Dim Bulbs!
Community Still Getting Con Ed Bill Even though they Spent $90M to Build Own Power Plant
By Michael Horowitz
BRONX, NEW YORK, APRIL 25- Riverbay assistant treasurer Daryl Johnson startled the community, early last year, with a revelation that Co-op City had paid Con Edison $17 million over the previous two years to help provide electricity to the local community.
Johnson’s revelation was especially striking, since the Co-op City Times and City News had repeatedly reported, in recent years, that the Riverbay Corporation’s cogeneration plant, which cost $90 million to build, had enabled the community to generate electricity without Con Edison.
In recent years, Johnson, who has an extensive background in auditing, has been compiling financial data aimed at bolstering his case that fiscal waste is rampant at the Riverbay Corporation.
Putting this seeming waste into perspective, an expenditure of $17 million represents approximately 17 percent in carrying charges.
Asked to comment on his startling revelation about $17 million in payments to Con Edison, Johnson said, last year, that he was looking into the matter and its implications relating to management, the Riverbay board, and the Co-op City community as a whole.
“We need to investigate about what’s going on in terms of how Co-op City spends its money in this and a wide assortment of other areas,” Johnson stressed, in a telephone interview last year.. “It’s really hard to piece something like this together when you’re dealing with a management that stonewalls you as much as possible.”
Informed observers, commenting last year, stressed that they found it more than a bit strange that Co-op City, which has had a state-of-the art cogeneration plant since 2009, paid Con Edison $17 million over the last two years to help generate electricity for the local community.
One shareholder, upon hearing about the payments to Con Edison, stressed, at the time “I thought we were generating our own electricity. In Co-op City, we seem to be dealing with a bunch of sleazes who think nothing of wasting the shareholders’ hard-earned money. What goes on in Co-op City is enough to make you want to throw up. We don’t get answers from management; all we get is a bunch of bs.”
