A June rate-setting meeting of ElectriCities, the public power agency that provides electricity to 32 North Carolina towns, left Selma leaders with the difficult but inevitable decision to make. Customers can expect to see an increase of 11.5-cents per kilowatt hour on their August bill.

Donald Baker, director of public utilities in Selma, said Tuesday that rising energy costs had finally caught up to ElectriCities and other power companies. He pointed in particular to the cost of producing coal, which nearly tripled in the first five months of this year, jumping from $40 per ton in January to $110 per ton in May.

As a result, Baker said, ElectriCities told Selma officials rates would be increasing by 14 percent this month. The Town Council, in turn, on Tuesday passed that increase along to power customers.

Interim Town Manager C.L. Gobble said he was taken aback by the timing of the rate increase. “We knew something was going to happen, but we didn’t know what or exactly when,” he said. “We thought they [ElectriCities] would meet in June but that the increase wouldn’t happen until October or November. It’s tough that we just passed our budget a week ago and now we get this bad news.”