It is difficult being an opponent to any incumbent especially to Mayor Triolo and Vice Mayor Maxwell. Both of them have been in office for years and have all the connections and answers down pat. Both opponents, Drew Martin and Sarah Malega were outstanding, up on the issues and gave them a run for "their money."
One thing that the incumbents bragged about more than once was their rate parity to FPL. They claim that we are now even with FPL's rate, even under it. We sock it to commercial establishments with high rates and it's no wonder the incumbents never mention it...we are so much higher than FPL and lowering this rate would attract more businesses which I would think is the goal.
Click the link below and see the true figures as Candidate Sarah Malega suggested.
Florida Municipal Electric Association--latest figures.
6 comments:
Sarah was wonderful
I was very impressed by the tone of the candidates. For the most part, very civil. Not at all like the Lake Worth we have come to expect.
Trying to be as objective as possible, I think Pam blew Drew away. She is a good speaker and like you say, knows what has been happening for the past 5 years very well. Drew wants solar everywhere. I do too, but it can't be the priority of a campaign. Also, Drew doesn't think the CRA money stays in the city and benefits developers, which he is well known to oppose. I just couldn't help but think it was McVoy standing there.
On the other hand, Sarah came out on top of Scott. Her passion is evident even though she is not acquainted with some of the issues as Scott would be.
While your graph doesn't show exact parity, we are pretty damn close and headed in the right direction. I am extremely happy to see progress and yes, the commercial rates need to come down to be equal with FPL or below. I didn't think for a moment we would be this close when the trio passed the ordinance to achieve this goal. Kudos to them!
Can't wait for the follow up forums coming up.
Thanks Lynn for giving us this info! As for the CRA-I don't like them. Their books are closed. The money they "save " lake Worth in county taxes is tax money from the whole city. But their "projects" only benefit a small portion of the city.For too many years they have not been in the most blighted areas of the city. And their staff salaries are ridiculous. It's just not fair.
I agree with Drew on the CRA as far as getting some of the properties out of the CRA to help our tax base. I disagree that the downtown was blighted, but if it ever was, it is not now.
Commercial rates are not going to come down at least for a very long time. Beginning in a few weeks, FPL customers will begin paying back the $1.3 billion for Irma costs via their bills. Customers will be charged $4 a month per 1,000 kilowatt hours. So, the customer who uses 2,000 kilowatt hours a month will pay an $8 surcharge, and so forth.
Rates have not gone up for LW electric and because of FPL raising their rates, we are closer to residential parity. The city throws in a cost of a franchise fee that we don't have to pay which I think they estimate at about 10%. This is controversial and is used for our rate for comparison to FPL.
These FMPA numbers in this graph are based on 1200kwh. The parity is based on 1000kwh.
Drew was completely unprepared. Sarah gave Scott a real challenge, though some of her answers/statements were incorrect, such as stating the commission VOTED to close the pool. If anyone knows that's not correct, it's you, Lynn. Michael closed the pool and then told the commission.
Very civil overall and time flew. The first of many. Let's see how they all evolve from here.
This commission lets Mike Bornstein do whatever he pleases. Sarah misspoke on that one but in essence, the commission never said NO to Bornstein or give any alternative as to a time certain as to when the pool will be repaired or reopened. Bornstein does not want this pool. The commission dropped the ball on our pool.
Next, the mayor also misspoke when she said we almost lost the money from the county. She mentioned $6 million that was used to re-do our casino building. That money was borrowed from ourselves. The money from the Recreation Bond was $5 million and it was only Burt Aaronson who made a big deal out of it. Cara Jennings was negotiating our decal parking spaces.
She and Maxwell over exaggerated that we were near bankruptcy. This is UNTRUE. We were climbing out of a recession back then that hit us hard in LW due to the economy overall. Property values were way down. Stanton instigated austerity measures that turned our city around. We had plenty of money in reserves and millions in assets. NOWHERE NEAR BANKRUPTCY. That is a political myth.
You're right about the 1000kwh however, just read the link and you will see a similar result.
Drew answered the questions and did a pretty good job. He focused way too much on solar, however. He was not given the questions in advance and did well.
Sarah was the star of the night.
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