The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) has issued its final rate order for Lakefront Utilities Inc. (LUI) electricity rates.
LUI posted a summary of the recent OEB hearings on their website.
Northumberland News published an article based upon that summary.
The Cobourg Taxpayers Association (CTA) needed to clarify the omissions in these postings and wrote a letter to the editors of Northumberland News and Northumberland Today:
Letter to the editor:
Lakefront Utilities has posted a summary of the recent Ontario Energy Board (OEB) hearings on their website and you published an article based on the contents. Although what Lakefront has written is true as far as it goes, their omissions are misleading in our opinion.
The additional hearings were necessary because Lakefront’s situation is different from previous OEB decisions. Lakefront admits to spending $15,000 on legal opinions to support their case so they must not have considered the decision a slam-dunk unworthy of wasting their time. If the situation were as clear as Lakefront claims there would have been no need for additional legal work to bolster their case.
Lakefront claims that the intervenors asked for reimbursement of $8,000 in costs for the additional hearing with the implication that the Cobourg Taxpayers Association (CTA) asked for a third of this amount. The reality is that the CTA requested reimbursement of only $72 for a Freedom of Information Request.
As a result of the intervention by the Cobourg Taxpayers Association, Energy Probe and Vulnerable Energy Consumers Coalition (VECC), the approved increase is only $0.88 per month. This is a 23.5% decrease from Lakefront’s original $1.15 request. These amounts look trivial when stated in dollars per month per customer. However, when considered across Lakefront’s 9000+ customers the numbers are large.
Lakefront originally requested a rate increase which would result in customers being billed $4,414,540 annually for delivery charges. This was an increase of 8.26% from the previously approved amount. Due to the efforts of the intervenors the annual increase was reduced to 4.48%. Over the next 4 years Lakefront’s customers will save $617,712 due to our efforts.
Ken Strauss
CTA Director