This is a petition to launch a formal and fair investigation into the mismanagement of Hibbing Public Utilities Company.

This city has averaged 46-48 blackouts per year. Thats nearly once per week. The residents of this city rely on working power to keep homes, schools, and businesses heated and running. In a state where the winter temperatures can reach -50, this is unacceptable.

The residents have been consistently hit with insanely high electric and steam rates that seem to always go up and never down. Nobody should have to still be paying off their winter bills in August. Your utility payment should not be double the cost of a mortage or rent payment. 

In recent years, Hibbing Public Utilities has been granted tens of millions of dollars of state funds for plants affected by new enviromental laws. These funds should have been sufficient to help updates to our systems.

Employees within the HPU have been subject to looming threats of lay offs of excessive amounts of workers that are needed to maintain our service, as well as an unwillingness to fill open positions.The HPU should be hiring more crew, not reducing its staff and leaving the massive workload on the backs of a few.

Until recently, there has been a severe lack of communication and transparency, about how and why these outtages and price hikes have occured. A single facebook post and a single sentence on a website is not sufficient. We deserve to know.

The Hibbing City Council has been highly critical in recent months of Hibbing Public Utilities, and rightfully so. We believe that Mayor Rick Cannata, and the rest of the city council will agree with us - enough is enough.

The funds allocated for this company and the price hikes on consumers does not reflect proper management of funds, nor efficiency of services, nor updates of archaic systems.

If every one of these blackouts was caused by squirrels, they would be an endangered species. Lets not blame the problem on a creature that cant even defend itself against such allegations 

With this petition, we ask that our Hibbing City Council investigate, even audit, Hibbing Public Utilities, for these reasons. The ratepayors have the right to know how their money is being spent.