The Lakeland City Commission on Monday will vote on whether to issue a $70 million bond to help cover the costs of repairing a damaged Lakeland Electric power plant unit, along with all necessary upgrades to the entire electric system.
In mid-April, City Manager Shawn Sherrouse sent city commissioners an email and memo, saying he needed to authorize an “emergency purchase in excess of $21 million” for major repairs to Lakeland Electric’s McIntosh Power Plant Unit 5.
The natural gas-powered unit, which produced 64% of the utility’s electricity last year, lurched to a halt on Feb. 23 and has been out of commission ever since. But it wasn’t until March 31 that the full extent of the damage became clear. The price tag to fix it was locked in at $21 million.
The new bond will help cover those costs, as well as the costs of building a new power plant.
Thieves is what Lakeland electric are. Remember the rakes to burn trash that set us back millions and then they sold them. Do you think we the citizens got our money back out of that deal? Remember the mayor told us to deal with it when we had to pay for the fuel charges for another city after they sold power to another them and forgot to put the fuel charge into the contract? Moving all these people into Lakeland and this seems like another way of hiking our electric bills even higher not to mention the drought we been in and the water shortage we were in last yr. Do you think these city officials know what the heck they are doing? Pretty soon the water and electricity will be so expensive but thes officials will have no problems living off out tax money.