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Volunteers--what would the world do without them?
Now we have a volunteer Lake Worth city board that is investigating the possibility of selling our electric utility, even taking on the daunting task of coming up with a value. Tomorrow night at 6pm, the Electric Utility Advisory Board meets. None of these board members are professionals in the electric utility business.
We have a city commission majority that voted to wean us off utility funds to operate our city at 20% a year for 5 years and a group of vocal residents who firmly believe it is the high cost of energy that is making Lake Worth an unattractive place to invest. And we have a handful of citizens who are still fuming that this commission chose Orlando Utilities Commission to be our new energy provider beginning on January 1, 2014. They were determined that it be FPL.
There will be four presentations:
A.
Radio
Read Meters by Mary Lindsey (She previously stepped down as chair of this Board)
B.
Timeline for Long Term Purchase Power Supply
C. System Valuation
D.
Re-powering of Smith Plant
There will also be two reports by Clay Lindstrom, Assistant utility director: Purchase of electric power cable and purchase of transformers. Both of these reports will be on the Commission Agenda the first meeting in May.
Everyone needs to show up.
11 comments:
Now we have a volunteer Lake Worth city board that is investigating the possibility of selling our electric utility. None of these board members are professionals in the electric utility business.
Jesus F'ing Christ! And we wonder why we're up to our necks in pigeon poop in this joke of a town? These people are nothing but public puppets. A way for certain commissions and city staff to manipulate things from behind the scenes.
7:46 You are 100% correct in your assumptions. The commission wants this off their plates. They hand it off to volunteers who get the blame and no compensation and consultants who get alot of compensation. Read the Post article. Also, the consultants have already done a valuation. I guess that gets thrown out. No faction wanted FPL to be our short term supplier. Lynn, please lose that idea.
Your assumptions are way off the mark. I guess all the Volunteers on the Tree Board or, my favorite, Sister City boards are all experts in those fields.
You don't have to be a weather man to know which way the wind blows.
Ask any..... ANY Lake Worth Realtor if the high cost of our electric energy is a deterrent to investment or a family relocating here or in one of our neighboring towns.
It's one big dismal piece of a dismal puzzle that each intelligent decision maker must make when looking at Lake Worth.
Look at your water bills people. I know, I know, we have control of our water system.
We have control over our beach parking meters and aren't they fun to watch. I think the line was 10 people long when I went by yesterday at just one kiosk.
The Electric Utility Advisory Board is only as good as the information they are able to get from the deep black hole that receives hundreds of millions of our dollars every year.
Do you think the 5 elected officials are any more qualified to make these types of decisions without spending the time needed to concentrate exclusively on that issue.
Give them some credit. They have stepped up to the plate. They are as smart as Clay Lindstrom allows them to be.
I am a proponent of asking for proposals from any company wanting to acquire our valuable electric utility. FPL happens to be the lowest cost provider of juice in the state. If they were to offer a price that would benefit us, I would probably be a proponent of putting it on the ballot. You are a proponent of letting the people vote on everything. Why not this?
You are correct about city board volunteers in general. I do think that they give it their all once they are appointed. It is too bad that politics takes over the objective as evident regarding the P&Z board.
I would like to know the value of our utility just like a Realtor would want to know the value of a property it was listing for sale.
They are as smart as Michael Bornstein allows them to be. The buck stops with our city manager.Don't we have a contract with OUC? WHY is this small faction pushing for sale to FPL.OUR costs have already been lowered ,and there is a plan in place to lower our electricity costs every year for 5 years. This was agreed to by our Commission. The poster at 9:22 must be a friend of the anarchist crowd in town who don't want us to have ANY power?
922, there are many boards that do not cost us money for their decisions and do not have budgets. I don't think suggesting the type of foliage in LW is very dangerous nor is a sister city Board, which is sort of a waste. there is a big problem depending upon a electric board to make recommendations as to selling. Big difference here. How can any city commission give that task to volunteers with agendas? Get rid of the CRA too while you're at it.
Anarchists? LOL. I am taking that as sarcasm. If our electric attorney, Sheff Wright, says we must make $200 million, that does not mean any utility in existence will pay anywhere near that. That's a joke.
OK, take Shef's figure of $200 million as a high amount. That is the amount he states the value to the city is for having our own electric utility.
Now take what Vero Beach was able to sell their utility, which is roughly double our size, $185 million.
So low end would put us a $89 million. That's about a $100 million spread.
You are falsely stating that we want to sell the utility. We do want to see what FPL would offer.
Please articulate what the harm in finding out what they would offer could possibly be.
I believe that what Sheff was saying is that is what it would take to pay off all our obligations, union, loans as well as its value before we could sell it...not the value of our assets at electric utility. I don't know the situation in Vero--did they have a loan outstanding? Did they have an unfunded union pension liability in the same amount that we have? Etc, etc.
If it is indeed a "false' assumption that a handful of people do NOT want to sell the utility, then why are you going through all of this to come up with a value? Surely it is not just to waste staff time, is it?
What a value might be today will change in time depending upon what capital improvements we do there. To come up with a "value" is subjective depending upon the point of view of the Seller or the Buyer. I am rather sure it is much more valuable to us.
Why put everyone through this process when we are NOT contemplating its sale and have not voted to do so? And if you are wanting to sell it, then FPL should not be the only one bidding on it.
Should our utility staff and finance director go through this exhaustive process just to satisfy a group here who want to sell it off?
I am one of the handful of people who want to see what the offer would be and whether it could make sense. The voters would ultimately make the choice. I agree with you that the value is a moving target and that we should NOT devote one minute of staff or volunteer board time trying to hit that moving target. It is only worth what someone is willing to pay.
Let them spend their time and money to find out if it would make sense to them to acquire our electric utility. Who knows, maybe when they see how much debt we are in, they might turn tail and then we can concentrate on our long term requirements whether it be retooling the plant or continue being just a distributor skimming off the top to keep our taxes so artificially low.
Our taxes are NOT low. They are based on the value of the property. With the special assessment (LW waste and stormwater) that is paid, we are over the 10 cap limit I would guess. Let's clean up the slum and blight. Until we do that, property values will suffer.
Next, if an outside power company wants to value our utility, ok. Whatever they come up with will be kept confidential by them so it won't be adding to our knowledge or curiosity.
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