Just in case you missed this from yesterday.

“Former Lake Worth Electric Utility director fired in Ft. Pierce”

Ironic isn’t it? The very same week Mr. Ed Liberty becomes the new Lake Worth Electric Utility Dir. (as reported last Wednesday in The Lake Worth Herald), a former director, Clay Lindstrom, is fired in Ft. Pierce.

Do you remember former Lake Worth beat reporter Lona O’Connor? Excerpts from an article in 2013 are below.

Lindstrom was fired by the Ft. Pierce Utility Board on a 3-2 vote. He was not given an opportunity to respond or even give a statement. Lindstrom ‘left’ Lake Worth around 2½ years ago to become director at Ft. Pierce Utilities. According to a FMEA rate study last May, Ft. Pierce electric customers were paying significantly more per 1,000 KW/hr than Lake Worth’s Electric Utility.

Linstrom claimed he did nothing wrong. However, it was discovered some businesses were not charged a connection fee and there were other discrepancies.

Time for a stroll down memory lane: 

Then there’s that pesky reliability issue, but there has been progress on that front, too.
     “Three years ago [2010], we were one of the worst for overall reliability,” said Lindstrom. “Now we’re in the top 10.”
—Excerpt from news report by former Lake Worth beat reporter Lona O’Connor, September 2013, titled “Lake Worth works to improve utility billing, stem money losses”.

From NBC5/WPTV: “By a vote of 3-2, the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority terminated Clay Lindstrom’s contract ‘without cause’ for losing confidence in the director.”

More excerpts from the article by Lona O’Connor back in September 2013.

The city’s electric and water utilities are plugging away on fixes for a troubled system that was said to be losing about $1 million a year, due to inaccurate billing and metering.

and. . .

     Because some of the problems seemed concentrated in large commercial customers, staff first reviewed billing after the consultant, Burton and Associates, determined that at least one customer, Palm Beach State College, was being billed for water and fire line service but not sewer service, which cost the water utility more than $80,000 in lost fees.

and. . .

     Utility staffers are now also replacing meters, some of which date back to the 1950s, in a city that just celebrated its 100th anniversary.