Saturday, June 2, 2018

City of Lake Worth news from July 2017: “New Electric Utilities Director Hired”.


Before we get to the news from last year, the biggest news in this City of Lake Worth is the news nobody is talking about. Yet. To find out what is going on there is a link at the end of this blog post. And no, it has nothing to do with ‘zombies’.

Lake Worth Electric Utility Director Ed Liberty will be with the City of Lake Worth one year coming up next month. Let’s take a look back to an article in The Lake Worth Herald last year:


“Lake Worth’s Oldest Established Business — Established in 1912”
The Herald newsroom is located at 1313 Central Terrace. Have community news? Use this link or
call 561-585-9387.

 

Excerpt from the front page news, July 13, 2017:


Lake Worth City Manager Michael Bornstein has announced the selection of the candidate for Utilities Director for the City. Ed Liberty brings experience, expertise and leadership qualities to the City of Lake Worth Utilities Department.
     Liberty is an energy industry executive with experience in natural gas and electric T&D [Transmission and Distribution] operations, electric generation, renewable energy project development, energy and sustainability services and asset development.
     Most recently with Public Service Electric & Gas, Newark, New Jersey, Liberty has been the leader of the company’s utility operations with functions including Materials and Logistics Management, Transportation/Fleet, Environmental, Health & Safety and Training.

Welcome to the City of Lake Worth, Mr. Liberty.

The latest news about the Lake Worth Electric Utility is not good. But it’s in times like this when experience matters. Mr. Liberty demonstrated his mettle last year during Hurricane Irma. Liberty’s work during that storm was well-chronicled by the City of Lake Worth’s Public Information Officer (Mr. Ben Kerr), The Lake Worth Herald, and on this blog as well.

But the Electric Utility director’s work during that storm last year was never chronicled in The Palm Beach Post. Why not? Because their beat reporter and most everyone else at that paper hauled ass out of town before the storm arrived.

So when the next ‘storm’ hits and the Post finally gets around to reporting this story, maybe then they’ll finally get around to acknowledging how great a job the City’s Electric Utility, director, staff, and lineman (and out-of-town linemen too) performed last year.

But hope springs eternal. Last October the Post was put up For-Sale by the Cox Media Group. This year, on May 1st, Gatehouse Media took over operations. So when the next major storm hits, an actual weather event, maybe it will actually get chronicled in the County’s paper of record.