Dear Editor:

The potential 30-40% rate hike from Liberty Utilities stands to have drastic effects.

We have thousands of families in Southwest Missouri alone who barely scrape by each month who stand to have additional stress put on their pocketbooks and emotional capacity.

What of the businesses who see such an increase in their energy costs? Will they simply absorb the cost? Not likely. They will pass the cost onto the consumer. Mom and pop shops already struggle to compete with big box stores and online mega consumer sources like Amazon.

How many vacant store fronts are in our small towns as a result? How many local jobs have been lost as a result?

Small town city budgets are certainly impacted when small businesses shutter. Small towns struggle to make do, let alone find ways to thrive (especially those small towns who have been unable to pass the Use Tax because no one wants to see more taxes).

Throw in increasing their bill to keep the lights on by a third or more and you are looking at job or service cuts. Every community out there is struggling to pay competitive salaries to entice police officers to fill their vacant spot. Public safety suffers as a consequence.

Senate Bill 4 which by title “Modifies and creates new provisions relating to utilities,” was passed by the Missouri Legislature and signed by Governor Mike Kehoe in April. That bill allows utility companies like Liberty to pass on the costs of construction or demolition to their customers, ahead of the work actually being done.

That bill also made it so that those of us who have invested in solar panels, whether to save money or free up use on the grid, we will now be taxed on those solar panels as personal property.

Don’t the people of Missouri deserve to have leadership looking out for them? Because it sure doesn’t feel like the Republican supermajority is thinking through the effects of their votes.

Missi Hesketh

Forsyth