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As someone who worked in the restaurant industry for 39 years, I read with interest the recent reporting on how restaurants are struggling. It’s scary for small businesses right now. Every single day they are faced with increasing costs of food, inadequate staffing, and a never-ending pandemic just to mention a few of the challenges that must be overcome to stay in business. In the midst of all this chaos, we’re getting a proposal thrown at us that would require a public takeover of our utilities. Really?
As I understand the proposal, we’re being asked if we want to borrow billions of dollars from big banks to pay for the assets of the state’s two biggest utilities. On top of that, we could pay tens of millions more every year to hire a company to operate those assets. That’s because an elected board would be in charge of the whole kit and caboodle but they’d need professionals who understand the electric grid to advise them on how to keep our lights on.
Here’s an interesting twist, they could hire one of our current utilities to provide this expertise. I believe it’s hard to beat professionals at their own game. Especially something as complex as our electric utilities. Needless to say, I’m very skeptical.
Dick Grotton
Scarborough
