Thursday, April 30, 2020

Lake Worth's Electric Utility

Coronavirus Florida: Lake Worth Beach residents aren’t in the dark, but will city be in the red?

"Through April 24, nearly 2,600 customers whose accounts were delinquent and eligible for disconnection before the moratorium have maintained use of their utilities, electric utility director Ed Liberty said."

And that's enough to put our Electric Utility in a precarious position.

Our lame-duck Commissioner Hardy thinks we should get rid of it to Florida Power & Light and states that we are the only city in Palm Beach County with its own power plant. So what? Lake Worth always wants to either give something away or sell it for peanuts...just get if off their plate. We need our Utility to help operate our city.

We have had our own power since 1914 all thanks to the Pioneers. And on top of it all, our electrical utility decided to upgrade to 26.4kv, a non-standard in the industry and one that FPL does not use as far as I know.

Read about it...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

to share in the illness the commission should give up their paychecks for the last 3 months and forward. What percentage of the electric and water bill does the city collect for our operating budget?

Anonymous said...

They should give up the car allowance, where are they driving these days anyways?

Anonymous said...

you would think with all this time home they would return calls.NO WAY,Maybe they all went to hawaii

Anonymous said...

Hardy is ignorant about the Utility and its importance to us. One only needs to look North to Vero Beach.

The sale price was $185 million from FPL. By the time they paid off all the liabilities, the city received $30 million.

Vero is half the population of Lake Worth. Vero did not supply power to anyone else outside city limits.

We have looked into selling to FPL several times but have concluded it does not make financial sense.

Lake Worth should look to long term upgrades in our own system. Partnering with companies to utilize our license to operate a Utility with access to the grid and produce power here. Selling is a short sighted blunder. We can do much better.