Results tagged “kevinburke”

Charles F. Luce, who was Con Ed's chairman and chief executive between 1967 and 1982, died last week at the age of 90 in California. The Bronxville, NY resident died of prostate cancer.

On Tuesday, a Con Ed executive faced a number of irritated City Council members seeking answers about the July 18 steam pipe explosion in Midtown. Senior vice president William Longhi said that the investigation could take another two or three months, but City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said, "You may not have all the answers and all the Ts crossed and all the Is dotted. I can accept that. But I cannot accept that you have absolutely nothing to tell us about why this may have happened.

You'd imagine that Kevin Burke, the chairman, president, and CEO of Con Ed, would want to attend at City Council meeting about the steam pipe explosion on July 18. But, no, Burke isn't showing up, which annoys many Council members. The Sun has a good look at the head of the city's essential and currently reviled utility.

Well, there's nothing like having a barely-one-hour blackout on a sultry weekday to make you consider stocking up on flashlights, batteries, water, and maybe a Go Bag. Con Ed is still investigating the cause of yesterday's brief power failure to parts of the Bronx and Manhattan; Newsday reported "the blackout was caused when breakers opened at an Astoria substation and cut off power to stations servicing Yorkville and parts of the Bronx." It's unclear why the breakers were opened in the first place.

It's time for to break out the "Con Ed Sucks" signs! The utility has requested to raise electricity rates 17%; the Post reports, "typical residential cusomer paying $70 a month would pay an extra $12 per month starting April 1, 2008." (The increase for businesses is slightly smaller, 10.7%.) Well, we guess those livery cab drivers have to be paid somehow! And fixing the Long Island City network, which Con Ed should have been doing all along. Here's what Con Ed head Kevin Burke said in the press release:

“Electricity use has increased more than 20 percent over the past 10 years, and we are responding with a two-fold approach. The energy efficiency measures we propose will help slow the rising demand for power. At the same time, we need to increase our investments if we are to maintain a reliable, resilient, and robust infrastructure necessary to meet the needs of a growing population and an increasing demand for electricity."

But Assemblyman Michael Gianaris tells the Empire Zone, "At a time when they’ve now proven they can’t spend their money in the right places, I don’t see how this increase can be justified. It’s a very profitable company that has proven to have serious failures in its reliability. To request what can only be a massive increase in rates to the customers who are already paying among the highest rates in the nation is unfathomable.”

Mayor Bloomberg has been leading the city for over five years, but the way he handles dealing with the public during crises - no matter how big or how small - remains curious. As some people think he should have stayed in NYC after Wednesday's brutal Bronx fire - and not gone to Miami, some people ascribe his cool "delegate issues to underlings" and "move onto the next thing" attitude to his business management experience.

Queens Assemblyman Michael Gianaris accused Con Ed of placing its own PR needs above basic needs of customers. Gianaris says that the utility spent over a half million dollars to shore up its image after last summer's Queens blackout. He argues that money should have gone towards increasing reimbursements to businesses, whose reimbursements were capped at $7,000.

With the weather turning quite brisk today, it's almost hard to remember that back in stifling July heat, many neighborhoods were without power for days and days. Almost. Yesterday, Con Ed released a 600 page report detailing what happened, why they decided not to shut down the network, and why trying to fix the problem caused delays. All in all, Con Ed is saying it wasn't really their fault - it was the equipment! Please, Con Ed needed 600 pages to come up with that excuse? Anyway, the NY Times summarizes what Con Ed says happened:

According to the report, three unrelated events on July 17 combined to knock out five feeders. The first event was a fire, around 3:50 p.m., that broke out in an underground conduit near 30th Avenue and 44th Street when a low-voltage secondary cable short-circuited. The fire damaged two of the primary feeders, causing both of them to fail in a 32-minute period. More than two hours later, at 6:48 p.m., a third feeder failed.

Continue reading "Con Ed Blames Queens Blackout on Eqiupment, Not Itself"

The Office of Emergency Management has decided to stop relying on Con Ed-supplied information on power outages, after the July Queens blackout mess that affected about 300,000. OEM Commissioner Joseph Bruno said that the fact that Con Ed said only 1700 customers were without power on July 20, later raising it to 25,000 customers (and customers equal entire buildings, with indeterminate number of people in them), was cause for the city to start sending canvassers on the street to get better estimates. The "Power Outage Response Team" will be made up of NYPD, FDNY, and other city officials. Comissioner Bruno said, "We have never seen Con Ed be off by a factor of 10, as we’ve seen here... We are no longer accepting those [Con Ed] numbers as we had for years."

- City Councilman Eric Gioia wondered, "You're telling me the only way to find out is for the customer to call up but you don't have the capacity to receive the phone call, and what you're trying to do is do some calculus based on how long people took to hang up the telephone. It seems like this is an exercise in absurdity." (NY1)Queens City Council members and Senator Charles Schumer are asking Con Ed to lift the $7,000 reimbursement cap for businesses.

On page B7 of today's NY Times, Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke has a letter to the residents of northwest Queens. We've put the letter up in parts - has anyone else seen this ad in other city papers? Clearly not on a "Dear" basis, Burke tells residents he's aware of their hardship, acknowledges their patience and says that Con Ed will "strive to restore" residents' trust in the Con Ed. He also emphasizes the role Con Ed employees play, thanks various city agencies for their help, and says they will "find out what caused this extraordinary series of events in our system."

At 4AM this morning, Con Ed said that most of Queens had its power. About one hundred or so customers are still without power and "some restored customers may experience lower than normal voltage conditions or sporadic outages as crews reinforce the area’s power cable system" (or power being totally knocked out again), but other than that, things are sort of back to normal. Which means the lawsuits can begin: The mother of a feverish 2 year old is suing because the hospital told her to feed cool drinks and ice cream to bring down the 102 fever, but with the blackout, that couldn't happen!

- On being President: Spitzer doesn't want to be, while Suozzi does (to which Spitzer cracked, "Good luck")There was also a supposed freak-out by Spitzer when he saw that Suozzi was going to bring notes on stage during the debate. Notes are not allowed, and Suozzi told reporters that Spitzer got "angrier and angrier and angrier" and accused him of "playing games," but let's face it, if notes weren't even allowed...

Before last week, Mayor Bloomberg could pretty much do no wrong. Sure, he wasn't exactly Republican or Democrat, but the city was running and that's all that mattered. But now, after the Queens blackout, he's in the crapper with Queens residents, business owners, politicians - and many other New Yorkers who are wondering why the mayor couldn't get a grip on the crisis. The Daily News, . And the Mayor's continuous defense of Con Ed and its CEO Kevin Burke, earned him a "Say Watt?" cover on the Daily News and has been driving everyone else crazy. Mayor Bloomberg said, "I think Kevin Burke deserves a thanks from this city. He's worked as hard as he can every single day since then, as has everybody at Con Ed." Yes, but has he worked as hard as someone without power? Put him in a Queens home for 8 days, some of those days in 95 degree heat, and have him do his job that way. But we do feel for the Con Ed workers, who are getting harrassed by frustrated Queens residents - they are just doing what they are told, hopefully they are bearing with it.

After a week of being powerless or near powerless, thousands of Queens homes and businesses are starting to power back up, but it almost feels like too little, too late. It's already been a week of no food, no hot water and no business for many people, and one family blames the death of a 60 year old father on the blackout. Politicians are also fuming: They want Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke to resign, pissed that Burke minimized the blackout as an "inconvenience," and for Governor Pataki to designate Queens a disaster area. Representative Joseph Crowley said during a press conference, "If this were an area of 100,000 people in upstate New York, the governor would have declared it a disaster area." No kidding.

How many ways can we write that power has still not been restored in Queens? Cause it still hasn't. What else can we say? The papers are having a good time with this one, what journalist wouldn't love to write a story about a hair salon in Astoria that can't do a blowout? But good news stories doesn't bring the power back on, and neither, it seems, do all the mayor's horses and all the mayor's men.

Mazz Swift, Violinist