Dear Friends and
Neighbors,
You do not need to be an engineer to understand the problem with the Siemens Cogeneration plant at Warren County.
The Siemen’s Annual Performance Report shows energy savings for year one $299,950.
Niagara Mohawk records reflect before the Cogen was built in 2004 energy cost of $269,052.
How can you save more in energy than you spent the year before?
This is what former Warren County Treasurer Frank O’Keefe and Deputy County Treasurer Rob Lynch were trying to get across to the Board of Supervisors right from the start.
The stipulated savings being reported by Siemens did not make sense. They were not being reflected in the actual bills that were being paid. This was the County Treasurer and Deputy Treasurer reporting this. Yet this input was ignored by the County Administrator, County Attorney and by most of the supervisors on the board.
Like I said you don’t have to be an engineer to understand this.
Where you do have to be an engineer, however, is in understanding the Siemens Cogen contract and the stipulated savings. For some inexplicable reason the Warren County Attorney at the time, now County Administrator Paul Dusek, did not seek independent engineering expertise when reviewing and recommending the contract to Warren County Supervisors. He chose instead to trust Siemens.
The controversy has been taken to a new level this past week with the release of the Warren County Sheriff investigator’s report of the Siemen’s Cogen. Here are three documents:
http://www.westcottupny.com/2015/10/03/cogen-warren-county-sheriff-investigator-report/
Supervisors Rachel Seeber and Doug Beaty have publicly called for new leadership at the county. The newspaper has asked for a special prosecutor to be appointed. I’d also ask for there to be a review of how the Board of Supervisors operates and where is the board’s accountability in this?
It is time for the County to learn from past mistakes.
The County needs new leadership and can start by seeking a new County Administrator from outside of Warren County to come in with a fresh and unbiased approach. This person should conduct a review of how the county does business and responds to credible input from the community. All too frequently good, free advice from concerned citizens is ignored.
In the case of the Cogen not only were the County Treasurer and Deputy Treasurer raising concerns for years, but there were multiple local, credible engineers who were questioning the Siemens deal from the start – Doug Auer, Lincoln Cathers (deceased), David Kline, Warren DPW Superintendent Bill Remington, and of late Travis Whitehead, Gif Harvey and Joe Kervin.
Why in the world would you not listen to these people? And to make matters worse the county entered into two more energy contracts with Siemens after these people had already raised concerns about the Cogen.
These deals too should be audited and reviewed.
This is my fourth year on the board and more than anything I would like to see this culture change at the county. Insular, closed door decisions are still going on. The most recent example was the poor handling of the nursing home sale where the final deal was not even close to what was in the original Request for Proposal (RFP) – http://www.westcottupny.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/106-Not-Even-Close.pdf.
I want to acknowledge the outstanding work done by the Sheriff’s office. The report is meticulously detailed and documented. It took courage to release this report. There was pressure not to release it. There will be a push from some to try and discredit this work, so read the report and draw your own conclusions.
When I got on the board and started to report on the issues with the Cogen the former Treasurer Frank O’Keefe called. The first thing he said about the Cogen?
“It stinks to high heaven.”
Mark Westcott