Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Hay River (Aug 28/00) - The people of Hay River will have no direct say in who will be the town's next power distributor.

The utilities committee -- composed of town councillors -- will make recommendations and council will vote to ratify whether the Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) or Northland Utilities (NUL) will become the next franchise holder.

Mayor Jack Rowe said council has been elected to make decisions like this and feels public input will only inflame the issue.

"If it went to a public meeting, what we would have is proponents of the NWT Power Corporation on one side of the room and proponents of NUL on the other side of the room.

"Really, we'd just have this clash of sides, rather than a gathering of additional information," he said. "We think we've been vested with the authority, as municipal council, to decide on who the power distributor should be."

The town utility committee is currently reviewing both proposals and seeking advice from southern consultants before making the information public.

"We're going to bring that information to a committee of the whole on Sept. 11, with a recommendation from the utility committee," he said.

"From there, we will make a motion before a special meeting of council Sept. 18," he added. "At that point in time, the decision will either be ratified or put down."

Both proposals have been kept under wraps by council, pending authority to release the information, Rowe said.

"The reason we're not going fully public with it, is that in both proposals the package was marked confidential," Rowe said. "When we had our public presentations by both proponents, they didn't really come forward and say that 'our package is no longer confidential,' so we can't really release all the information that was covered within that."

With the proposals in hand, council still needs further clarification as to just what both companies are offering.

"We're gathering information in the form of a Q and A, so we know what they are offering, basically, so we are comparing apples to apples," Rowe said.

Rowe said the philosophical debate of a Crown corporation competing with private enterprise should have been addressed by legislation.

"That decision, as far as I'm concerned, should have been rationalized or should have been clarified before any of this," he said. "That's not an issue we have to deal with."

The mayor said the credibility of either proponent is not in question and once the data is clarified, the decision should be made forthwith.

"We're talking about two proponents who both have got over 50 years of service in the North, capable of providing quality service and it gets down to finding out which package is best," he said. "Are we rushing things along? I don't think so."