Talking Points for Presentation to the Riverside County Board of

Talking Points for Presentation to the Riverside County Board of

Talking Points for Presentation to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors
Good morning, thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Joey DeConinck and I have the honor as serving as the Mayor of the City of
Blythe.
All of my colleagues and I, as well as some concerned Blythe residents, are here today
because we are concerned about the future of the Solar Trust of America solar project to
be constructed northwest of the Blythe Airport.
First, it is important to note that Solar Trust has been an excellent community partner.
They have donated financially to many local causes yet have done so without needing
anything from Blythe.
The proposed 2% franchise fee took many of us by surprise.
The City Council met in a special meeting on June 21 and voted unanimously to oppose
the fee.
Some of you are probably wondering why we opposed the fee considering that there
could be hundreds of thousands of dollars coming our way had we supported it.
Quite simply, our community is afraid of losing this project and the thousands of jobs that
go with it.
We are afraid because we have been down this road before.
We have been promised a number of big projects, we jumped through all the hoops, got
the residents all stirred up and excited, and then something killed the projects. And all
along, we were promised that the projects wouldn’t move elsewhere.
Those projects included a nuclear power plant that was eventually constructed near
Buckeye, Arizona. We lost more than 400 jobs.
Another was the Morgan Trucking facility that also took with it to Arizona another 300400 jobs that were promised to Blythe.
Now we are anticipating a huge boon to our economy from construction activity over the
next 5-6 years, some permanent jobs after that, and increased sales and bed taxes as well.
Solar Trust has indicated that the 2% fee could kill the project.
We don’t know if it will or it won’t but with today’s economy, we can’t afford to take the
chance.
We need this project in our community.
We understand that it will likely also bring with it some negative aspects, such as
construction workers working off some stress at the bars, but we think the good will
outweigh the bad.
We would like nothing more than an influx of new monies to our General Fund that will
not only offset those negative effects but will move our budget forward.
But we can’t take that chance so we took the position to oppose the fee.
As we indicated in our letter, the proposed policy was never made available for review
nor did the City Council have the opportunity to negotiate any of the proposed terms.
This has all moved too quickly and we have not had sufficient time to research all the
angles.
The City Council is willing to negotiate with the County to arrive at a solution that
hopefully benefits all parties.
However, the only choice we had was to either support or oppose a policy that we had not
read and risk losing a huge job creator.
We therefore had no choice but to oppose the fee.
Blythe and the County have been strong partners in many projects over the years and we
look forward to continuing that relationship.
Our thanks to you for looking out for the residents of the County in general, and of
Blythe in particular.
I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you.