For many residents, January’s utility charges were higher than previous months’.
Some residents are expressing skepticism about why their bills were so expensive, but Gainesville Regional Utilities has chalked it up to last month’s high frequency of freezing temperatures, said Jim Gilmartin, a GRU engineer utility designer.
Homes in Florida are better designed for cooling than for heating, he said. Some students live in older homes that don’t insulate heat as well.
Despite the weather, off-campus students and residents still said they were surprised when their bills for last month shot above previous months.
Keira Pelletier, a 22-year-old UF almuna who lives downtown, said she doesn’t understand why her bill doubled.
“I didn’t feel that we used the heat as much,” Pelletier said. “We went out of the way to be conservative to actually keep the bill down.”
Pelletier said she’s heard of friends and strangers whose bills were higher than normal.
“I was on the phone in the grocery store talking about my high GRU bill, and this guy in front of me turned around and commented on how high his bill was, too,” she said. “Everybody seems to be dealing with this.”
UF women’s studies junior Ana Fajardo said she was confused by her bill as well.
“I wasn’t even at my house for a lot of January, so my bill wasn’t logical to me,” said Fajardo, 20. “I’d like to know how this amount came to be.”
GRU marketing and communications specialist Kendall Litton-Jensen said the company offers programs to help save customer save money, like free inspections to maximize energy and water consumption, she said. If a bill is too high, GRU offers payment assistance.
Gilmartin offered customers tips such as keeping the heat temperature at 68 degrees,. Students such as Ray Odeh, a 20-year-old UF horticultural sciences sophomore, said past utility bills taught him to keep January’s bill low.
“The only electricity I use will be for my appliances, like my stove and refrigerator,” Odeh said. “It kept the costs a lot lower.”
As for Pelletier, she remains skeptical about her bill amount.
“I definitely think the temperature had something to do with it,” she said, “but not as much as our bill was implying.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 2/25/2014 under the headline “Sparks fly over GRU bills"]
