CRAB HALL Takes Aim at Arroyos del Norte

Hue and Cry over Coop Rates

Vista Grande Charter School?

Early Warning Calls for Pre-emptive strike. Phone your TMS board member. Call your Representative. Be True to Your School. Attend the next board meeting.

While at least one board member plays footsie with millionaire Rob Perry’s La Tejana and another is MIA, Flavio says, “Crab Hall administrators are conspiring to turn Arroyos del Norte Elementary school into the Vista Grande Charter school and bus Los poquito Taosenos into Enos Garcia.”

“Say it ain’t true.”

“No, non, that’s what the CRABS tell me.”

“Por Que Flavio?”

Los administrators don’t want no more cuts in pay. They missed a financial deadline and the state is reducing the TMS budget by 5%. So they plan to cut out a whole school to save money and preserve their administrative positions.”

“Sounds so like a Republican. Next they’ll be signing vouchers and giving tax credits to private schools.”

“If La Tejana wins the election, say goodbye to the public schools. But say goodbye –or not?–to Arroyos Del Norte—your neighborhood school if you live in Arroyo Seco, Arroyo Hondo, Desmontes, and Valdez.”

Contact the mainstream media to follow up and clarify this “rumor.” We see smoke; you call in the firefighters. Or call your favorite board member—if you have one. Show up at the next school board meeting.

First, “they” want to fly over head with Wild Ospreys. Now “they” want to scoot your school out from under you. Next, “they” are coming for your water and your land.

Be very afraid.

Commissioners Pound Reyes & Ortega

San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy congratulates Cody Ross (13) after Game 3 of baseball's National League Championship Series against the Philadelphia Phillies Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010, in San Francisco.

The reports about Taos County Commissioners pummeling the Coop started coming in during the San Francisco 3-0 victory over Philadelphia yesterday afternoon. Thanks to Carlsbad native Cody Ross, the Giants lead the Phillies 2-1 in the NLCS. Sport, in contrast to politics, offers a beginning, middle, and end to the story. The players, unlike politicos, can generally be measured, according to merit: add up the hits and runs, see the final score. You can spin the stats but not the outcome.

According to Flavia and Flavio, Commissioners Jaramillo and Chavez struck out CEO Reyes several times and turned his bat boy, Pres. Bobby Ortega inside out during a very public session on KCEC’s proposed rate increases. Apparently, the issue of transparent P&L statements, high executive compensation, trustee expenses, millions of dollars in new Coop debt for Broadband expansion were discussed and dismissed. Commissioners summarized Coop procedures as contemptible disregard for the members’ interests.

Reyes, Ortega, and the Rubber Stampers at KCEC generally conduct their business in the quasi-private confines of their Cruz Alta HQ. By manipulating the trustees’ desire for travel vouchers and responding to requests for personnel hires or continuing the “contracts for cuates” program, Reyes keeps the boys in line. Though he does have trouble with “that woman from Pot Creek and the Man from Cerro.”

Virgil Martinez & Luisa Mylet

At the end of August, the trustees voted to give the CEO a raise, and then they voted 9-2 (Luisa and Virgil voting “NO”) to increase electricity rates for members. And then several trustees went off to a “Broadband Conference” in Atlanta. The trustees love to travel and Broadband is another opportunity—like Propane and the Internet, the Command and Call Centers, Tri-State and Statewide, the Roundhouse in SF and the Capitol in D.C. The trustees will tell you “Face to face” sessions with the “Big Boys” in the Coop world have brought Taosenos dividends. But they won’t talk about the “mucho millions of dollars” in debt taken on so Luis can garner all those headlines re: Solar excess and the world of the wired.

As Nick the Nitpicker reminded Reyes and Ortega yesterday, according to Bruja Flavia, the Coop has failed miserably at diversification, losing millions in Propane and Internet projects. Now the Coop wants to compete with Qwest, local providers, and the fast-moving techno-world, taking on $20 million in debt, in a world where geeks prevail in an environment as unfamiliar to trustees as the world of public scrutiny. (We hear complaints constantly about Kit Carson’s lack of Internet service.) The activists, led by St. Jerome Lucero and Lightning Mouth Linda Bence, have been joined by the County Commissioners—the traditional representatives of the people in our Jacksonian democracy aqui en Taos.

As Commissioner Chavez noted yesterday, the Coop has lost some $800,000 last year, and will probably lose a similar amount again this year, and maybe next year. (Yet raises and travel allowances continue.) Commissioner Sanchez wondered about seniors on fixed income. Commissioner Barrone generally speculated about the debt and how the assets of the Coop collateralized adventures in diversification. Regardless of what Luis the Rabbit says, nobody loans money to the Coop sans electric-rate payer members. We pay the freight for traveling trustees and Luis’s headlines.

Luis dances around balance sheets and line items in the budgets for diversification like a medieval scholar debating the number of angels who dance on the head of a pin. He’s as clever as a stand-up comic with a gift of gab equally as entertaining. But, unlike the Rubber Stamp board, the Commissioners and the Public apparently don’t buy into those who do the “Hustle My Bustle.”

Flavia said the Rabbit and President Jiggle Juggle left the commission chambers red-faced and upset. Up in Penasco, members say Ernest Gonzales may give incumbent trustees a go in 2012. A local Haberdasher is lining up support for St. Jerome in Taos. In Questa, rate-payers say Marty Martinez, former Coop employee and longtime music maker may give Bob a run for the board. Candidates are declaring early and the trustees are bleeding red like the books at KCEC.

I’m sorry I missed the Nick and Andrew show. Bruja Butchie said it was like the old days at the Commission. Viva los Cincos.

But how about Cody Ross of Carlsbad and them Giants?

Pesky Friends:

Consult KCEC’s “Notice of Proposed Rate Adjustment,” mailed by the Coop to members for information regarding residential and commercial increases. According to the notice, the Coop “will file proposed rate schedules under Advice Notice No. 57, on November 15, 2010, with the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (“Commission”), which will result in a rate adjustment to all consumers of KCEC. “

Editor’s Note:  According to the current proposal, the average residential or commercial member of the Coop, who uses less energy,  will be penalized by paying a higher percentage of the increase than those who use more energy. Efficient or low energy home users are penalized as are low-end commercial customers–according to the Coop’s projections.

We advise members to read the “Instructions for Protesting” carefully. The form is designed to deny, not to help, members with the process. For instance, you must copy the Coop with a form and send ten (10) copies of the rate protest form and certificate of service to the PRC. And you don’t need a lawyer. Download the above form or email bwhaley@newmex.com for an email friendly or Microsoft Word document.