At the direction of the Pioche Town Board, the town transferred ownership of its electric utilities to the Lincoln County Power District (LCPD) in October.
District Attorney Dylan Frehner reported at the Oct. 21 county commission meeting that some of the concerns in the draft version between the two entities have been smoothed out.
Of major concern, he noted, was a “provision for indemnification,” which he explained means that if anything goes wrong with the system over the next 10 years, Pioche Public Utilities (PPU), thus Lincoln County, will be responsible for covering some of the damage.
“Over the past several weeks,” Frehner said, “We have looked at the possibility of LCPD increasing their insurance to cover any liability that was there and found that LCPD could increase their coverage. The cost, for at least the first year, would be about $15,000 to $16,000. So what we are looking at doing is using money from an existing capital improvement fund which PPU has for power purposes.”
“Right now,” Frehner added, “our proposal is to rework this where PPU would keep that money and then pay LCPD to increase their insurance over the next 10 years to make sure they have that liability coverage which would also remove the liability from PPU and the county.”
He said a final version of the revised agreement is expected to be presented to the commission board at the Nov. 4 meeting.
Pioche Town board member Phyllis Robistow said, “We got applause from the audience at our meeting when we made the decision to transfer ownership to LCPD.”
She also noted that County Auditor Dan McArthur of Las Vegas thought the idea of the insurance policy increase would work out just fine. “From an auditor’s standpoint, he was quite comfortable.”
LCPD General Manager Dave Luttrell said he was pleased with the idea as well.
