Lamar Utilities Board Chairman Thrall’s email to Lamar City Council prior to City Council decision to reject offer concerning returning ARPA funds in exchange for water discharge permit

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Lamar Utilities Board Chairman Doug Thrall shared with The Prowers Journal the email he sent to the Lamar City Council, Mayor Crespin and City Administrator Hammes prior to the City Council meeting of July 13.  At that meeting City Council voted to reject the LUB’s resolution offer.

Greetings to All:

As Chairman of the Lamar Utility Board, I am reaching out to each of you in the hopes of coming to a final resolution with our ongoing issue as it relates to the $350,000.00 annual payment in the settlement agreement with ARPA for the failed power plant.

To summarize the Board’s thought process, I would like to share with you a few brief thoughts to ponder.

1. Who makes the payment on the bond loans for the failed power plant?  The answer is ARPA.
2. Where does ARPA get the funds to make those payments?  The answer is from all the participating cities who are members of ARPA.
3. Where do the cities get the money to pay ARPA?  The answer is from the electric customer base from each city.

The customers who purchase electricity from LUB are all the citizens, businesses, farmers and ranchers who live and work within the reach of the City of Lamar and LUB. As you are aware, we were the only ARPA member that filed the legal action against ARPA for the failed power plant, which resulted in a very large settlement.

We at LUB understand that the City of Lamar has a fiduciary responsibility to their customer base, as does LUB. We also understand that the City of Lamar is required to provide a municipal sewage treatment plant for its sewage customers. The difference is that LUB’s customer base far exceeds the City of Lamar’s customer base. Additionally, most of the LUB customer base that we serve outside the City limits will never have the opportunity to hook up to the City of Lamar sewage treatment plant.  Lastly, the City of Lamar has access to Federal funds and grants to offset the cost of the sewage treatment plant.

Several weeks ago LUB offered a win-win resolution to this issue to Mayor Crespin and to date, have heard nothing back. Our request to the City Council members is that you restore the ARPA settlement funds back to LUB, as they were in the past, and let us at LUB help you with the needs the City of Lamar has, at the least overall expense possible to all of our mutual customers. We all live and work here and it’s time we joined together to resolve this issue.

We look forward to each of your thoughts.

Respectfully,

Douglas Thrall, Chairman of the Lamar Utility Board