Berlin Right To Fold On Utility Sale

In the poker game that had become the negotiations over
the sale of the Berlin electric system, it can be said the Berlin Mayor and
Council folded. As in any poker game, if you don’t have the cards and the odds
are stacked against you, that’s the only play.

While we felt selling the electric system was the wrong
direction from the beginning, the Berlin Mayor and Council deserves some credit
for backing out of the deal. An argument could certainly be made the course
charted by Berlin should have never been pursued in the first place, but the
elected officials were right to move ahead and officially end this unfortunate
state of affairs. Enough money has already been wasted and it would have
certainly taken hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete the deal, which we
believe townspeople would have regretted for years to come.

It was revealed this week the deal breaker was the Old
Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC) part of the equation. ODEC, which was to
take over the generation aspect of the plant, learned through an environmental
assessment of the utility there were old oil stains on the property in need of
remediation. It seems nobody was aware of it, and the town will soon bring in
the state Department of the Environment to clean the soiled areas.

Indications are even if ODEC had not backed out of the
deal, overall negotiations were not going well. Choptank was expected to
purchase the distribution part of the plant, but that has also been shelved, in
light of ODEC’s move.

With the Mayor and Council backing out of the deal, the
big question is: what happens next? There are lots of different thoughts here.

We have our own thoughts. The town needs to get a new
purchase agreement, one that can make the town proud and address the concerns
of the consumers, namely the rates they are paying. The council needs to
immediately meet with the Berlin Utility Commission and get on the same page.
That has not been the case in recent years as evidenced during last year’s
referendum on the fate of the utility. The BUC was against the sale, while a
majority of the Mayor and Council supported it. A slight majority of citizens
voted for the plant to be sold, but that support has been eroded over the
months.

Supporters of the utility sale intimated this week Berlin
is now “stuck with the electric plant” and “all its debt.” To a degree, that’s
true, but the debt was not going to miraculously disappear just because of the
plant’s sale. Additionally, for a municipality the size of Berlin, it’s not a
bad thing to own an electric plant. It should be a positive and allow the town
to pursue renewable energy options that exist in the marketplace.

One suggestion put forward in the Electric Subcommittee’s
report to the Mayor and Council this week was evaluating the utility as a
“stand-alone” fund or business. We think this is a worthwhile approach. The
utility should be independent of the town and we believe should not be managed
by elected officials, rather an expert in the field or at a minimum an individual
body immune to the politics of this small town.

A
new day is here. Berlin will continue to own its utility and we think there are
serious advantages to that. It needs to be viewed as a positive rather than a
negative. With a new general philosophy and a sound fiscal approach, the town
should be able to make the best of the situation. 

About The Author: Steven Green

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The writer has been with The Dispatch in various capacities since 1995, including serving as editor and publisher since 2004. His previous titles were managing editor, staff writer, sports editor, sales account manager and copy editor. Growing up in Salisbury before moving to Berlin, Green graduated from Worcester Preparatory School in 1993 and graduated from Loyola University Baltimore in 1997 with degrees in Communications (journalism concentration) and Political Science.