Last night's meeting was, for the most part, simply a formality to establish the millage and the budget for 2013/2014 that is required by law.
- Millage: 5.4945 (same as last year)
- Stormwater special assessment: $75.60 per ERU (no change from last year)
- Refuse collection special assessment: $245.76 (no change)
- Rates and charges for Electric: Reduction in rates of 4.5% for residential and small commercial customers. Mayor Pam Triolo said, "Let's live within our means. We can go back and adjust if we have to." Vice Mayor Scott Maxwell said, "That's a game change for us." The Finance Director had a slide showing the comparisons between Lake Worth and FPL mentioning that FPL was just granted a rate increase of 5% beginning in January because of fuel projection costs whereas we do not have to go before a Public Service Commission for rates.
- Rates and charges for water: No increase
- Rates and charges for Local Sewer: 10% decrease
- Rates and charges for sub-regional sewer: $1.563 per 1000 gallons and $1.315 per 1000 gallons for the City of Palm Springs
Fire: $2.8 million
Police: $2.9 million
Employees: $1.1 million
It's nice to see that taxes are not going up and I might save a dollar or two on my electric bill. This too is temporary if a general obligation bond passes to do the infrastructure. This commission timed this just right as higher fees would not kick in until next year.
ReplyDeleteLynn, your statements to the commission regarding the Karson contract were at the very least misinformed and at the most lies. How are you going to explain the irrefutable paper trail. Certainly brings your blogs credibility into question.
ReplyDeleteThat is your opinion and the bully blogger's opinion, anonymous. Invoices were submitted and no final bill was necessary according to that committee. I have a call into Ms. Karson now to verify. Will let you know.
ReplyDeleteSome people have nothing better to do but to denigrate my credibility. It's all politics.
The next time you comment, sign your name and I will give it some credibility, perhaps.
Things get lost in this city due to the change in employees. We can't seem to keep staff. More than likely it got deleted from someone's computer or they need to do a better search.
ReplyDeleteThat other blogger, not going to use his name as you would delete it, continues to re-write history and takes everything out of context. I heard he was the most despised person in the city.
ReplyDeleteHe's been told repeatedly to go back to his own blog.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused. Wes posted the actual "agreement" with the "LLC". What committee? Does what the "committee" say override the contract?
ReplyDeleteIs there any other context than what is pretty plain English in the agreement?
Most of what should be public record is gone. But what can be found looks like someone is trying to put lipstick on a pig.
It says plainly that invoices are required.
It say the a city representative has every right to audit the records and charges listed in those invoices.
It also the city has ownership to all the findings and materials the LLC has and makes.
So why is it out of line to ask for the materials? She was paid per our end of the agreement. Whare are the materials due us from her end of the contract?
Think about it this way, anonymous. The Select committee would not have been paid unless they had submitted invoices. They said that they did. They got paid. They say that the report was given to the city on two occasions. Their work was over when Maxwell DEMANDED that they appear before him AGAIN and subject themselves to more abuse because he didn't like the results. They said "no."
ReplyDeleteTo most people I talked to the karson agreement appears to be a pay back. Maxwells abuse is not relevant to her submitting the report in person. Her findings were considered useless. Funny,karson had no problem accepting the money. Your unwavering support of Karson, while admirable for a bud, hurt your credibility.
ReplyDeleteHow did they lower electric rates? By playing with the rate structure? That reduction is probably unsustainable. They would have had to:
ReplyDelete1. Expose the utility to risk by lowering the prudent cash reserve. This is what keeps us in business when a hurricane knocks out power for weeks at a time and we have to pay crews to come from other states to help get us back up and running. We also still have to pay fixed costs like debt principle and interest, contractual obligations, etc. think about how long it takes to cycle a payment from a customer and you will see why we need to be very careful about this number.
2. Expose the utility to risk by playing with the debt ratio that's mandated by bond covenants.
There are about four factors in the rate structure that can be manipulated, at risk to the enterprise, in order to adjust rates up or down. How ethical is it to do this when you know (because your finance director has told you so) that the reduction is only sustainable until you get your campaign literature printed??
Hope you don't spend that $2 per month savings, because you'll pay $4 next year to make it up.
I also saw in the PBP that the CM is proposing to spend money left in the Conservation Fund to attract homeowners to LW. I'm not opposed to marketing the city, but the Conservation Fund was created to educate LWU customers about and assist them with improvements to reduce demand. Is it legal to use it some other way just because we don't answer to a Public Service Commission? That's the sort of thing FPL did and got smacked for a couple years ago.
@10:39---
ReplyDelete1. most people? Who, all 6 of your negative NO's?
2. Payback for what? She got the contract fair and square after a lot of BS
3. What findings? This was NOT about FINDINGS. Did you even read the blog to understand what she did.
4. I would say that YOUR CREDIBILITY is about minus zero.
All you people want to do is personally attack citizens. Change your program.