High gas bills bring Cleveland residents together for answers

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High gas bills bring Cleveland residents together for answers

Wednesday, February 14, 2001

By EBONY REED PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

Gas bills have taken Emily Campbell $2,400 into the red.

She’s retired and doesn’t know how she’ll pay them.

"My gas bills used to be around $70; now they are around $180, and I’m not using any more gas," said Campbell, whose debt has grown from heating bills over a couple of winters. "I leave it on 70 [degrees] when I’m home, and when I leave, I turn it down to 60."

Campbell, 74, who owns a house on Pulaski St. in Cleveland, was joined by about 70 other residents last night at St. Colman Church for a community meeting on rising gas bills.

"We want residents to get a sense of community," said Kerry Katz, who helped organize the meeting. "I really hope everyone here will realize we are all in this together. This area’s a low, working-class area and can’t afford these high gas bills. One man mentioned he had to choose between paying his gas bill and for groceries. That’s how it is here."

The nonprofit May Dugan social-service center sponsored the meeting, where residents voiced concerns, mentioned having more meetings and discussed getting their elected representatives more involved. Some City Council members were present, but Mayor Michael R. White was not.

Bill Callahan, whose gas bill was $432 last month, said, "I cannot believe the mayor is not here to talk about this."

Gas bills have been rising across the United States. This month, California lawmakers approved a $10 billion plan to keep electricity flowing for millions of residents. That state’s two largest utility companies said they were in financial trouble and strapped for cash, which could affect services.

FirstEnergy spokesman Ralph DiNicola, who did not attend the meeting, said, "In the short term, Ohio does not face the same problem as California. In the long term, we will have to address ... supply." He said California’s electricity companies no longer control most of the state’s power plants because of deregulation, but that is not the case in Ohio.

Last summer, natural gas prices surged to a 3½-year high. As prices continue to rise, homeowners worry about mounting bills.

"People are moving in with others because they can’t pay these high gas bills," Campbell said. "It’s sad now. If all these people tonight [who] said the mayor should be here would end up in his office tomorrow, something would get done - a few would go to jail. But we’d get action. ... People cannot make it like this."

E-mail: ereed@plaind.com

Phone: 216-999-4848

http://www.cleveland.com/news/index.ssf?/news/pd/c14gas.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 14, 2001

Answers

"People are moving in with others because they can’t pay these high gas bills," Campbell said. "It’s sad now. If all these people tonight [who] said the mayor should be here would end up in his office tomorrow, something would get done - a few would go to jail. But we’d get action. ... People cannot make it like this."

It is a sad day indeed when people have to resort to moving in together because they cannot afford their high gas bills..... I think that we have just touched the tip of the iceberg with the high cost of utilities..

-- Tess (webwoman@iamit.com), February 14, 2001.


All an apparatchik cares about is his own warm derriere. We have a privileged class of entrenched politicians that care nothing about this country or the people who support the bums. But after all these parasites would be living under the freeway if they could not find someone to bilk.

-- David Williams (DAVIDWILL@prodigy.net), February 14, 2001.

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