Right now, this is only a rumor. But it’s the kind of rumor that matters, because some decisions are so large — and so irreversible — that waiting until “it’s official” is the same thing as waiting until it’s too late.
In recent days, there’s been talk that the City of Linton may be considering the sale of its municipal utilities: water, sewer, trash, natural gas, and electricity. If that possibility is even being entertained, the public deserves to know it early, in plain language, and in full daylight. Not because anyone wants drama, and not because every rumor is true, but because this particular idea has a way of becoming “inevitable” the moment it’s allowed to quietly pick up momentum.
And that’s the real danger here.
The most dangerous part of selling a municipal utility isn’t just the sale itself. It’s the way these decisions can move: quietly, quickly, with the public catching up only after timelines have been set, consultants have been hired, and the deal is already being treated as a foregone conclusion. Once that train leaves the station, the town isn’t debating whether to sell anymore — it’s only negotiating how it will be sold.
Linton has seen this pattern before. It doesn’t always come with bad intent. Sometimes it’s simply the instinct to avoid conflict, to “handle it internally,” to keep things tidy. But tidy isn’t the same thing as wise. And when the topic is the sale of the utilities, tidy can turn into a generational mistake.
Because Linton Utilities isn’t “just a service” — it’s the engine room.
Most residents experience utilities as a bill and a basic expectation: water runs, lights work, the furnace kicks on, trash gets picked up. But inside the city’s finances, utilities have historically been something else entirely — the town’s most reliable source of strength. The utilities have long helped stabilize Linton in ways that don’t show up in everyday conversation, and in more than one season they’ve functioned as the difference between the city merely getting by and the city being forced into constant cuts, constant scrambling, and constant weakness.
That’s why selling them is not a normal budget decision; it’s a structural decision.
It’s the town taking the one system that has historically generated stability and leverage, and converting it into a one-time payday. That check might look impressive, and it will most certainly be described as an “opportunity.” It will be sold as a smart move, a modernization, a way to reduce risk, and a way to simplify. But there’s a difference between a financial plan and a liquidation event, and towns really get into trouble when they confuse those two.
Linton’s utilities are the golden goose. They produce golden eggs: steady cash flow, local control, and the ability to plan and respond as a community instead of as a customer base. Selling them doesn’t improve that; it ends it. The city would be trading a long-term revenue engine for temporary relief, and once that relief is spent — because it always gets spent — the town is left with no goose, no eggs, and no way to recreate what it gave away.
And this is where the conversation gets even more serious: Linton isn’t simply “served by” its utilities; Linton has been shaped by them.
By population, a town this size should function with a part-time mayor, but Linton has long had a full-time mayor because the role is tied to utilities management and utilities compensation. That isn’t gossip; it’s an example of how intertwined the city’s structure has become with the utility system itself. The utilities don’t just keep the lights on; they help keep the city operating in the form it currently operates.
So, if the utilities are sold, it won’t just change who provides gas or electricity. It will force the city to confront what it looks like when that internal support disappears. It will force hard questions — quickly. And it will do so at the exact moment the city has the least leverage: after it has already given up its strongest asset.
There’s another detail most people don’t see, but it matters because it proves the point: local control has produced real, measurable value.
Traditionally, Linton’s utilities superintendent has purchased roughly one-third of the city’s natural gas needs on the forward markets during the summer months, often saving the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. That isn’t theory, and it isn’t luck. It’s practical management, applied at the right time of year, by someone who understands how to protect the town from winter price spikes. It’s the kind of quiet competence that rarely makes headlines but keeps rates steadier than they would otherwise be, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that becomes harder to guarantee once Linton shifts from being an owner to being simply another account.
A private utility may still make smart purchasing decisions, of course, but the incentives are different. If they reduce costs, the savings don’t automatically come back to Linton as stability. They become profit, or they get used to finance expansion elsewhere, or they get absorbed into corporate priorities that have nothing to do with Greene County. That’s not villainy; it’s simply what private ownership is designed to do. Which is why the first big number residents hear in a potential sale should not impress anyone by itself.
A sale price is not the same thing as value.
The real question isn’t, “How much will they pay?” It’s what the utilities are worth to Linton over the next twenty or thirty years: the steady revenue stream, the ability to manage rates locally, the ability to plan for infrastructure on our terms, the ability to respond when markets swing, and the simple fact that local accountability still exists when the system is owned here. Those are the kinds of advantages that don’t feel dramatic in the moment, but they quietly shape whether a town remains resilient or becomes dependent.
And if Linton is considering selling, it’s worth saying plainly: small towns routinely underestimate what they’re giving up, and they often overestimate their negotiating position. A sophisticated buyer doesn’t need to “win” a loud fight in public. They just need to be patient, polished, and permanent. They can sound friendly while writing terms that favor them for decades, and once the ink is dry, the conversation shifts from “Should we do this?” to “How do we live with it?”
This isn’t really a partisan issue, and it isn’t about personalities. It’s about permanence. The people who make a decision like this may be gone in a few years. The consequences won’t be. If the utilities are sold, Linton gives up leverage it may never ever regain, and the town will spend the next generation operating with fewer options, less control, and more exposure to decisions made somewhere else.
And if the city truly needs more revenue — if the pressure of budgets and spending choices is real — then the fact that City Hall already owns over 600 acres of timberland on the northeast side of town that is literally rotting away instead of producing income is worth asking about. For years, that property has been left unmanaged, with decaying trees and even used as an informal dumping ground while residents are told there isn’t money for basic improvements like sidewalks and parks. Yet with responsible forest management and selective timbering practices, that land could become a long-term source of revenue, producing dollars repeatedly instead of vanishing in a one-time utility sale.
That isn’t a hand-wave “other idea.” It’s a concrete opportunity to generate revenue without giving up local control over critical services, which is exactly why this cannot be handled quietly.
If the city is exploring this idea at all, the public deserves full transparency before anything is decided. Not after. Before. Open meetings with real notice. Real numbers released in writing. Competing valuations. Clear terms. Clear timelines. A clear explanation of what changes for residents and what protections — if any — remain in place.
If it’s truly a good deal, it should survive daylight. If it can’t survive daylight, it isn’t a good deal.
Right now, this is still only a rumor. But some rumors are too dangerous to ignore, because by the time they become “confirmed,” the momentum is already built and the outcome is already framed as inevitable. Linton doesn’t need a one-time check that disappears. Linton needs long-term strength, local control, and leadership that understands the difference between a quick win and a permanent loss — because once the goose is gone, the eggs stop coming, and the town that’s left behind will spend decades paying for a decision that took only weeks to make.
Very well thought-out article. Hope all get involved in the process and help make the best long term decision.