Dear Editor:

I am responding to a letter that the mayor of Hogansville, Jimmy Jackson, wrote to the editor of the LaGrange Daily News. Mayor Jackson’s letter addressed the Diverse Power deal that is pending, and he unfortunately misunderstood some important details of that offer.

I was at the meeting where Councilman Jack Leidner presented the facts of the Diverse Power offer. The mayor seems to have missed a couple of important key points of that proposal. If the city of Hogansville were to accept the Diverse Power proposal, the loan from 1993 in the amount of $6 million would be paid in full. The mayor is correct that Hogansville will have to pay Diverse Power $650,000 to run the electric plant for us. What the mayor neglected to take into consideration is that Hogansville currently pays $650,000 to manage the plant on our own now. So in fact that $650K is already a city commitment and not a new cost as the mayor indicated.

Also, the mayor further forgot to mention that Diverse Power will immediately begin to upgrade the city’s power plant infrastructure. Currently Hogansville has no money to spend on upgrades due in part to the money we are committed to spending to repay the $6 million we still owe on the 1993 loan.

The Diverse Power proposal is clearly an excellent deal for Hogansville. Not only will we realize added funds to our budged because we will no longer be paying on the 1993 debt, we will see upgrades to our electrical distribution system which ultimately could lead to savings for Hogansville’s citizens.

Candice M. Collings

Oak Street, Hogansville