Bill Swank Quotations

The primary cause of the pole failure was not deterioration of the poles, it was the wind loading on the poles and the wires. It wasn't a deterioration issue.

We're looking at it as an investment on our part.

We're confident that, when they see it spelled out in detail, that they will find that these were prudently incurred costs and related to storm restoration.

Since we have not had an opportunity to fully evaluate the impact of these staff recommendations, it would be premature to comment on specifics at this time.

Fuel diversity is something we've been striving for for a long time. I think the nation as a whole is beginning to reassess its options.

The purpose of the inspection program is to make sure that if there are poles that are deteriorating, we go out, identify them and make sure the ones that are tending toward failure are braced or replaced.

Someone is going to have to determine whose engineer is correct. That's part of the process. They try to reduce the number and we try to account for the dollars we spent.

We'll be practicing a best practices policy. If (Constellation) does something extremely well, we can adopt the same procedure in Florida, but there's not going to be any financial impact . . . for quite a while.

We're dealing with a new era of higher hurricane activity and we realized we need to harden our system to deal with it here in Florida.

We're well over a million, and it doesn't look like it's going to ease up.

We believe the expenses we are seeking recovery of were prudently incurred in serving our customers.

We're living in an era where there is a higher incidence of hurricanes. This will give us what we need for a while.

We are working on them, and we will try to get to them as quickly as we can. It's only been a month and a half since Wilma. It might take another month or two.

Unfortunately, hurricanes are a way of life here in Florida, and restoration is a cost of doing business.

We've had very mild winter weather so far. We haven't heard a lot of customers complaining about their bills. Unless we get a really strong cold snap, it will be until the hot, humid weather returns before people begin noticing a change in their bills.

Our customers are out of service less time only half as much as the national average so if we had bad maintenance we wouldn't have that kind of reliability.

People should contact us if they have a problem and let us know what their situation is. Our customer service representatives will work with customers.

This is an increase in the adjustment in the fuel (cost) . . . that is a direct pass along to the customer. We're impacted by the same high costs of fuel that each of our customers are.

There was no intent to confuse or mislead anybody.

The reserve amount that we are requesting is reasonable in light of the past experience of the past two years and the forecasts of the heightened hurricane activity.

Considering we have 1.3 million poles, that would be 120,000 a year.

It won't affect prices at all. We anticipated the fluctuation in fuel prices when we set our rates.

If fuel prices come down drastically, we will refund the difference the following year.