Figure 1: Robert LaFave, L'Anse Village Manager, standing in front of a set of solar panels recently installed to help power the Village's water treatment facility.
L’Anse council will opt for the state’s low-income energy program. Despite concerns some of the money could be for natural gas bills the village does not serve. Since the low-income energy program started in 2013 L’Anse has typically opted out of the program. However recent changes to the energy assistance program law require all energy providers, municipal and for-profit companies, to develop a low-income assistance program.
It would require everybody, whether you’re a municipal utility or an IOU, investment utility, to have a low-income assistance program, which would allow us on one side to do shutoffs during the winter months, but on the other side, we would also have to have a surcharge for the program. Now, if we opted out, we would still have to do a surcharge, but we would have to find a non-profit locally to work with and we’d have to do tracking and reporting to Lansing, and just from a feasibility standpoint that doesn’t work well for us. – Bob LaFave, Village Manager, Village of L’Anse
L’Anse has had its Energy waste production program forever.
What bothers me though is that it covers both energy and natural gas bills. Well, we don’t sell natural gas. Some co does. So we’ll likely, we probably have the pot of money. We send the Lansing. I’ll probably end up paying for some. bills for some co-customers as well this bill is not perfect but I know that MMEA worked very hard to try to find a solution it’s just the solution that we have is just I just don’t think it’s going to work for smaller communities like ours that don’t have a great deal of staff. – Bob LaFave, Village Manager, Village of L’Anse
Village manager Bob LaFave says the goal of the 2013 energy income assistance program is to keep the heat on for low-income residents at risk of the inability to afford high energy costs. LaFave adds that the recently passed updates for the program may challenge smaller communities providing utilities.
Additional action by the L’Anse, the council approved union contracts for village employees and the police department. Department heads in attendance and councilors and the personnel committee expressed gratitude for one another’s work to come to agreements. Each contract will last for 3 years and include 3 percent pay increases during that time
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