Tuesday night the Wake Forest Town Board heard from Stephanie Beauregard, Manager of Financial Services with Booth & Associates, a firm which provides cost of service, rate study updates and other electric services.
She recommended Wake Forest raise its residential cost of service by 2 percent in 2021 and 4.6 percent in 2023. The increases are needed to ensure the town-owned electric system, Wake Forest Power, will have an adequate cash reserve for 90 to 180 days in the event of natural or manmade disaster or other destabilizing event and also to cover the cost of providing the service.
Chief Financial Officer Aileen Staples said Wednesday, “We will not present a recommendation to adjust rates until March 2021 or perhaps in conjunction with the FY 2021 -2022 Budget.”
Also, small commercial customers would receive a decrease in their rate structure.
Currently, the basic customer charge for residential single-phase service, which is most residences, is $15.95 and the proposed rate is $25, a 56.74 percent increase. The energy charge is now $0.11310 and would be reduced to $0.11090, a 1.95 percent reduction.
Wake Forest Power has 6,807 residential customers with a monthly kWh charge of 909 and an average kWh charge of $0.12955.
The average residential customer will see an increase of approximately $6.85.
The Wake Forest commissioners and mayor will be looking at the present rates and the recommended rate increases for residential customers in March 2021.
In other business, nine people who have applied for open seats on the Wake Forest Planning Board, including current members Grif Bond (current vice chairman) and Ed Gary (current chairman), were interviewed by telephone. Of interest to some who follow Wake Forest politics, Chris Malone, a one-term town commissioner, one-term county school board member and four-term state representative in the General Assembly, was listed as having applied but did not respond by telephone.
Wake Forest Planner Dylan Bruchaus presented the various amendments the town planning staff is ready to apply to the Comprehensive Transportation Plan, including adding the future rail corridor for the unfunded Southeast High Speed Rail and future grade separations for that corridor, which means closing some streets. The SHSR plan included closing Elm Avenue and providing east-west access by way of an underpass on Holding Avenue. There are apparently some missing greenway sections and road sections that will be added. After a question from Commissioner Bridget Wall-Lennon, Bruchaus and Planning Director Courtney Tanner had a long discussion about making online maps searchable.
Tanner returned to the podium to explain that the Town of Rolesville has decided not to move forward with the interconnected bus plan. “They don’t have the money,” Mayor Vivian Jones said. Tanner said they would pursue the project for next year because the route through Rolesville will also give Wake Forest residents a more direct route to the northern Wake Tech campus. It would give Rolesville residents access to the expanded health services and shopping available in wake Forest.
The director of downtown development, Lisa Hayes, introduced Transportation Planner Jonathan Jacobs, who explained that, in order to add parking spaces to downtown, they are proposing to make the section of Wait Avenue from Roosevelt Avenue to South Brooks Street one-way to the west. He said they anticipate making the change soon.
Mayor Jones asked about one-way traffic on the portion of East Jones Avenue between South Brooks Street and South Taylor Street – the town board had approved doing that in September – and Jacobs assured her it too will be soon. Today, Wednesday the town announced it would begin converting the street to one-way with diagonal on-street parking the week of December 7. It will match the other section of East Jones between South White Street and South Brooks Street.
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5 Responses
I, too agree with John Higgins. Any time the people at the helm need to find money to fund things that they say will improve our town, we, the residents are the ones who do the paying. Taxes and fees are being raised, but no improvements are ever seen. Where are the improvements to the overcrowded roads with no traffic lights where we need them, like Rogers Road where they are once more building another community and shopping center and no way to safely make a left turn out of any shopping areas along this road. TERRIBLE PLANNING!!!! How about reducing the number of well-to-do members on the board and replace them with some middle-class residents who live here and can provide a realistic picture of what can and should be done.
I agree with John, plus with all the new building going on how about having the developers pay up to offset some of the costs
Once again, Wake Forest keeps raising taxes, fees, and other costs. I realize that the cost of wholesale electricity may be going up, but just passing that to their customers is the last thing that should be done, not the first. Find costs including staffing if necessary to cut. Add this to the $21 per month added fee for trash pickup and the 15% to 20% increased real estate taxes based on assessments, and the citizens are being bled dry. Remember, many citizens have had their hours and/or pay cut this year due to COVID. Small businesses are hurting in a big way. Yet, the Town bureaucrats keep passing costs to the taxpayers, and the commissioners jut rubber stamp them. WAKE FOREST NEEDS TO REDUCE THE TOWN’s COSTS. I can smell a coming tax revolt in Wake Forest.
We have needed a tax revolt for some time.
I agree. What can we do to better educate the public?