The continuing saga between Butler’s Food World and the Grand Bahama Power Company continued over the weekend as police showed up at the store on Saturday.
According to reports Butler’s Food World owes the GB power company in excess of $400,000.
While Proprietor Jeff Butler confirmed to The Freeport News over a month ago that he was running his store on a generator, recent reports suggest that power to the store was cut by the power company, but that the power was being re-connected by someone and continued on the grid.
It all came to a head when the Grand Bahama Power Company and the police showed up at the store on Saturday when it was alleged that on two occasions the power was reconnected to the store.
In an interview with Jeff Butler on Saturday, he reiterated that his store was running off a generator, and he said he wanted people to know that they are using a generator because they feel that the power company is “raping” the people by excessive charging.
He said that they are using a diesel generator, which sometimes burns less than 10 gallons per hour, which he said is less than what was seen on the bill from the power company.
“We can run the generator at the same or less cost than the Grand Bahama Power Company supplies us,” said Ron Jones, General Manager of Butler’s Food World.
“So there seems to be something wrong with how they are doing this.
“There are a lot of issues to do with Butler’s and the landlord here and you know it’s a bit unfortunate that they have gone down this road because it would have been nice to see Butler’s Food World succeed and the mall that’s trying to open to succeed and I think Butler’s would be an asset to the mall.”
He said he understands that the tenants have invested a lot of money in their stores in renovations and inventory, but he said the feud between Butler’s and the landlord has only created a problem for everybody, including the tenants. He then said as soon as this matter is resolved everything would be better.
Butler said that while Grand Bahama Power has had frequent power cuts, the store has not experienced one power cut in two months, as he said they have a state of the art generator that they spent a quarter of a million dollars on for a wax system that is electronically controlled. He stated that they have the best refrigeration system in Grand Bahama.
“But there were three articles over the last three days (in the newspaper) about this issue and I can guarantee you, … by Hannis Babak,” he stated.
Butler went on to say that the articles in the paper sounded like Babak who is the landlord for the building, stating that what was said was all foolishness.
He said that he had spoken about these power bill issues with the former Prime Minister and he intends to continue the same discussions with the present Prime Minister.
Answering other parts of accusations levied against him, he stated, “We pay our suppliers on time and we use as many local suppliers as we can.
“We are not paying the power company on principle. We have documents showing that our power bills should be under $10,000 per month, but our bills were for $26,000, $27,000. That’s with no a/c. That’s another 10 to 12 thousand. This entire building they are billing us for the a/c chiller system running through the entire 83,000 sq. ft. building, and all we have here on the air is 18,000 sq. ft., less than 20 percent of the building.
“But all of our Florida suppliers, Bahamas Customs, our brokers, everybody’s bills are up to date.”
He stated that at present there is heat on him by Babak to discourage him, but he said, it won’t work.
“Babak owes us more than we owe Babak,” said Butler.
The Freeport News called Babak to get a response to Butler’s statements; “There is nothing that I owe him,” said Babak in a telephone interview. “After he got his financing sorted out last September he started to make payments to me and in April he stopped. He would not have paid me anything if I owed him.”
Questioned about the matter with the power company, Babak confirmed that the police and a representative of Grand Bahama Power Company were at the premises on West Atlantic Drive on Saturday afternoon to check the power situation. At that time it was discovered that the generator was running on idle, but the breaker for the power was in the “on” position.
Despite having fenced in the area and putting up surveillance cameras, the locks were again tampered with, but no one could be identified as the culprit.
The Freeport News
