EAST POINT, Ga. — Channel 2 Action News was there as people protested a plan by a local city to raise their power bills. The protesters said they can’t afford an increase.
“This is what they put in everybody’s bill,” East Point homeowner Marie Terry said, as she showed Channel 2’s Tom Jones a notice in her power bill.
Terry said when she opened her power bill and saw that it was going up. She thought about how she would have to make some changes when it gets too hot.
“Air conditioner. You can’t run it. You can’t. I’m on a fixed income. So that affects me a lot on a fixed income,” Terry said.
Neighbors are upset East Point is raising its power bills from winter rates to summer rates. With winter rates, they paid 9.3 cents per 1000 or more kilowatt hours.
For the summer rate: “That goes up 13.9 from 9.3. That’s kind of high,” Terry said.
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A source familiar with the rates told Jones that customers had been only paying winter rates since COVID hit.
But now the city wants to go back to summer rates because of a budget shortfall.
Terry doesn’t think it’s fair that the city is making customers pay for its failure to balance its budget.
“I would tell them don’t raise the rates. Find another way to get some money to the city,” Terry said.
Napoleon Black also doesn’t want to see the rates increase.
“It’s gonna affect everyone’s pocketbook. But I’m more concerned about people who are low-income. Our seniors,” Black said.
He’d like to see an audit so customers will know where their money is going.
“We don’t know where we stand. We don’t know how much money is coming in. Maybe we do need to raise rates. We don’t know,” Black said.
Jones reached out to the city to find out more about this rate increase, the budget shortfall, customers kept mentioning and possible layoffs. He is still waiting to hear back.
The protestors plan to go to Monday night’s council meeting and let them know they can’t afford this rate increase.
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