Who stole the money from the Coop?

When you, member of the Kit Carson Electric Coop, go to vote today at the Cruz Alta HQ, ask the trustees, the attorneys and management, why and how the bandidos got away with an estimated $210,000 in cash and checks in a daylight robbery, so blatant and so obvious as to cast suspicion on Coop employees? While Luis spins the news, we all caught up the wake of this dervish’s deceitful doings. But where are the cops and are they chasing the robbers on Cruz Alta St?

Though many of us have always liked Trustee Manuel Medina, we can’t understand his turn toward the spendthrift ways, the support for Propane losses, the open check book during the last decade for trustee travel to Las Vegas, New Orleans, Disney Land, and Hot Springs, Arkansas. Why Manuel, why?

We members understand why Manuel and Luis find a worthy opponent in Tri-State but deplore the displacement of revenue from Coop budgets to line items for attorneys, attorneys. These same attorneys benefitted to the tune of $500,000 in the recent KCEC request for rate hikes from the PRC, in which the Coop’s solicitors were deployed against more than 300 members who protested against rate increases. The PRC would have given the Coop a rate increase regardless, just to keep it solvent. The trustees seem to think the members are the enemy.

Now the Coop wants to force not only rate payers but taxpayers into supporting the folly at the Command Center, a poorly designed and expensive bit of architecture and appeal to public safety—as if Taosenos were under siege by terrorists. The only serious threat to Taosenos, besides a declining economy and increasing public-private debt, is Mother Nature. Historically, the Taoseno has survived destructive storms and floods, drought and fire, due to experience and tenacity despite the disorganization of utility management and overlays of government bureaucracy.

Incumbent trustee David Torres told The Taos News “I have made it my business in life to take on bullies, tyrants and heavy-handed companies.” If that’s true, Torres need look to the left and right and across the semi-circular seating arrangement at monthly KCEC board meetings for a tyrant or a bully. We have yet to hear or see David in action.

For the Coop can be seen as “bullying” the Town of Taos and its taxpayers into signing a lease…someday…at the Command Center. There is no other explanation of the financial folly—no matter what the Mayor or CEO say. And the electric Coop is a monopoly, the perfect home for the bullies, who prosper, due to political gerrymandering and the inherent bias of power against transparency.

Vote today for Andres Vargas, a fiery outspoken attorney, who represents a voice with questions for the overseers of the Coop. We members are constantly told we own the Coop but a majority of the Trustees and management, who occupy the chairs, have removed the Coop from public purview and oversight. As Trustee Virgil Martinez, a member of the minority, has said, “We can’t take care of our money or our loans.”

Forget about outages; deposit the members’ money in the bank. What could be simpler? Then ask yourself, “How many trustees does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer: “None. They ask Luis to do if for them.” And therein lies the rub.