Penelec closing two offices

BY ROBERT L. BAKER

First Energy Penelec is closing its Tunkhannock andPrestonParkelectric utility service offices, President John Skory told theWyomingCountycommissioners Thursday afternoon.

He said that no one would lose a job, but around 9-11 more employees would be working out of the company’s Montrose office.

“We’re looking for efficiency,” Skory said. “It takes a lot of money to keep the other offices open.”

Skory said he had met earlier in the morning with employees in the two shops affected.

And the company had also met with the employees’ collective bargaining unit, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 459.

“The union does understand where we’re at,” Skory said.

Nothing would really change with the company’s day shift, but he noted that  in place of overtime, field workers would be seeing a 16-hour a day/seven day a week shift.

First Energy spokesman Patti Michel said that with the closed offices there would be a $500,000 upgrade of the Montrose facility.

Skory said the company’s plans to shift operations from Tunkhannock andPrestonParkoffices to Montrose could trake up to 10 months.

“We expect to eventually sell the two properties as well, but with no timetable attached right now,” Skory added.

Penelec  serves 600,000 customers in 31 counties. Some 4,000 of them are inWayneCountywhere thePrestonParkoffice is located and 14,000 of them are inWyomingCounty, where the Tunkhannock office is.

Skory called the changes “a minor disruption in workforce” where the people who started their day atPrestonParkor Tunkhannock will soon do so in Montrose.

He said the public could expect transparency in uninterrupted electric service.

Not everyone is sure of that, however, particularly in case of emergency.

Resident Dawn Rogers of Eatonville said she was furious when she learned the Tunkhannock office was closing.

She recalled in August her power going out during Hurricane Irene, and the Tunkhannock linemen for Penelec had been dispatched to another region to lend a hand.

She said it took the company two days to finally get to her and do what amounted to a 5-minute job to restore power, and she was out of work because of it.

“If we have another disaster, you’d have a hard time convincing me it’s going to get any better when the service trucks are even further away,” she said. “We’’ll just have to sit there and wait it out.”