Thursday, April 19, 2012

City of Lake Worth vs. FMPA

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Today is the day that the City of Lake Worth meets with FMPA (on their turf) to discuss the law suit filed against them on April 15, 2011 by Lake Worth. Click here to read the Agenda that begins at 11am.

What triggered this law suit by the City was the day that we gave notice to exit All Requirements FMPA in December 2008. At that point, FMPA retaliated and said that they were no longer going to pay us the $60,000+ a month for the natural gas pipeline that we had built. This resulted in a law suit. The Contract required that we purchase power from FMPA for five years after giving notice to exit.

Sue Hersey, owner of Energy Advantage Consulting, was retained by the City and signed a contract for $413,400 to advise us and write an RFP to find a traditional power supplier. It was said that ending the FMPA power-supply agreement would save the city about $11 million annually and would reduce power bills by at least 15 percent for the utility's 25,000 customers.

At the time, Ms. Hersey said that since we own our asset and that all was in good condition because it has been maintained, the best plan of action is to maintain local generation for reliability, exit FMPA, run our transmission studies, do an RFP for long-term capacity and energy purchases and highly consider a Stand Alone operation with the LM6000.

The objectives are as follows:
  1. Maintain retail electric rates below the average cost of all providers in Florida
  2. Provide stable electric rates and continue to offer programs to help customers useelectricity efficiently
  3. Promote limited use of renewable energy resources into power supply plans without causing electric rates to increase by more than 10%
  4. Achieve the best value for the City of Lake Worth by acceptance of diverse term limit proposals (3, 5, 10, 20 yrs) that allow responders the latitude to develop creative submittals that coordinate submitter assets and City needs.
  5. Provide additional service for City of Lake Worth customers through the consideration of value added services offered with bid submittals. Value added services could include additional audit programs, marketing, key account assistance, rate analysis services, etc.
  6. Mitigate rate volatility by seeking power supply offers that include a diverse fuel supply mix including nuclear, coal, gas and oil, with limited coal exposure not greater than current level from Stanton I ownership
  7. Ensure maximum bid participation by allowing responders a wide range of response options, to include but not be limited to submittals for asset ownership, purchase power agreements, and partnership proposals
  8. Improve the reliability of the City of Lake Worth system and enhance network transmission service from FPL by seeking an additional interconnection location (tie-line)
  9. Obtain a power supply that meets operating flexibility requirements of FPL NetworkTransmission tariffs
  10. Maintain control of Lake Worth Electric
On another note, Mary Lindsey, someone who has taken a keen interest over the years to become very informed on our Utility and probably knows more about it than any "lay" person in this City, is a first-class example for dispelling the notion that those working in certain professions (so called qualified people) are the only ones who are capable in rendering good, solid opinions as volunteers on the Planning & Zoning board. She has spoken for professionals relative to that board but recently advocated for a citizens volunteer Utility Board without the requirement of professional qualifications. She organized a bus load of citizens who traveled to Orlando at 7am to listen to the law suit discussions at the FMPA headquarters.

9 comments:

erflat said...

WHY AREN'T YOU IN THE BUS?

Anonymous said...

Are you really comparing Mary Lindsey to Linda Mahoney or Larry Mcnamara? Really?

Lynn Anderson said...

First of all, I'm not on the bus because now we can hear it all from Mary Lindsey. I am way too busy for all day bus outings.

Next anonymous who took a crack at two people I admire--what is your beef? Where do you get the idea I was comparing specific people to people? I was talking about qualifications for boards. How can you justify one board being so called qualified and another board that will tackle our biggest asset in this city to have non-qualified people advising our commission? don't give me the BS answer of quasi-judicial crap. This is ridiculous and even having a utility board is more ridiculous.

Ok--so give me all your slams against Mahoney and McNamara. Name them all. And of course, be sure to use your name and that you are known to me.

John Rinaldi said...

My biggest problem with our utility company is that it really is not a utility company at all. It does produce any electric power. All it is, is a way for the city to tax us far and above the 10 mil they are allowed to. There are no regulations that impose any limits on rates they can charge us. So when we have a short fall in revenue the commission can raise utility rates to cover whatever costs it needs. That's one of the major reasons we are in the mess we are in. Our utility company is nothing more than a way for our city to screw us.

Lynn Anderson said...

We ARE a Utility. We do have the ability to produce our own electric power up to 87 megawatts of power. In order to generate all of the power that we need--we have contracts that prevent that. But we would need some supplemental contracts--keep Stanton Coal, our Nuclear...we wanted to generate 100% of it we would have to add more generation to cover peek at 100 megawatts.

Anonymous said...

Lynda Mahoney and Laurence McNamara have been researching and educating themselves about land use laws since before Mary Lindsey ever thought of moving to Lake Worth.
And by the way, Mary doesn't know better than everyone else about the utility. Facts are in dispute here, and opinions are formed based on my facts or your facts, so to speak. So we have no agreed upon "starting point" for a utility discussion, unless everyone is willing to accept Sue Hersey's facts as a starting point. Right now we have a bunch of people repeating someone else's opinion as fact.
Anyone can sound like they know a lot if everyone else knows NOTHING. Every single commission meeting is testament to that. Dozens of dopes who walk up to the podium and, if you are not intelligent and informed, they sound as if they know what they're talking about. But most of them don't.
We can get a new utility director, but if he/she does not agree with Mary Lindsey, then I guess he/she will be tagged a liar or stupid.

ArĂȘte said...

Dear Anon 9:25 am - You speak as if Linda and Lawrence are qualified 'less than' Mary. I have known and have observed all three for years. Based on that knowledge, I suspect none of the three would appreciate being characterized as 'more qualified’ than the other. They each have gifts. Many of their respective gifts are the same; clarity, tenacity and passion but each has a different style. Frankly, I think the similarities and differences should be respected and not belittled.

Anonymous said...

10:49 Anon GOOD POINT! 'Anyone can sound like they know a lot if everyone else knows NOTHING.'

Anonymous said...

So, get informed! Then the Maxwells, etc. of the world won't be able to fool you.