The Number One Reason People Do Not Pay Their Rent: Their Utility Bill.
And many of these people (the honest ones) can either pay for power and try to convince their landlord to give them an extension on rent or pay their rent and hope the city doesn’t cut off their power.
Property Managers (and/or “Landlords”) can only give residents a certain amount of time before they have to file for eviction. I’ve been to a few of these proceedings, and suffice it to say, the city probably makes a good bit of money on eviction cases (or someone does). What does this mean? In many cases, the high price of utilities is causing people to lose their homes.
(You could attempt to argue that it’s the “high” price of rent, but that’d be totally bogus in Alexandria, where rents haven’t significantly increased in at least eight years. In fact, Alexandria is probably way below market, considering the current demand is substantially higher than our supply).
The city may have ways of solving this problem in the future, but the damage that has already been done is irreparable. They should focus on cutting energy costs however than can and increasing efficiency; then, we could pass the savings back to the consumer.
But for now, a utility bill is a utility bill, and if it’s not paid, your power is turned off.
We don’t need to refund. We need to reduce.
CenLamar 
I think the City Marshal collects a fee for evictions. Isn’t he the highest paid elected official in Rapides parish?
WHY NOT HAVE CITY SHOP FOR BEST RATES?? THEY DO NOT HAVE TO USE CLECO!!!!
Here is my slogan-0-thon: You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube; That ship has already sailed; . . . the spilled milk thing.
There is nothing we can do to alleviate the utility bill problem created by the Council’s failure to act. All we can do not is hold the culprits responsible and try to avoid these kinds of painful mistakes in the future. As I said before, the utility bills are merely a tragic and obvious symptom of the disease which is the collective misdirection (for a variety of reasons) of the council. Last nite on Channel 4 you saw the opening shots of a petty battle of pin the blame on someone else. The council likes credit but they will not accept the responsibility of their misdeeds. The McElroy report is accepted and paid even though is it far less than they promised, proposed, and contracted for. If we want a viable strategic plan or master plan, we will have to hire someone new and pay for it AGAIN. The $100K water park study that didn’t even result in a report, just a meaningless letter – we can’t let them get away with that.
Please concentrate on a cure and not just some short-term palliative to temporarily relieve some painful symptom. Fight for real change.