Hostility cranks up at meeting on smart meters

A town hall meeting on the city’s “smart meter” utility meters turned into a shouting match that almost led to a fistfight between City Councilman Myron Lowery and an audience member.

Others accused Memphis, Light, Gas and Water Division of a conspir- acy to spy on people and endanger them with incendiary devices.

“I’ve never been to such a hostile meeting,” Gale Jones-Carson, director of corporate communications for MLGW, said of the Thursday meeting.

Lowery said the town hall meeting at the Central Library on Poplar was driven by misinformation that quickly led to a charged atmosphere and, for him, danger.

Lowery said that as the meeting ended, one angry woman confronted him and “wagged her finger in my face.” When he tried to answer her, Lowery said he responded in kind, wagging his finger in her face. “Her husband said, ‘Don’t you talk to my wife like that,’” then drew his hand back as if he were going to hit Lowery.

“Just then, three men stepped

between us to separate us, and the man calmed down,” Lowery said.

One audience member said he saw the confrontation between Lowery and the angry man and realized he made the right decision not to speak during the meeting, where he realized he could be inviting trouble from the “low-class people” whom he said were part of an “ambush on LG&W.”

“I actually feared for my personal safety to the point that I decided not to raise my hand and say anything,” said John Volmer, guest relations supervisor for the Memphis Grizzlies.

Volmer said he likely was the only person in the room who came as a supporter of the smart meters. He said he had been part of a test group of volunteers who tried the meters and that he liked his.

The town hall meeting, conducted by council member Janis Fullilove, was a chance for the public to ask questions before the city invests more than $10 million in 60,000 of the meters. Fullilove could not be reached for comment Friday.

Jones- Carson blamed the hostility at the meeting on the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1288.

“The union is trying to incite people,” she said. “The union is driving this.”

She said MLGW has a history of replacing employees through attrition rather than layoffs and that smart meters are not a threat to workers’ jobs. So, she said, IBEW opposition “is mind-boggling to me.”

The local’s business manager, Rick Thompson, said the hostility arose because MLGW was unable to answer people’s questions adequately.

“It was the worst case of presenting their case on smart meters I’ve seen in 35 years,” he said.

Thompson said most of the audience was made up of “community members” rather than union supporters.

“My personal opinion is somebody is getting paid,” he said of the city’s support for the meters.

Before the city invests in the meters, the issue should be placed on a referendum, he said.

“Let’s see what the people say.”