May 10, 2007

To the Editor:

Great Falls Tribune

Dear Sir:

The headline in the Tribune, Electric City Power Hooks Potential Customers, 5/10/07, was misleading. I also attended the same meeting and found that city staff is calling the shots. As in City Commissioners meetings, items on the agenda are routinely approved without discussion. ECP members performed in a similar fashion but did not make a single decision.

I thought that recent litigation about public documents, procrastination by RUS, or the ever increasing construction costs of the Highwood Generating Station would surely be on the agenda. Installment of carbon sequestration equipment would bring the price to more than a billion dollars and increase electric rates. At the end, a citizen wished the ECP well “now that things are coming apart.”

There was no response to the statement. Yet, the case of the missing/lost 2004 Feasibility Study, costing some $23,000, would affect seriously the ECP decision making process. Staff has told different stories: one version was that this document was not available because it was “SME private property” and the other one that it does not exist. The fact is that the city government, in partnership with SME, does not have accessibility to all documents when it makes decisions?

Thus our city has become known as a Ship of Fools and it is sinking as its planks are detached one by one. Must citizens resort to litigation to save it from a shipwreck?

Or will the City Commissioners have the courage to appoint a “Special Commission” to straighten out this financial fiasco?

Sincerely

Aart Dolman