The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1908-01-10

money by 80 dong. lie has, now
ever, made several Intellectual attempts
10 try and get an amicabIc feeling be-
tween himself aud the citizens, also
the council.
He had the Executive Committee of
the business Mems Club called together
aud went over his commercial contract
with them, section by section, aud
asked that they indOTsc same. they at
the Time asking him to print some ad-
dtiuns to same, which was done at
once. Still their endorsement up to
the present has not been received, aud
Que Of the advisory board appeared
before the City Council and asked
that they do not give me the city con
tract until get together with the
business men.
After the meeting Of the council
dodgers were passed out asking the
city 10 meet me and discuss the light
ing situation with view of getting
our position more clearly defined.
Explanations by the lessee of the DIFF.
ference between Hat rate Lighting aud
lighting by meter were made, aud any
question shat was asked was very
chccifully answered. This seemed to
bring about Il much better feeling
between the public aud lessee and the
work of installing meters went along
rapidly.
At special adjourned meeting Of
the council a committee was appointed
- investigate various municipal plants,
aud this has been done to consider
able degree, and apparently where
authentic information has been avail.
able has shown this committee the
fact that nearly all the municipal
plants are failures aud only an added
expense 10 the city aud an increase of
taxes.
The committee on Lighting then
asked the lessee to make proposition
on lighting the streets, leaving the i'm.
preston that they would likely build
their own plant and wanted it for II
short time only. This was done al
once, giving them price of II cts
per H. ". hour for one months con-
tract; | cts. per X, W hour for six
months contract; 10 cts. per X, W.
hour for one years contract, and = y
cts. per X. w. hour for five years
contract. With this proposition was
handed them statement as to our
actual cost of making X. W. hour
under our present conditions and what
we hoped to get our cost to when we
started our better engine, that we now
have standing on foundation at the
plant; and all the above was based on
this latter cost with less than five per
cent profit to the plant.
The Lighting Committee when tax
ing this away seemed to think it fair
but later said council would not accept
il. We then made another proposition
to take the contract for one year, first
6 months ia be our actual cost Of pro-
ducing current and next six months to
have sliding scale, bringing it down
during the year to % per cent below
our present cost, which we could only
do by considerably increasing the
present load on the plant, say prac.
ideally doubling same, and that at the
end of the year we would be willing
to make live-ycnr contract at what
would be about : cts. per X. ". This
was also turned down by the COM
mttee.
Following this came the first offer
from the committee to give this com.
pany contract, which was n propO-
sition to light the streets for cts less
per X. W hour than the plant can
make the current for, aud of course
we had to turn it down, AS we are not
willing to lose about $500 per year on
the street lighting contract.
The plant to-day is running at II
considerable loss and is still holding
up its service. This will be continued
until the limited capital Of lessee is ex-
hausted, in the hope of getting justice
from the citizens of Pennington and
the council, but when the capital is
exhausted this plant will be closed
down and the town 60 back to coal
oil and other kinds OF lighting. This
can be taken us idle talk. but the les.
see in this article has endcavorcd to
put forth the actual facts ~ near as he
can, and believes that Mr.. ". K.
Taylor, one of the committee, whom
the writer believes a fair aud unbiased
citizen, will endorse the above as truth
in every particular and that he IS sat
islied that the lessee has been doing
everything in his power to get proper
adjustment of the Lightning situation
All our propositions were turned
down by the council at its meeting last
| Monday NIGHT and A snprial plpctiOn