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Show John- , , . . ' : IPA Disagrees ! Om Facts Of Bond Sales . a ! By GARY R. BLODGETT y News Editor I An Intermountain Power Agency (IP A) Tf official said this week that statements made by Bountiful Mayor Dean S. Stahle about cost savings to th IPA were "misleading and inaccurate." conte MAYOR STAHLE noted in a meeting of J': the Bountiful City Council that their (city's) m action to delay approval for reduction in :jr K; size of the proposed Intermountain Power tyStr Project (IPP) plant near Delta "saved the ediait: project between $170 million and $200 million." mil-lion." The mayor explained that the two-month ;son 'c delay actually helped, rather than hinder the 1,-ing. e I Project, because declining interest rates jmk during that period would result in the plant "Dei j saving an estimated $170 million to $200 11 ! million in additional interest for the multi-iorT;'i multi-iorT;'i billion plant. ' BUT IPA Board Chairman Reece Nielsen zed ifc Mid that using the same figures as Bountiful : H for determining interest on the $900 million i sl" bond issue, the project lost $42 million instead in-stead of saving money because of the delay ,y.ni;1 in construction. info- i "Dates for determining those savings r';; were misleading," Mr. Nielsen said. Id f a HE EXPLAINED that because contracts nirtf 10 De rewritten, the deadline for sale of v-n'-i" toids was set back to Jan. 31. "Even then, use ' Participants in southern California did not :lllJf' get their contracts signed and returned until Feb. 15," said Mr. Nielsen. "Thus, when Bountiful finally decided to sign, the elapsed time was only two weeks, not two months, and during those last few days the interest rate actually increased slightly so that the IPP lost money." MR. NIELSEN emphasized, however, that he is not upset at Bountiful officials or anyone else about the delay. "As for the change in interest rates, no one could predict pre-dict that," he said. Bountiful officials delayed signing the contracts for the project -- thus holding up the sale of bonds - because of negotiations between Bountiful and Utah Power and Light Company, one ofthe principal share holders in the IPP. MAYOR STAHLE stressed that figures used by Bountiful officials to estimate the savings to UP&L date back to the original deadline, Dec. 31, 1982. "That's the date IPA officials were pressing press-ing for, and it was a combination of delays by the Intermountain Power Project and southern California that necessitated the final contracts by southern California to be delayed until Feb. 15," Mayor Stahle explained. ex-plained. "MR. NIELSEN is basing his figures from that date (Feb. 15) instead of Dec. 31, the IPA's original deadline. Based on the original ori-ginal deadline, the savings would have been $170 million to $200,000 million." |
