Ambulance pact advances
LAFAYETTE — The City-Parish Council on Tuesday moved forward proposals to renew an exclusive contract with Acadian Ambulance and to allow residents to opt out of having new “smart meters” that give Lafayette Utilities System the ability to remotely read electric and water meters.
Both measures are up for a final vote on Feb. 28.
On the smart meter issue, 22 people signed in to support allowing LUS customers to opt out of having the new smart meters installed.
The devices have attracted opposition from a small but vocal group who have expressed fears about the possible health effects from the radio frequencies used to remotely read the meters and about allowing the city-owned utility to have detailed information that smart meters can collect on customers’ daily use of water and electricity.
Lafayette resident Ray Green also expressed concern over information on utility usage being shared with the federal government, which provided a grant to help fund Lafayette’s smart meter conversion.
“Any time the government has one nickel in a project, they own it,” Green said.
LUS Director Terry Huval has said fears of health effects and invasion of privacy are unwarranted.
“I think we ought to have the best up-to-date metering and electrical operation that the technology allows us to have,” resident Haywood Martin said.
Huval has said the smart meters will allow LUS to save on the cost of manually reading meters and help LUS instantly know of power outages or water problems without having to wait on customer complaints.
The proposed smart meter opt-out provision would allow LUS customers to keep their conventional meters but pay a monthly fee to cover the cost of manually reading the meters.
The fee would start at $5 a month but would be adjusted based on the cost of manually reading meters and on the number of people who choose to opt out.
The council also moved forward a proposal to renew a contract that would give Lafayette-based Acadian Ambulance exclusive rights to provide service in Lafayette Parish and would raise the limit for automatic rate increases from 3 percent a year to 6 percent a year.
The city’s current contract with Acadian Ambulance was approved in 2003 and expires in March.
The city-parish Emergency Medical Service Advisory Board, which monitors the ambulance contract, recommended the renewal and the revised 6 percent cap for annual rate increases, a figure that EMS Advisory Board Chairman Andre Fruge said is on par with ambulance rates in the region.
Fruge said in an interview last week that the rate increase will likely affect only about 14 percent of the potential users of ambulance services in Lafayette, because about 86 percent have private or government insurers that negotiate their own rates with Acadian.
Under the proposed contract, Acadian could exceed the annual 6 percent rate cap, but only with the approval of the EMS Advisory Board and the City-Parish Council.