The Coop Leads the Way

 “In sum, Kit Carson is facing the same problems that are faced by most electric utilities around the U.S.—declining revenues and increasing costs. Kit Carson’s decline in revenue has been exacerbated by the loss of its largest customer—Chevron. These conditions will result in a negative margin for 2015 and an inability of the Cooperative to meet RUS and CoBank TIER requirements for its loans, thereby putting the Cooperative in technical default. The only solution to the problem is a rate increase.” —Peter J. Adang

Kit Carson

Although the KCEC request for rate increases hits the “poor” and “seniors” hardest by zeroing in on a 41% raise for monthly “system” charges and about a 20% charge for modest home electricity uses of power, the current imbroglio concerning the Coop has less to do with a raise in energy expenses than the price of corruption and incompetence during the last decade and a half.

Mr. Adang can easily defend the Coop’s current “need” for funds to keep the electric side of the Coop alive but he cannot defend the last 15 years of investment in side businesses: the failure of the Call Center, Propane and Internet ventures, and the boondoggle at the Command Center.

The profligate and historic spending of the “traveling trustees,” for example, a $30,000 week in Las Vegas or the “$100,000” spent on a single annual meeting (detailed in a 990), gives one pause. How many millions has the Coop spent on the trustees?

Nobody likes a rate increase but we’re all used to being exploited by the politicos and corporate interests. The oil and gas merchants in Taos have been exploiting us for decades. We know we don’t own the local gas stations. But the members of the Coop and the people of Taos keep getting told that the Coop is “owned by those it serves.” Except we have “no say so.”

A member scorned is an angry member.

Despite legitimate criticism of the Coop, both management and trustees, we know the game is fixed: the PRC will approve the rate increase. The Coop will spend as much money as is necessary on attorneys to divert attention from the real issues.

Reforms

If Adang were serious about generating support for the Coop, he’d (1) advise his fellow trustees to reduce the number of districts from 11 to 7 and encourage all trustees to run at large. (2) He would publish the latest “audit” online so that members could see how much the “electric side” invested in the Call Center, Propane and Internet, and the Command Center and what the “actual” return on investment or debt has been. (3) He’d publish the income and travel expenses associated with each trustee for, say, the last twenty years. Clear the air and then discuss rate increases to “save the Coop.”

Limits and Failures

Taos Friction reminds Taosenos that we live in a beautiful but “remote” area with “LIMITED” economic opportunities. Despite a few successes, TSV and Tourism, material resources have financially limited the now moribund Moly Mine, the successes of most entrepreneurs or even artists.

In the modern era, since statehood, the native Taoseno’s genius for politics and the technical assistance of “newcomers or influential do-gooders” have transformed local governance and some private enterprise into a system of highly successful recipients of the state and federal aid. Just as the visual artists have alternately thrived and starved, depending on the art world trends, so politicos and entrepreneurs depend on the macro economy and politics.

Boosters

See Babbit, 1922, a social satire by Sinclair Lewis, American Nobel Prize winner for literature, if you want to read about “Taos Boosters.” The local “boosters” (influenced by their Chief, Mr. Energizer Bunny, want to raise or have raised our taxes/rates, like Luis, to pay for failing enterprises or mismanaged government entities: see the coop above, failing due to profligacy in the past.

See the failing public schools what with poorly maintained buildings costing millions to remodel and the rise of “charters” due to unsatisfactory education, and now, the attendance falling at public schools.

See a proposed county tax for a failing hospital, due to a board of bored socialites and predatory out of town managers, who can’t adjust to change. Maybe we need more emphasis on urgent care and ambulances to Espanola.

See a failing El Prado Water and Sanitation District raising property taxes after raising GRT, due to an obsession with cornering the water market, using “white-out” to manage changes to contracts, and mismanaging the District, a district whose debt seems nightmarish to members.

See the proposed Town and County tax for E911 expenses, being considered due to Mr. Energizer Bunny’s “Influence Peddling.” The Town made false claims about asbestos at the prior E911 facility during the Cordova administration on Civic Plaza Drive, so they could relocate to a poorly conceived KCEC facility. Subsequently the Town and County rejected the Coop’s underdesigned facility  and relocated, again, to the County’s “state of the art facility.” Now the taxpayers must pay for what could have been  a fix of a few hundred thousand dollars at the original site but at a cost of $1.6 million. Meanwhile a mostly vacant 3 million dollar plus Command Center will be paid for during the next forty years by the Coop members.

Luis and the Coop hit us twice at the Command Center: once as members of the Coop and once as taxpayers.

Overbuilt and Underfunded

Mr. Booster and Mr. Babbit, and Mr. Energizer Bunny, at the Town, County, and Coop are looking to pick your pocket and drive you into penury all in the name of electricity and “Public Safety” or a “a slow and painful death at a local health facility.”

(After years of corrupt practices, the Town did figure out how to “pave roads” in a modest and efficient manner by hiring a new contractor “who wasn’t in on the game.”)

At the County, they seem to be  picking up the pieces for the rest of the entities in town.

Still this 21st generation of elected officials has invested enough dough, cumulatively, in public facilities to serve growth (what growth?) well into the 22nd or 23rd Century (or end times in climate terms!). What with the airport ($24 million), that County Complex (138,000 sq. ft.?), the partially vacant Town Hall (and 69 associated buildings), a hospital (without doctors) and new school buildings (with fewer students), we’re set for the millennium.