf.
City Manager Clarence Monday appointed a four-person committee to study whether the city should take part in the projects. The committee consists of people with experience in finance, utilities and/or developing properties.
The committee met Feb. 15 to get information about the projects. The members have been studying the information on their own and will meet at 9 a.m. Tuesday to decide upon a recommendation to make to the council that night.
One of the committee members, local developer Clark Eden, declined Friday to say what he thinks about the projects before the committee meets again, out of fairness to other members.
But “it looks to me like the city and the consultants have done a thorough job” of gathering and analyzing information on the projects, Eden said.
The other committee members — Lance Heater, Jim Johnson and Durk Barco — could not be reached for comment.
Martinsville operates an electric department that supplies power to homes and businesses. The city buys that power on the wholesale market through AMP-Ohio, an organization owned by its more than 120 member cities.
Officials are considering participating in the power plant projects as a way to control the city’s power costs. Prices for wholesale electricity are expected to continue rising well into the future. It has been reasoned that the city could save money on electricity by basically being a part-owner of power plants.
The three projects include one coal-fired power plant in Ohio, one coal-fired plant in Illinois and three small hydrodams in Ohio.
Together, they would supply only about 57 percent of Martinsville’s power. The city still would have to buy the rest on the market.
The city has estimated spending about $3.5 million per year for 40 years on the power plant projects. Most of that money simply would cover the cost of purchased power. Consultants have figured that only about $123,535 of the yearly $3.5 million would go toward debt service on the plants’ construction.
Vice Mayor James Clark said he thinks there is “a lot of misunderstanding among the citizens” that all of annual $3.5 million would go toward debt service, when that is not the case.
Clark said he wants to find out the electric committee’s recommendation Tuesday.
“I won’t say the committee (decision) will be the total factor” in determining how he votes, he said, adding that he also will take into account comments made during Tuesday’s hearing.
Yet if most speakers are opposed, “I won’t feel comfortable going against the citizens unless I’m really, really sold” on the projects, said Clark.
He and Mayor Kimble Reynolds Jr. indicated they probably will vote against participating in the projects unless they hear information Tuesday that they have not heard before.
“My position is still the same, although I will remain open-minded as to what the committee has to say,” Reynolds said.
Councilwoman Kathy Lawson said she is “still digesting the information” and does not yet know how she will vote.
“There’s a lot of information to digest,” she said, adding that she has not found out much about the projects during the previous two weeks that she did not already know.
Councilman Gene Teague recently was appointed to the council to replace former councilman Mark Anderson, who resigned because he planned to move to Danville. Teague is the only one of the current council members, though, who has expressed support for participating in the projects.
“I still think it’s the right deal for the citizens” in terms of obtaining the lowest wholesale power prices in the future, Teague said.
But “we obviously want to see what the committee has to say,” he said of council members.
He indicated that he will vote to take part in the projects unless he hears some information different than what he already has heard.
Councilman Ron Ferrill could not be reached for comment. |
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