Rocky Mount residents will see their power bills jump next month as a result of a decision on Wednesday by a power agency's board.

At a meeting at the city of Wilson's Operations Center, municipal officials from throughout Eastern North Carolina reluctantly gave the final endorsement of a 14 percent wholesale electricity rate hike that will take effect Aug. 1. The increased rates will be charged to 32 cities that are part of the North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency, which includes Rocky Mount.

The city officials, who were meeting as commissioners of the power agency, voted for the increase after listening to a lengthy presentation by ElectriCities staff on the reasons it was needed – and after several Rocky Mount City Council members pressed for a smaller increase.

Reading from a prepared statement, Rocky Mount Councilman Andre Knight said the council asks that the power agency and ElectriCities, which is the administrative arm of the agency, reduce operating costs and trim at least 1.5 percent from the proposed increase.

"In Rocky Mount, the overwhelming percentage of our electricity sales is to residential customers," Knight said. "At the same time, this demographic is the most negatively impacted by rapidly increasing costs of petroleum and energy and are finding it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to pay already high rates of utilities."

The officials also went along with a motion brought forth by Tarboro Town Manager Sam Noble to eliminate the $1,000 a month payments to ElectriCities board members, which will be a savings of about $100,000 a year.

It's up to each city that is part of the power agency to determine how it will pay for the increased rates.

In preparation for Wednesday's vote, the Rocky Mount City Council on Monday approved an 11.5 percent increase to the city's electric rates that is to take effect on Aug. 1.

ElectriCities, the non-profit administrative arm of the power agency, has contended that the 14 percent wholesale electric rate hike was needed because of increases in the cost of coal, uranium used to fuel nuclear power plants, power transmission, maintenance costs and rising debt service of the power agency.