Customer issues continued to be at the forefront of Clarksdale Public Utilities matters when Bruce Ellis attended Tuesday’s meeting saying he has not been able operate his business Delta Cinema at 111 Third St. due to sewer line damages.
“Right now, you all are refusing to cover the damage, so I’m here to present a claim for damages, which is the first step in a lawsuit against CPU,” Ellis said.
He said he was informed by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company that sewer supervisor Willie Wolfe answered the claim.
“I would like a written notification within 10 business days to whether we should proceed in court,” Ellis said as he presented the claim to CPU board president James Hicks.
“If this is an appropriate claim, the statute allows 90 days for a utility to respond,” replied board attorney David Hunt before Ellis could walk out.
Ellis said the issue stemmed from a line on Third Street to halfway over Second Street last fall
“I guess I was a little worried about the time because I presented this to the city back in July,” said Ellis, claiming Travelers Insurance was a sewer issue.
Board member Donald Mitchell asked if Ellis talked to anyone in customer service.
Ellis said he attended a board meeting in September 2017
“I was told somebody would get back with me, but nobody has gotten back with me since then,” Ellis said.
Ellis said he filed a claim within 90 days.
“Somebody should be handling this insurance claim other than Willie Wolfe,” Ellis said. “I don’t think Wolfe has the qualifications to be handling a lawsuit, considering that you all have two attorneys at this facility.”
Ellis said he felt like an insurance company would handle the matter, but, if not, he will have to take legal action.
CPU general manager Curtis Boschert said after the meeting their insurance agent Fiser Insurance would be notified.
Annie Houston, who resides at 1532 Cedar St., was on the agenda and had been at past meetings, but decided not to attend Tuesday.
“I talked to Ms. Houston and, just kind of an update, an employee is going to be working with her and she didn’t feel the need to be here,” Boschert said.
Boschert also reported there were power outages Nov. 3 and 4 and the feedback he received was positive.
“Monica Jennings of Flowers Manor had a lot of good things to say about our response time and how the crews were out there kindly, courteous and worked hard to get the power back,” Boschert said. “She just wanted to let the commission know and pass that on to the employees.”
Also during executive session, CPU looked at a claim of a customer wanting to use a different utility company.
Boschert said the law requires customers to use CPU and they try to provide good service.
He reported during the meeting customers will not have their power cut off when there is bad weather.
Meg McNaul, an attorney for Thompson Coburn LLP from the Washington D.C. office, discussed the National Energy Regulatory Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and things to focus on in 2019.
McNaul said FERC falls under jurisdiction for reliability-related activities with CPU.
The standards for Clarksdale include vegetation management, tree trimming functions, system planning and modeling, cyber security, physical security, relay testing and maintenance.
“It’s really a wide range of utility activities,” McNaul said.
McNaul said penalties at the federal level could be as high as $1 million when there are violations, but that usually is not the case.
She said there are monthly compliance meetings that include her and Boschert.
“We go over in detail all of the reliability standards and we try to determine whether there is a need to update documentation, whether we’ve received new guidance information from the regulators that suggest we may want to make a procedural improvement, whether we learn anything from other organizations that might lead us to change our program to adopt a new best practice,” McNaul said. “It really covers a lot of different activities.”
At the end of the year, McNaul said priorities are identified. She said there will be some updated procedures in the first few months of 2019.
Boschert was pleased with McNaul’s report.
“I think that shows we’re in compliance with the federal standards,” he said. “She’s helping with that. We’re being proactive in those areas. We’re being compliant.”
In other business, administrative assistant to the general manager Teena Meredith had been suspended and went before the board for a hearing at the last meeting in October. She was officially terminated from CPU at the hearing.
