LOGANSPORT STILL WORKING ON POWER PLANT PROJECT

Mayor Ted Franklin joined us on Talk of the Town Tuesday morning and provided some updates on the power plant project.

“The power plant updates … it’s still very, very complicated. I say that because if it were easy, everybody would be doing what we’re trying to do."

"I feel that we’ve made some significant progress again this week. I don’t want to give a timeline because there are so many demons that can jump out of the woodwork unexpectedly but hopefully we’ll have something soon. We’re still working on that, it’s really dominated my time in the mayor’s office. It’s just been a terribly, terribly complicated process. You know, I’m reluctant to give a, you know, a thorough update in that there are too many things that can go wrong."

"I guess I learn with time too and experience, don’t set your hopes too high because things can always go wrong, but we’re still hopeful and it will certainly be dealt with within the next couple of months one way or the other."

"I don’t look for any other extensions and I don’t look for any other partners in this. I think this will be it. If we’re not successful here, we’ll be forced to decide who our power supplier will be - whether we join MISO directly or whether we enter into a long term purchase power agreement with Duke Energy or if we join the Indiana Municipal Power Association. I think one of those three are probably the most likely to occur, but there are some other power suppliers that have obviously spoken to us and would like to at least submit a proposal. We’ve encouraged them to go ahead and give us a rough draft and really to zero in on the cost.Some have followed up with conversations that I’ve not been involved with, it’s really going through the utility service board and the utilities superintendent so I’m not privy to that, but still working on the power plant project as a whole and remain hopeful.”

July 15 had been referenced as a deadline for the project.

“I think deadline is probably a strong word,” Franklin said Tuesday. “Our goal was to have everything finished by July 15. That didn’t happen, again because it’s so complicated to try to pull together a couple hundred million dollars with a long-term payback over 25 years.”