Neighbor in Longmont

I'm a neighbor that lives in Longmont, where I have municipal utilities and experienced exactly zero seconds of power disruption from the same two days of wind storms (my trash can certainly went on a short journey though.)

In following the coverage of the wind storm I found out that Xcel energy has posted around $7 billion in profits since 2021. Meanwhile they have been claiming it's prohibitively expensive, to the tune of hundreds of millions, to modernize our infrastructure.

From my perspective it looks a lot like Xcel energy has been pocketing the money intended for maintenance while asking for rate hikes and doing f*ck all to protect the infrastructure we all use and allow them to own a "regulated monopoly" on.

This is theft. Xcel shareholders are stealing from Boulder citizens, and paying out dividends instead of maintaining our shared infrastructure. A profit motive for infrastructure is immoral and should be illegal. It would not surprise me in the slightest if xcel has broken the law for us to end up in this situation and all power infrastructure should be removed from their control.

-signed a municipal utilities enjoyer who doesn't have his maintenance fees pocketed by greedy rent-seekers.