New Iberia City Council wants lower Cleco energy bills for residents

Published 4:30 am Friday, December 9, 2022

The New Iberia City Council grilled a governmental service representative for Cleco about increased costs and the state of the city’s franchise agreement at Tuesday’s council meeting.

Willie Bergeron of Cleco, the private but state regulated electric public utility,  stood in front of the council for over half an hour at Tuesday’s meeting after he appeared in advance of the sunset of Cleco and New Iberia’s initial contract.

“I’ve had some visits with Mayor DeCourt in the past and there’s some improvements he’d like to do in the city, so we decided to come out a little earlier and give an early renewal to help the city with the improvements he’d like to have,” Bergeron said. 

However, DeCourt said that renewal for another 25 years will be at a future meeting, and council members took the opportunity to ask Bergeron about vastly increased Cleco prices for residents in the city.

“One of the things we’ve noticed over the last 12 months is this new rate structure put in place has really become a burden for our citizens,” Councilwoman Deedy Johnson-Reid said. “There’s no real relief, when I look at Entergy they always say they will help you with the bills and I don’t see anything like that from Cleco (Entergy Louisiana, LLC serves approximately 1.1 million electric customers in 58 parishes).”

A new pay structure was implemented by Cleco with approval from the Louisiana Public Service Commission in the past year, which spurred several town halls and public meetings where local officials, Cleco officials and even PSC Commissioner Mike Francis all discussed the upgraded price.

“There was no relief for our poor and elderly with large utility bills this summer,” Johnson-Reid said. “It seems that because we’re an older city with a lot of elderly people this was a huge burden for them over the summer.”

Bergeron credited the increase to the price of natural gas tripling recently, which is out of the control of Cleco.

“We don’t make money from fuel costs, that’s passed on to the consumers,” he said. “It looks like it’s going to go down a little bit and we’re hoping it does with the cooler weather.”

Bergeron added that Cleco has energy efficiency groups that can do an assessment of a home free of charge for insulation and with a landlord’s permission.

“We do offer ways to help our customers,” he said.