I seem to recall that PUB sends out 19,000 bills per month. If I am way off the mark would someone please correct me? While I will do the polite clap in response to the recent (if paltry) fee cuts at the utility, lets all do a little game of what if !
Q: What if 6 Million had not already been spent on the invisible weir dam (or dam weir) ?
A: Across the board $26.32 bill reduction for everyone
in Brownsville, for every month, for a year.
(Insert vomiting sequence from The Exorcist here)
I have seen first hand, and more than most, the day to day work the front line employees do. For the most part it is cost effective and professional. The days of being paid to lean on shovels seem to be gone along with the times of the company picnic and family reunion being one and the same. Equipment and plant maintainence are all within what I consider to be prudent, cost effective levels. This makes me pretty happy, because money bleed from those areas is much harder to fix.
Ok now that eliminates the vast majority of the people at one of the largest companies in Brownsville, so the message to you remaining few, CUT IT OUT! Just stop it, already.
"Of course I know. It is my business to know" -The Merovingian
Thursday, September 27, 2007
How Low Can You Go?
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3 comments:
Great post. Keep it up.
(From a previous Brownsville 2020 post this past April)
PUB "PLUS": A PROPOSAL FOR A FIXED ANNUAL INSTALLMENT PLAN.
In larger cities the utility company allows customers to opt-in to a billing "installment" plan. Here's how it works: the company adds the previous year's worth of bills, divides by 12, and then bills the customer a monthly "installment" equal to 1/12th of the previous year's total bill. This helps the customers BUDGET their utility bills which, as we all know, go up and down during the year. At the end of the year, if there is an amount owing, the customer pays the 1/12th plus the balance, or if there is a credit, he can either receive a refund or credit it to the next month's payment.
Example: if my 2006 total utility payments were $3,180, my monthly bill during 2007 would be a "flat" $265 per month. The extra "work" involved at PUB could be easily offset by charging customers a nominal fee, such as $1.00/month for this service which should be enough to hire one person to pay for this entire operation.
Imagine (there's that overused word again!) the impact of this on fixed-income folks across town, particularly the elderly and low-income. We will actually be able to PREDICT what our monthly utilities bill will be every month, which means we will potentially have more discretionary money to spend during the year.
A simple solution... no whining, no complaining, and no cost to the taxpayers. What WILL Brownsville be like in 2020?
Almost every other utility offers this. I would like to see the monthly bills include deviation, monthly and year to date so that conservation would be encouraged to keep the rate the same, or lower, next year. I wouldn't want anyone to get blindsided when the monthly rate was readjusted. With that one, albeit piddly adjust to your plan, I agree.
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