Letter to Editor from Monier Ibrahim

To: Keith Carnahan, CEO of MLEC; County Mayor Jonah Keltner; City Mayor Danny McKnight; and MLEC board members.

Dear Sirs,

I passed the state inspection to have a service release at 110 Dr. Ibrahim Lane in Summertown. I live outside city limits where we have no building codes in Lewis County. The power will come out from my electric pole through [an]underground conduit to meter the base.

The ladies in the office said I have to wait for engineer Marty Carroll to inspect the connection and approve it. The connection [was] inspected and approved by Steven Skelton from MLEC and Stephen Taylor from the state of Tennessee. What [is] Marty’s job? Does MLEC need a salaried engineer to measure #1 aluminum wire from my pole to my meter?

When I talked to Keith Carnahan, he said [that] these are the rules and if you need electricity, you need to follow the rules. I tried to explain to Keith that no engineer is needed to connect some wires, but he said, “I am an electrical engineer with a Master’s in Engineering.” And continued, “You don’t work for me.”

Keith is not recruited or volunteered to be CEO of [an] Electric Company that does not produce, nor authorize to produce electric power. He is basically doing clerical work, shuffling some papers with his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering at my expense for a salary. He is an employee; not an employer. The employer is MLEC members.

My countrymen, the problem is the monopoly of MLEC. [If] we have a competition, every board member would have his number listed for contact, I wouldn’t have to use my personal connection to reach one; Keith Carnahan wouldn’t tell me that I don’t work for him, and he would know that he works for me un-recruited, not volunteered and paid by MLEC; and furthermore our fees wouldn’t be twice as much as other neighboring service utilities fees.

But it’s Keith’s job to appoint as many hacks as he wishes at my expense to make lives more miserable daily. Keith and the board members need term limits so Keith can go fishing with his Master’s Degree in Engineering. Should we have had the right management at MLEC, I wouldn’t have to wait for Marty for a week to get electricity to finish the house, and I wouldn’t have to let three men go home early without any work done for a cost of $500. Why do [I] need a co-operative? All we need is a Lewis County utility run by Jason Graves or contracted every three years to the lowest bidder, and Keith can go home fishing with his Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering.

Cordially,

Monier Ibrahim, PhD (Genetics)

110 Dr. Ibrahim Lane