Lake Worth Beach residents saw a massive jump in charges
"Temperatures are beginning to cool, but customers of Lake Worth Beach's municipally owned utility are heating up over surging electric bills.Sky-rocketing costs for natural gas coupled by increased energy use during the summer months resulted in an unhappy surprise when September's bill arrived for many of the utility's nearly 28,000 customers.
All customers were hit with a 16.25% jump on the ''power cost adjustment'' portion of their bill, which permits utilities to adjust the price of electricity to reflect fluctuations in the cost of fuel used to supply power.
My power cost adjustment was 85% of my fuel cost...not close to the 16.25% increase the city touts. I had an electric audit by the city and I was told that the power cost adjustment was a TAX.
Utilities Director Ed Liberty said the culprit is natural gas prices that have quadrupled over the past year. Around half the fuel mix that goes into powering all of Lake Worth Beach is made up of natural gas.
The spiraling costs left the city utility with an unanticipated multi-million dollar gap between fees collected from residents and the price for buying that fuel.
Jorge Milian's article in the Palm Beach Post
As an aside, Commissioner Kimberly Stokes was the only commissioner to vote against.
14 comments:
It's an obscene increase. What about the costs the city is going to incur to try to collect the bills that people are unable to pay.
What did Stokes vote against?
Sorry, I thought that would be clear...the power cost adjustment
What a mess lake Worth is they've always had so many problems with their electricity and their high bills and then their water and their sewer on top of it it's so expensive to live in the city of lake Worth now it's so much better when you have FP& L and you live outside the lake Worth City limits lake Worth is huge rip off for their citizens! The City of lake Worth has a bad reputation a lot of people don't like to buy in that City because they know or have heard how expensive the utility bills are in that City get out before it's too late before you get killed by one of these drive-by shooters or gang members or thugs or illegal immigrants driving without a license it's a third world city out of control with a lot of corrupt elected officials just like a third world country just like the US is becoming right now! What a mess!
It is not a good city to live in, too much crime blight, and bad elected making all so expensive!
I know the City is in love with their Power Company, but have they checked the FPL rates lately. When my internet and phone charges go up, I check other companies' rates. Sometimes it pays to make a change.
@3:08...FPL IS A FEW CENTS LESS THAN OURS. The only way you can make a change is to move out of Lake Worth to a city that does not get serviced by Lake Worth Utilities.
Well, if it's just a few cents difference, then that's the market.
There have been drive by shootings in lake worth close to my house, it is not a good city to live in at all, extremely blighted crime infested and completely dysfunctional! Way too many illegals and anarchist. Bad schools too. It is a dump!
Way too many issues in lake worth, run as fast as you can! Wellington Jupiter Delray anyplace is better, the only one good thing about lwb is the beach, that is it!
we are paying this sheriff so much he should be crusing ALL streets in town like our city police did to show we had a police force.without him we would have more to do more.try going down fed hwy at 35 and see how many cars pass you.i dont want to see any of my friends or family killed on these streets
On my street the speed sign says 35 mph and the cars are driving 50 60 70 miles an hour the police are never around they never do anything we have all these laws but we never enforce any of them where are the place to enforce our laws today in this country?
We probably have the technology to target speeders, but for some reason, choose not to use it. I think it is probably not something anyone wants to address, for whatever reason.
If all the speeders could be fined or lose their licence, that would solve the problem.
That's a decision that probably comes down from on-high, so we will never know the answer, and they will never solve the problem.
We have a lot of rules and laws in this city and country no dogs on the beach no alcohol in the beach no smoking on the beach no surfing in swimming areas no entering the country illegally so many rules and laws but everybody does them and nobody enforces any law or rule anymore in this country it's complete anarchy!
Lake Worth has gone down hill over the past year or so. Allowing homeless to camp anywhere was a mistake worth fighting for. Allowing aggressive panhandling, again a huge error on their part. The city seems to be for the people, and not for ANY business.
Homeless people camping outside a business will scare people away. The electric rate (not residential, but commercial) is so outrageous, the restaurants, shops, etc must move out after they determine they cannot afford those rates.
The bottom up affect isnt working! Encourage business. They bring people. People bring money. Money buys police presence. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Post a Comment