Sad and stunning rate hike request from CMP

To the Editor;

While it should come as no surprise, it is nonetheless stunning, and sad, to hear of Central Maine Power’s request for a rate hike. In these days when so many people are presently struggling, CMP chooses to confront us with that. At a time when many of us are dreading the upcoming winter, not knowing how to balance heating bills, food, medicine, and many other essentials of daily life, CMP wants to greet us with more rate hikes.

This is perhaps the pinnacle of their apparent insensitivity to the people they are supposed to serve. Sure, they dress up their request with the need to strengthen and fix the grid and lines, but shouldn’t the hefty profits made from their outrageous and inflation-fueling rate hikes of last winter be covering that? This is not to slam the hard-working linemen and others in the trenches; I salute them and praise their hard and sometimes dangerous work. 

This company, however, seems completely oblivious to the daily struggles of so many Maine citizens. It apparently ignores the wishes of a citizenry that voted down their clean energy corridor by continuing to fight that in court; perhaps they need a rate hike to keep paying their team of lawyers in that pursuit. It could also be that a company that is neither Maine nor American owned has no idea, or concern, for the issues of the folks who actually live in their company’s service area.

David Mahoney

Greenville