FPB Cycle Billing Update

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FPB’s Board and staff continue to look for ways to improve service. One way to reduce congestion in the office and wait times on the phone is through cycle billing, which is now an industry standard. With cycle billing, bills are sent twice a month instead of once a month, reducing customer wait times.

For many years, FPB has sent all customer bills at the same time of the month and all customer bills have been due on the same date each month. As FPB’s customer base has grown over time, this billing pattern has resulted in longer wait times for customers to reach our staff both on the phone and in our office.

Once implemented, bills for half of FPB’s customers will be due on the first of the month and bills for the other half of FPB’s customers will be due on the fifteenth of the month. Customers will still have due only one bill per month in an amount similar to what they have paid in the past. FPB plans to begin cycle billing in May 2017. 

FPB realizes this change will result in some customers receiving a bill due April 15th and their May bill due May 1st. To help alleviate this financial impact, FPB will work with these customers to create payment arrangements to ease the implementation of this process. However, due to meter reading schedules and routes, FPB is unable to allow customers to select a particular due date.

For questions about cycle billing, contact FPB customer service at 352-4372.

November 15 Board Meeting Presentations

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FPB Staff presented the following presentations during the November 15th board meeting.

Drought presentation

Kentucky drought status information.

Responses to Envision

Presentation to the Frankfort Plant Board Regarding Questions Raised by Envision Franklin County and Synapse Energy Economics Concerning the AR Contract and KyMEA Power Supply Portfolio

Reservoir presentation

History and future possibilities for the reservoir.

 

Battle 4 Atlantis

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battle-4-atlantis

Eight of the best teams in Men’s Division 1 college basketball will travel to the Bahamas this Thanksgiving (11/23-11/25) to compete in the 2016 Battle 4 Atlantis tournament on AXS TV FPB Preferred cable channel 611.  Michigan State University, Louisville, Baylor, Louisiana State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, St. John's University & Old Dominion University!

FPB Cable-Telecom Planned Maintenance Outages Scheduled for Thursday and Friday

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FPB Cable-Telecom crews will conduct planned maintenance service interruptions in designated parts of the service area in an effort to migrate the existing cable-telecom infrastructure from the current headend facility into the newly constructed cable-telecom headend.

The necessary service interruptions will continue Thursday, October 27 and Friday, October 28.  Staff plans to minimize voice, video and data outages on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis for as short a time as possible but customers should plan on outages between 9:00am and 2:00pm during the maintenance windows. Some outages may be up to two hours in duration.

Thursday’s impacted areas: Louisville Rd., Hawkeegan Dr., Westview Dr., Willowcrest Subdivision, Donna Dr., Vicky Way, Hunters Trace, Game Farm, Cardwell Ln., Highlands Dr., Highview Circle, Augusta Subdivision.

Friday’s impacted area is the 8000 block of John Davis Dr.

The migration to the new facility will improve network reliability for customers and allow for enhanced service offerings in the future.

We appreciate patience during this migration into the new cable-telecom facility.

FPB Statement on Tanglewood Project: Process and Progress

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In efforts to improve Cable-Telecom services, and to enable necessary repairs and upgrades at the 130 year old reservoir, The Directors of the Frankfort Plant Board made a decision to construct a new Cable-Telecom headend facility.

The headend facility is the central hub, or brains, of the cable-telecom operation. All Cable-Telecom services initiate from this location. Satellite receivers, connectors, fiber and other essential equipment supports the entire full service network line of business. These services all originate from this site.

Initial planning for this infrastructure project began in 2008, including a study, site evaluation and financial considerations, which led to the FPB Directors to make the decision stay on the same headend property where the facility had been located since 1952. FPB broke ground on the site in summer of 2014. The new facility was designed by GRW and construction began in May of 2015.

As construction continued, members of the Tanglewood Neighborhood Association (TNAi) expressed concerns about the facility. Multiple public meetings were held involving FPB, TNAi and the Frankfort City Commission, among others.

In June 2016, construction of the facility was completed. Since then, FPB has been fully engaged in an exhaustive effort to relocate all of the technology equipment from the old head end to the new head end, while keeping outages to a minimum. The majority of this work has been done on third shift, in an effort to minimize a noticeable disruption of service to our customers.

In August, the City Commission issued a list of requirements that FPB was to complete. The cost, feasibility and complexity of the requirements are still being investigated by FPB staff and GRW, among others.

While the FPB Directors ask for clarification on some of the City’s concerns, there is still active work being conducted at the site.

“Our staff, vendors and consultants are heavily involved in decommissioning the old head end. While we appreciate everyone’s desire to take action on the list of requirements presented by the City Commission, FPB must maintain reliable service. Finishing the transition from the old facility to the new one is Priority One. Once the decommissioning is complete, the transition is finalized and our Board gets clarification from the City, we will move forward on cosmetic changes to the project.” Said Herbbie Bannister, FPB General Manager.

Bannister continued, “We look forward to a resolution to this issue and will continue to make providing reliable services our main priority.”