It's time for some sizzle at EPB, and time to re-light Chattanooga

Some electricity needs to crackle at EPB - the city-owned electricity and fiber optics cable distributor whose board last week told City Council members that the utility is working to fix a problem that has resulted in the city being overbilled for more than $1.2 million for Chattanooga streetlight energy.

But EPB President and CEO Harold DePriest -- surprise -- still says he believes the overbilling was balanced out by underbilling -- more mistakes -- on other accounting lines.

What is maddeningly ridiculous about all of this are the stalling tactics of the city and EPB. After months of conversation and about a half dozen audits or reviews, we're exactly where we began in April when the Times Free Press first reported the problem.

After Tuesday's City Council meeting, DePriest acknowledged to Times Free Press reporter Joy Lukachick Smith that EPB's accounting process was so error-ridden that utility officials couldn't determine how many high wattage lights had been replaced with lower wattage lights while the city was still paying for higher wattage through a maintenance contract.

In the meantime, the city has -- on the basis of EPB's flawed numbers -- not only spent our tax dollars unnecessarily, but also dumped an energy-efficient lighting system that would in the long run save us 70 percent in electricity costs. What's worse -- and frankly, unforgivable -- the city has essentially sent a new Chattanooga business packing. A business with up to 250 jobs. All on the claims of a utility that can't seem to figure out its own mess and refused for weeks to release its own audit by Mauldin & Jenkins -- which by the way, according to the city auditor, found more overbilling, $1.5 million, even than the city auditor's own $1.2 million assessment.

In 2012, a previous mayor and council gave Global Green Lighting owner Don Lepard a handshake promise to make the remaining streetlight replacements, and Lepard moved his factory from China to Chattanooga, first employing about 60 people and expecting to employ 250 as the city finished its project. When the project stalled because the new city leaders wouldn't move off the dime for the second and third phase of light replacements, Lepard had 5,000 lights in inventory and 60 laid-off workers.

But last week council members still took no action -- even after hearing a second time from the city auditor they had asked to review conflicting claims between Global Green and EPB. They didn't look to the city-owned EPB, as they should, and send some EPB officials packing. Not even after City Auditor Stan Sewell told them: "If I were running the EPB accounting department I would be embarrassed." Sewell stopped short of saying there was malice: "I don't see where anyone had anything to gain," he said.

That's reassuring, but not so much so that the mayor and council should do nothing. At Tuesday's meeting these so-called council leaders didn't even determine whether EPB needs to pay back the city and taxpayers.

The council opted not to do anything on the advice of Assistant City Attorney Phil Noblett, who pointed to a $10 million whistleblower lawsuit filed against EPB on behalf of the city and state by Lepard, who discovered the billing problem while installing the first third of 27,000 lights the previous Chattanooga City Council had voted to purchase. Lepard's early warnings to both EPB and the city government about the discrepancies in EPB numbers were brushed off.

Instead of settling the matter with the city, EPB instead began making covert changes to its billing procedures and attempted to discredit Lepard, according to Lepard's lawsuit. EPB also tried to stifle news stories and editorials about the matter by pulling the utility's newspaper advertisements.

In the first audit, Sewell found that following through with the replacement of all of the streetlights would cut the city's use of streetlight power by nearly 70 percent, and the lights -- warranted for 13 years but expected to last significantly longer -- would pay for themselves in 13.2 years. What other city service pays for itself ever, let alone in just over a dozen years?

The new mayor's administration, however, told the Times Free Press that it didn't make sense to replace working lights, and -- using EPB's flawed figures -- made a case that the new lights wouldn't live up to savings claims.

That thinking was then, and still is, wrongheaded.

What's not to like about being paid back $1.2 to $1.7 million (assuming EPB can't come up with some line item costs to prove DePriest's "it's a wash" claim)? What's not to like about a 70 percent power consumption savings, safer street lights that police could control from their cars, cleaner air, a hedge on climate change, and other possibilities like street light-based air monitoring that are only just beginning to become clear?

What's not to like (unless you're an EPB bean counter) about EPB's lost revenue (our savings) on maintenance that eventually would dwindle because the new lights meter themselves and send an alarm via computer when they eventually burn out or malfunction. Now finding a bad light requires crews who drive and look.

Yet our do-nothing council took no action. It's time to send some EPB managers packing instead of an entrepreneur -- a UTC graduate -- whose company in 2012 won the Kruesi award at the city's Spirit of Innovation meeting and who was on his way to creating 250 jobs here.

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