Hello, this is U.S. representative ████████████ at ████████████. I'm calling to invite you to a live telephone town hall meeting I'm hosting right now. To join, just stay on the line. I'll be sharing an update on what's happening in ████████████████ and its impact on our neighbors across the █████████ area. And I'll be happy to take your questions again. To participate, stay on the line and to ask a question, press star three. Our call will begin momentarily. Please hold while we connect you to your Access Live event. This Access Live event is currently in progress. Please note that this call may be monitored, recorded or rebroadcast. Thank you for helping to keep me educated and to be a better public servant, advocating for my neighbors. Talk to me about what is going on in ███████. Why are they requesting the highest rate increases? In the entire country. In ███████. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Congresswoman ██████. It has been just a joy working with you in this state for affordable energy. And, yeah, a lot of this goes to what you've already touched on. It is no doubt that ███████ is in an affordability crisis. But our call surrounding electricity have been a central increase that people have been feeling on top of increases in rents and insurance and pretty much everything. Our electricity bills have been going up at some of the fastest rates in the country. And a lot of that has to do with exactly what the congresswoman was just talking about. Desantis Public Service Commission. That's a group of utility regulators. Who are appointed by the governor. They sit in ███████████ and they make all of the decisions about whether or not utilities can charge you more money for your electricity. And in ███████, our main utilities for profit utilities have monopoly service areas. So whatever is decided by that group of people is how much we're paying. We can't go anywhere else. And unfortunately, the Census Public Service Commission, the PSC has become a rubber stamp to some of the largest rate increases. In the country this year alone, Tampa Electric customers. Saw multiple rate increases. Just Last year, the PSC approved Tampa Electric customers to be paying about 9 to $██ more per month. With the base rate hike from last year in March, that went up another ██ to $██ per month for ██ months. Due to recovery costs that we pay for. The utility does not pay for their storm costs. We pay for their storm costs and our storm costs. Then in June, there was a ██% increase in customer fuel charges. And just recently, in November, the utility regulators approved another rate hike for Tampa Electric customers that will go into effect in January. And if all of those numbers are swirling around in your brain, what that amounts to is that the average Tampa Electric customer will be paying ██% more, or $███ more a year than they were just five years ago. This is unconscionable, and it shows that the DeSantis regulators are putting. Corporate greed. Over community need. We have folks across the state who are making the very difficult decision of whether to keep on life saving air conditioning. or to pay for medicine or rent