The mission of LCEC is to provide reliable power to our customers. When you are at home or work and you flip on a switch or heat up leftovers in the microwave, we want you to know that you have power you can depend on. We want it be so reliable, in fact, that you can practically take for granted that you will always have electric power when you need it. That is our commitment to you, our customers. It may seem simple, but we take seriously the idea of following through on our commitments.

Currently, the electric infrastructure providing electricity to Cape Coral falls short in terms of ensuring reliable electricity. Should an outage occur on existing lines with the current population and the power needs of Cape Coral residents, customers would not continue to be able to take electric power for granted. The solution to this issue is easy – a new transmission line needs to connect existing sub-stations in order to ensure consistent, reliable power. LCEC will pay to construct that transmission line at no additional cost to customers.

That’s it. That is the entirety of the issue standing between Cape Coral residents and their continued access to reliable electricity. We are committed to solving this problem by upgrading infrastructure, and we will do so without raising customer rates or assessing residents an additional fee. LCEC employees have worked hard to keep costs low and eliminate the need for a rate increase in 2009 and we continue to focus on the bottom line.

In order to continue to make good on our commitment to you, we have asked the City Council to allow us to move forward with installing the new transmission line. We are at a critical point – without the ability to move forward with the new line, our customers face the prospect of rolling brownouts.

We have been patient.

We anticipated this need for a new line more than 10 years ago, and began advising the city about the need for it. However, our ability to meet our commitment to our customers is now in jeopardy and we are no longer able to wait.

We are asking the residents of Cape Coral to help us honor our commitment to you by asking your city council member to approve the new transmission line during their August meetings. Again, that’s it. That is the entirety of the issue.

It is likely that other groups will try to complicate this issue by raising other topics, such as putting the line underground or additional development within Cape Coral. These are important issues to us. However, the appropriate time to address these other issues is after everyone is assured of reliable electric power.

To be clear – we don’t have a strong preference regarding whether the new transmission line is overhead or underground. Asking LCEC to pay for underground installation is asking all customers to pay when they do not receive the aesthetic benefit. LCEC will not support passing the costs for underground installation on to customers in the form of higher rates. If the City of Cape Coral or other groups want to pay to have the line installed underground and pass on the cost to residents, that is their decision. At this point in time, our obligation is to provide continued reliable power, and we commit to you, our customers, that we will do that at no additional cost to you.

We are proud that in this day and age, LCEC is a company that takes seriously the notion of honoring its commitments to its customers.

It may be out of the ordinary to make a direct appeal to our customers to help us work together to solve a problem that impacts the entire community.

It may sound corny, but we don’t think of ourselves as part of an ordinary company. We are your neighbors. Our kids go to the same schools as yours. We shop at the same stores. At the end of a long workday, we also want to come home and not even have to think about the ability to flip on the lights and reheat some leftovers in the microwave.

Help us honor the commitment that we have made. Please, contact your City Council member and let them know that you want them to allow us to provide consistent, reliable electricity at no additional cost to you.

– Karen Ryan, APR, CPRC, is the spokesperson for LCEC.