Despite calls for Paducah Power Board Chairman Ray McLennan’s resignation from some community leaders, he says he’ll only step down if the board asks him to do so.
Rising electric rates and an inappropriate Facebook comment from McLennan has Paducah leaders like City Commissioner Carol Gault calling for his resignation. McLennan acknowledges that his comment online was inappropriate, but he added that it referred to a city leader who had allegedly used his position for sex.
McLennan says the board does not want him to step down and adds that they have discussed that option in regards to resolving issues the community has with Paducah Power.
“We had a discussion of whether I thought that might take the pressure off the board a little bit, and if that was the case I would be willing to do that, he said. “But I still want to stay on the board until I finish my time which ends in February of 2016.”
But McLennan says board members have not expressed that they want him to resign in their discussions.
“The feedback I got from the other board members was that they didn’t want me to do that. If they’ve changed their mind, what I would like to do is have an election. I would only do it who they want to be the chair is,” he said. “If it’s me, that’s fine. If it’s not me, that’s fine too.”
The Paducah Chamber of Commerce has also raised concerns about skyrocketing electric prices, saying they discourage new businesses from coming to the city.
Paducah residents’ electric bills are more than 50 percent higher than those of Jackson Purchase and Kentucky Utilities customers.
McLennan is the only remaining board member from the time Paducah Power and Princeton Electric entered into a contract with Prairie State Energy Campus. The Peabody Coal project claimed it would lower electric rates, but costs at Prairie State plants have increased from 1.4 billion dollars to nearly 5 billion during the past decade.
