Our Utility Department

Comment Up

The new Budget for the City of Lake Worth is on-line…all 246 pages of it. One of the interesting sections is our Utility. Why is the Utility so interesting?--because it generates a lot of revenue for our city and we still continue to get behind the eight ball. We pay 31% more than FPL customers and we are not making any money there. Why?

In this Budget you will see how they are eliminating Andres Reyes’ job as well as Howard Jordan’s. Don’t ever try to make things better in this City…don’t dare complain to your supervisor...don't dare be a whistleblower.

On page 91 (page 106 scrolling down the pdf file) is a graph of positions. As you will notice, Mr. Reyes’ job is being eliminated. Then on page 95 (page 110 of the Adobe file) you will see the elimination of Howard Jordan’s job that of Electronic Device Specialist.

This entire matter was not handled properly from the beginning. Bottom Line.

If you look closely, you will notice that the proposed budget by the Finance Department and City Manager Stanton’s proposed budget differ greatly in the Utility. It appears that Stanton wants to outsource services to the tune of $5,577,841, a figure under non-department-other. I am guessing here as to the purpose of the meaning of "non-department" because I can't get a return call to clarify so essentially it is a guessing game. So, let’s get this right, we eliminate an engineer and an electronic specialist and outsource for these services? Someone else on staff does them? Who is qualified? Don't know. It is unclear.

Perhaps there is some other explanation. I left two calls this week for Finance. I have a call into the City Manager since Monday. What's today? Has the "open door" shut?

We demand an explanation to less code, not more!