The July 8 front-page story in The Garden Island (“Kaua’i utility dealmakers meet In San Francisco”) showed that these Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative spinmasters just refused to throw in the towel and admit to the people of Kaua’i that they
The July 8 front-page story in The Garden Island (“Kaua’i utility dealmakers
meet In San Francisco”) showed that these Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative
spinmasters just refused to throw in the towel and admit to the people of
Kaua’i that they were using smoke and mirrors to buy Kaua’i Electric from
Citizens Utilities at a price ($270 million) that was grossly unrealistic.
In fact, the very learned lawyer from Princeville, Walter Lewis, wrote a
great letter to the Forum showing that the true indebtedness that we Kauaians
would have been buried with would have been a whopping $700 million if this
“deal” would have gone through. No member of the KIUC team ever talked about
the repayment of the principle on that $270 million loan, but Mr. Lewis ran the
numbers (as did a lot of others), and again the figure came out to an
astronomical three-quarters of a billion dollars.
Kaua’i Electric took in
about $l7 million last year, and the interest alone on that $270 million loan
was about $28 million. So with a yearly debt of $11 million on the income-outgo
of this operation, there is no way our electric rates would not have been
raised. And yet, Mr. Gardiner and his members continually told the people at
about six Island meetings that the rates would remain unchanged for l0
years—later changed to five years.
And we find, according to the article,
Dick Heitman, the KIUC “team leader/ transition leader/CEO (his title
documented on a paper), has said that “he has changed his mind about leaving
the Island and will continue devoting his time to making the transition and
sale successful.” He had told the people that as of July 1, he was bowing out
of the KIUC for personal reasons, which is fine and understandable, but only
the Public Utilities Commission stood in the way of torpedoing this shell game
that the KIUC members were trying to get the people of Kaua’i to accept.
So
one must wonder why he didn’t stick to plan A as he first said and remember
that the county, state, and federal government as interveners gave us a slam
dunk when they concurred with the people that the numbers as proposed just
don’t add up for benefiting the rate payers.
Our County Council has made a
very wise move by agreeing to allocate $50,000 to $l00,000 for an independent
firm to ascertain what Kaua’i Electric is really worth. However, Councilman
Swain felt that our tax dollars shouldn’t be used for this purpose —that
private funds should be used whether it be KIUC funds or from somewhere else.
But factually finding the true price of KE should benefit all of us when
we hopefully move to finding a co-op that will rescue us from the highest
electric rates in the nation to at least somewhere in the middle.
GLENN
MICKENS
Kapa’a
