GALION, Ohio – Galion citizens and business owners met at the Galion Public Library, and listened via Livestream Galion, to hear about electric bills, electric rates, and a possible ballot issue.
Galion resident and former council president Don Faulds explained some of the history of Galion’s electric power. At first, Galion provided power from its own power plant. Then Galion bought power from larger power producers. One of those producers was American Municipal Power which began building its own power plants. AMP is a non-profit company, said Faulds. All cost of power is passed on to its customers.
Faulds went on to explain that some of AMP’s power plants have not been successful, such as the plant in Meigs County, which is no longer in production. “We were billed but never got power …we don’t know if we ever paid that off,” he said, referring to Galion’s portion of the power plant cost.
In October of 2007, AMP urged Galion to invest in the new Prairie State power plant which they did. Fauld believes that was a bad decision because: 1. The city bought more power than they needed; 2. The costs for plant construction have gone over estimates; 3. The contract is for 50 years; 4. There is no state (Ohio) oversight for this plant [Prairie State is in Illinois]; 5. Cost for producing power at the new plant has “skyrocketed from month to month;” and 6. Payments for the Prairie State power are levelized and deferred.
Using an overhead projector, Faulds showed the audience a power bill that the city receives from AMP and a break-down of the entire city’s power suppliers and how much the city pays for each. He noted that 71 percent of all Galion’s power comes from the Prairie State campus.
John Smella explained that Galion is not complying with one of its ordinances, specifically the power cost adjuster which refigures the cost of power coming to the city and passes that number on to the customer. According to the ordinance, adjustments to every customer’s bill should be made in February and in August, said Smella. Using the PCA calculation, customer cost would rise or fall with the city’s cost of power and the electric fund would be maintained at $3 million.
Instead, in 2009 the PCA was placed at +2 cents and left there taking the electric fund up to $7 million. By ordinance, the fund was to be set at $3 million, he said. After many records requests from the city, Smella said it is clear that there is no record of any recalculation of the PCA since 2009. Smella said the extra $3,830,000 belongs to Galion power customers.
Past council member and former law director Roberta Wade said that historically the PCA was sometimes in the negative and there was a reduction in customers’ bills. Wade feels the mayor is pushing to use the surplus fund balance to subsidize the rates. She feels that the subsidized rates will give a break to the large power users.
“That money needs to go back to the ones that paid for it,” Wade said.
Wade stated there were three ways to fix the problem: 1. Council could make sure the ordinance was followed, 2. The citizens could participate in a class action lawsuit, or 3. The citizens could put an issue on the ballot.
With the council not moving on the ordinance issue and a class action lawsuit too expensive, the plan, said Wade, is to begin circulating petitions to put the issue of a power cost rebate on the November 2015 ballot. The rebate will be for over payment from 2008 to 2013. If passed those customers who have moved away from Galion will also receive a rebate. Any unclaimed checks will go to the division of unclaimed funds.
For more information on this issue call Don Faulds at 419-468-3936.
