SouthsideCentral was LIVE! at Danville City Hall for today’s Danville Utility Commission meeting. This article is complete, so enjoy the recap.
We’re underway. Mike Nicholas is out today and City Council hasn’t appointed a replacement for Dawn Witter yet.
Patricia Conner goes over the financial statements.
Next, the commission approves using $2 million in unrestricted cash to write down the power cost adjustment deficit. That will move it from -$17 to -$15 million dollars. Bill Donohue semi-questions the financial justification of the move, but eventually agrees.
Finance Director Michael Adkins says that it’s financially safe for Danville Utilities to use $2,000,000 of cash to write down the Power Cost Adjustment account.
Total citizen attendance at today’s meeting: Goose Egg!
Jim Turpin appears to be “Blinded By Science!” here, but he’s just talking.
I notice that Bill Donohue is sitting on the right side of the table today beside Bob Schasse. Schasse is the member that nominated Donohue for chairman last month.
Arnold Hendrix stops by for a few minutes.
Next, we move to hearing the results of a study on potential threats to Danville’s water supply.
The study consultant said pretty much what we all know, then left after her presentation was done.
The bottom line is that are lots of potential threats to Danville’s water supply and the only thing that the city can do is react to any problem.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Next, we wrap up the business with a proposal for a pilot project on changing some streetlights to LED bulbs. The conversation moves to how the city pays for streetlights. The city gets about $1.2 million from the state for streetlight use and other things. That’s based on the number of miles of road in the city limits. Streetlights are unmetered electrical service and are billed on a X dollars a month rate. The “How much electricity do Danville’s streetlights use in one year?”. Bill Donohue did some quick calculations and came up with $950,000. That amount was highly questionable to me, and I asked him about it after the meeting. He said he used 12 cents a kilowatt hour as his price (right now, Danville charges around 11.9 cents for the residential rate). The big flaw to Donohue’s equation was that he was going with the residential rate. It’s safe to assume that if this was a metered service, the kilowatt hour price would be lower based on such a high volume.
Chairman Phillip Smith made a good point by saying that the city of Danville should be treated at arms’ length as a regular customer would be. That’s easier said than done, but he’s right. We’ll see how this pilot project works in the coming year. That’s the end of the new business, so it’s around the horn time.
Barry Dunkley says that the new carbon feeder for the water plant has finally been installed. He also says that the environmental study about the stinky water issue has come back, and it looks like the study company also wasn’t able to find a conclusive reason for the problem.
We’re done! I hope you’ve enjoyed the most detailed coverage and photos from this meeting. We’ve got more coming up on SouthsideCentral.
During the Feb 23rd meeting this year the deficit for the Danville Utilities was reported as $18.3 million. Can you find out how the deficit was reduced $1.3 million in six months? That is an extraordinary reduction in 6 months… not quite as good as writing down the presently reported -$17 million to -$15. I am wondering if they did a write down previously and failed to report. If so, WHY? My confidence level in Danville government is fast waning………
Excellent question. That reduction happened as expected with the rate increase revenue. The easiest way to explain it to people is that customers were underpaying the actual cost of electricity for many years due to bad advice from the rate consultant.