A reader recently asked: Who is the exec. director Sustainable Westchester? I can't find it on their website. I have heard that it's Bob Elliott.
ANSWER: The following information is publicly available and was obtained from the links below.
Sustainable Westchester calls itself a "consortium" of Westchester municipalities but in reality, it is a corporation that is not subject to FOIL, so it is not required to make disclosures about its leadership or its earnings based on requests from the public. According to GuideStar, a 501(c)(3) organization that collects and disseminates information about IRS registered nonprofit organizations, former Democratic Croton mayor Bob Elliott currently serves as Sustainable Westchester's "principal officer". He was introduced to attendees of a Zero Emissions Summit held in September 2017 as Sustainable Westchester's "Executive Director". Prior to Elliott's employment with SW, former Democratic Croton mayor Leo Wiegman served as SW's "Executive Director".
Residents are reminded that the current all-Croton Democrat board of trustees will be voting on 2/20/18 (closed Monday for President's Day) to place the village into SW's Community Choice Aggregation program. Although at least two other competitors of Sustainable Westchester approached the village with a proposal to form a CCA program for the village (one of which promised the village that no taxpayer dollars would need to be spent to form it), it appears that neither other company's proposal has been considered by the current board, and that the village will be paying the costs of promoting and implementing SW's program.
According to GuideStar, SW earned over $300,000 in 2016, and according to the agreement that the village will sign with SW, Sustainable Westchester will receive a payment for each kilowatt hour used by village electric consumers who remain in the program.
HERE ARE THE LINKS: https://www.guidestar.org/profile/35-2397750
and http://www.globalcrisisnow.org/zeroemissionssummit2017/
****NOTE: RESIDENTS WHO WISH TO OPT OUT BY CALLING CON EDISON DIRECTLY, see more info here http://bit.ly/2C2dC9u
NOTE 2/21 UPDATED; BOARD CHOOSES CCA; OPT OUT INFO AND MORE HERE http://everythingcroton.blogspot.com/2018/02/board-chooses-your-energy-supplier-opt.html
That is the real issue with SW: lack of transparency and lack of accountability.
ReplyDeleteIt is actually worse than noted in the article, because the entity structure does not even have the same protections as a normal close corporation-- let alone a public authority.
The fact that SW is controlled by ex-political officeholders (not just those mentioned here) should give us concern.
It is true that each of us can "opt out" from CCA. But that ignores the key comcern, which is a quasi-governmental entity which will generate a multi-million dollar perpetual stream of revenue with no accountability to the citizens.
Given that SW officials have spoken of ultimately controlling "the infrastructure" of energy distribution and expanding into takeover of waste collection (i.e., garbage collection), I am concerned not with SW/CCA as it exists today, but rather what it is seeking to morph into.
Thank you for the links.
ReplyDeleteThanks we opted out. A little too incestuous.
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