Letter: Coal to diesel agreement turned down by Santa Claus council
On Monday night, October 10, 2022, the Santa Claus Town Council voted on their proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Town of Santa Claus, the Town of Dale, and Riverview Energy.
The MOU, if signed by all three groups, would have allowed State Senator Mark Messmer and State Representative Stephen Bartels to pursue taxpayers’ monies to pay for Riverview Energy’s water study with the town of Santa Claus.
Riverview Energy has not invested any substantial money into building this project.
It has been a year since the first MOU was sent to all three parties—and the MOU was never signed by Riverview. Basically, the only difference between last year’s MOU and this year’s MOU is that Riverview would not have to pay anything, and the amount of the study increased. The taxpayers would foot the bill for the water study (over $350,000).
However, as it turned out, the Santa Claus Town Council voted 3-2 against the MOU!
We want to thank all who have sent emails and messages to our elected officials objecting to this proposal for use of taxpayer money. And thank you to all who filled the room on Monday night and used your voice. We were heard! JOB WELL DONE!
Mary V. Hess, President, Southwestern Indiana Citizens for Quality of Life
There is no way that any taxpayer money should be spent on this’ll-fated project. If it does not meet the standards of the private capital market for funding for whatever reason, it should never be funded by taxpayers at any level-Federal, State, or Local. To even suggest doing so reeks of corporate socialism or the “privatization of profits and the socialization of risk.”
Riverview Energy may have made sense to some people in 2010 when it first was proposed in Vermillion County but by the time they got kicked out there in 2016 and came to Spencer County it was clear that it made little economic or environmental sense.