PRC/KCEC Update, Smith Box Tests New Councilors
The KCEC/PRC rate case hearing officer will hold a “pre-hearing conference for March 14, 2016, at 9:30 a.m. at the PERA Building in Santa Fe.” According to the notice, “the purpose of the pre-hearing is discussing procedural issues and details for the case.” The “Hearing Examiner Hurst will have a telephone line open for those wishing to participate via telephone. The numbers to dial are: 1-866-295-5950, Code 350382#. The line will open at 9:20 a.m.”
As noted yesterday, the PRC order granted the Coop motion to narrow the issues and rejected its own staff recommendations in paragraph 22. Staff claimed that “to ensure that the proposed rates are designed to recover costs solely related to the provision of electric service to its members and therefore it [staff] will need to determine that the proposed rates do not recover costs associated with KCEC’s diversified business activities, and that KCEC’s TIER, OTIER, and DSC ratios do not include debt associated with these diversified activities.”
In paragraph 25 the PRC order said that “Although Staff s Response to KCEC Motion to Narrow the Scope of Rate Hearing raises valid concerns about the scope of the hearing, the Commission finds, based upon the facts of the present case, that KCEC’s Motion to Narrow the Scope of Rate Hearing should be granted.” (Basically, KCEC and the PRC will only discuss highly technical issues surrounding the rate increase but not the mismanagement of the coop per the inordinate losses associated with diversification.)
As a sop to the opposition (protesters and members), the PRC added a fifth paragraph with nebulous, ambiguous language calculated to satisfy attorneys and the Coop. To wit:
“Is the increase in the monthly fixed charge for the residential class just and reasonable?” (Philosophers have spent 2500 years discussing the issues of justice and reason. Perhaps these PRC Commissioners know better.)
The rate increase is only based partially on a decline in demand for electricity. Mostly the request for higher charges stems from mismanagement, diversification, current and anticipated debt, and co-mingled finances, according to trustees who have spoken with Friction off the record over the years. The current Trustees, as everyone knows, have failed in their fiduciary responsibility, according to their cost of service study. But, as long as the PRC and KCEC CEO and Trustees manage to cover-up and keep the members from looking at the financial records, the Coop will continue down the profligate path toward bankruptcy.
Smith’s Big Box
At the public forum on the Smith’s Big Box/Couse Pasture development last night former Councilor Gene Sanchez raised the issue of why the Town has done no master planning per “Vision 2020,” the historic 1999-2000 mission statement regarding issues of growth, development, and quality of life aqui en Taos. Indeed, the Town manager avoided hiring competent personnel for the planning department until he could find “rubber stamps” (to approve his emails?).
The two newly elected councilors, Darien Fernandez and Matthew Evans will be sorely tested by the Barrone-Bellis administration’s machinations when the project comes up for review at the March 17 town meeting. In a highly unusual departure from standard operating procedure, the town is acting as the project’s “agent” in the rezoning process. The Quesnel area of the historic district could be next: Got to get the Bellis pub parking lot up and running. We’re talking “conflict of interest” here.
As Sanchez noted, “they [the town] are just going to do what they want.” When the citizens were fighting a developer’s request to change the code to accommodate the Super Walmart, one of the leaders against the project, “Nervous Jervis,” kept saying, “the fix is in.” He, Fritz Hahn, was surprised when Meliton Struck, Erlinda Gonzales, and Bobby Duran voted against the zoning change and stopped the behemoth. Today, like Nervous Jervis, we assume the “fix is in.”
We hear Councilor Cantu is all for slowing down or stopping the project until the area can be “master planned.” When Judi wanted to fire Bellis last spring, “the newcomers” gathered in force at Barrone and Hahn’s instigation and figuratively “lynched” the woman, a disgusting example of crowd hysteria, worthy of “Trumpism.” Judi backed off but you reap the sleaze you sow.
The sleaze from the Barrone administration originates at the Public Works Department where, according to the whistle blower’s documents and town’s paid hush money, the worst violations of the procurement code begin. Now fertilized by the attorney’s sins of omission and outright lies of the manager, the sleaze runs down Camino de la Placita to the Plaza. There the machinations of the Town cabal, the arbitrary and capricious “closures,” are pushing out the merchants who serve the “blue hairs” (Bellis’s description). The detritus gathers momentum as it pours (like underground storm water into the Spring Ditch) right down the middle of Highway 68 to Smiths and into the Los Pandos and Montoya St. neighborhoods, aided and abetted by the “dirty hands” of executives.
Mayor Barrone long ago abandoned his residence on Zuni St. in town to one of his children, we’re told. He lit out for the high ground back “up on the hill” in Las Colonias adjacent to Olguin’s sawmill. As long as he can play Santa Claus with Xmas lights and stick the “pig” to feed the poor, he’s happy to play the preacher.
I’m sorry to say so many of us voted for this “bait and switch” carpetbagger gang in Town Hall. We Taosenos have met the enemy and “he is us.” I hear a neighborhood organization is forming to fight the Town’s Big Box rezoning process. The litigation should carry over into the next mayoral election.
It ain’t about the Farmer’s Market: now it’s about your neighborhood. And we hear “the fix is in.”