CHCC up to date on MOU payments

The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. has made good on its promise to pay off nearly $60 million in utility arrears pursuant to a memorandum of understanding with the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.. However, CHCC’s account remains delinquent as its usage continues to rise and no longer reflects the usage stated on the MOU.

Last Thursday, during her presentation before the CUC board, acting executive director Betty Terlaje shared that CHCC has been up to date with their MOU payments of $525,000 a month.

However, she shared that CHCC’s utility usage has gone up since executing the MOU last May 2023.

“CHCC has made good on their monthly payments pursuant to the MOU they’ve agreed to. There is one more payment due for the month of April, but they’re still within their grace period. The unfortunate thing is that CHCC’s usage has gone up and the MOU was only reflective of their average before, at the time that we executed the MOU. So, that resulted in the receivables increasing from 52 kwh or 53 kwh now it’s up to 62 kwh. We will discuss this with CHCC CEO Esther Muña so we can resolve this in a way that works for both our agencies,” she said.

Terlaje explained that under the MOU, CHCC agreed to pay $525,000 for one year. However, with CHCC’s usage up by about 10 kwh, CHCC and CUC must meet again to possibly come up with a new MOU to address arrears reflective of the utility usage increase.

“We just discussed it on a board level, and they have reconfirmed that I try to meet with Esther Muña and present to her our options. I will probably send a letter out soon and see when she can accommodate me so I can meet with her and we’ll talk about the options and how to move forward and resolve this matter. That’s what I want to do, I don’t want to take it further and get messy with it, I would like to see how we could resolve this matter at our level. We hope to have another MOU with them to address the arrears especially now since their usage has gone up. That $525,000 should change to reflect their current usage, in addition, an amount to address their arrears. There is no new MOU and the old MOU was strictly for one year to allow CHCC to come up with a plan to resolve their arrears. We haven’t heard from them, but we are hoping that they will have some resolution to the matter,” she said.

Terlaje noted that she is determined to work with agencies like CHCC to resolve arrears as CUC is dependent on these payments.

“Our board has been very adamant and has made very clear that it’s not fair if other entities pay their bills while other agencies are given this long-standing payment plan. Although when the arrears are this high, I feel that we have to work with these agencies to see how we can resolve it and hopefully, moving forward they will pay all their current bills because CUC is very dependent on these payments. Otherwise, we will keep going backwards and we will keep finding ourselves in this situation where we are struggling to keep the power plant going,” she said.

In May 2023, CUC and CHCC signed a memorandum of agreement obligating CHCC to pay CUC $525,000 a month for its utilities.

Back when the MOU was signed, CHCC’s utility arrears had reached about $53.6 million.