August 9, 2006

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            The logo – a circle enclosing silhouettes of Binkley Chapel’s steeple and two trees with gold rays spreading behind the chapel and the words “Wake Forest Power” underneath – was unveiled Friday at the town board retreat.

            The goal is branding, Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said. Although the town provides power to about half the town’s residents, “everybody knows that Raleigh provides water and sewer, and a lot of people don’t know we’re in the electric business. This would make us visible as opposed to invisible.”

            The town’s electric department is operated with a separate enterprise account with its own budget, debt and debt service and capital improvement plan. This year’s budget is $15.9 million.

            “The logo is not the brand,” Bill Crabtree, the communications specialist, said. They want to use the brand to publicize that Wake Forest Power “is a professional service provider. It’s a hometown service provider.”

            Crabtree and O’Donnell said the logo could be put on the department’s trucks and uniforms and used on Channel 10 and utility bills.

            “Are we trying to make people feel good about being in our service district?” Commissioner David Camacho asked.

            Not really, O’Donnell said. “We have no competitors.”

            The town has service area agreements with Wake Electric, which supplies power to people in Heritage and on the east and north of town, and with Progress Energy, which serves the area to the south.

            O’Donnell said, given the town’s service area, that the town will double the number of customers it serves in future years. “We have the major commercial districts; the others are more residential,” he said. “Our load is going to grow at a greater rate than our customers.”

            “People think the town of Wake Forest is screwing them with electric rates,” Commissioner Margaret Stinnett said.

            “That’s why we need to show them the benefits,” Town Manager Mark Williams said. “Think back to every ice storm or hurricane. Our customers were back on before [the others}. We should be proud of that.

            “We provide the service and we’ve never pushed the benefits,” Williams continued. “If you’ve got a gripe, you can call up Margaret or Frank or the mayor and gripe.”

            Mayor Vivian Jones said that after an ice storm, she received a call from a resident in Staffordshire who complained her lights were not on while others around her had power. That was because she was on Progress Energy not the town lines, Jones told the woman, who then asked if she could be on town power.

            The reason Wake Forest electric rates are higher than Progress Energy’s or Wake Electric’s is that in 1986 the town board, persuaded by electric consultants and others, agreed to join other North Carolina towns with electric systems and buy shares in the power plants Carolina Power & Light (now Progress Energy) planned. The construction costs for plants such as Shearon Harris spiraled up and up, and the town’s debt grew.

            Wake Forest still owes about $20 million, and the last payment on the debt will be in January of 2026.