The average Chattanooga resident probably won’t think twice about having to pay another $5 a month for electricity after EPB announced a recent 3.5 percent rate hike.
The agency’s board of directors unanimously approved the hike at an early morning board meeting, and no one there from the public had anything to say in opposition.
EPB Chief Executive Officer Harold DePriest said the increase was the utility’s first since 2011, and most Chattanooga residents likely would have written off the hike as the utility’s price of doing business.
Indeed, if DePriest had said just that, with the usual corporate-speak about the cost of new equipment, keeping things up to date to better serve customers and the like, it might have generated little notice.
But the increase, DePriest said, was fueled by extreme weather, hotter summers and colder winters, both of which he said produce bigger storms.