Playa del Carmen Councilor Proposes CFE Compensation Institute

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo — A city council member has proposed creating a publicly funded institute to compensate residents for damage caused by repeated power outages, but acknowledged during the council session that the formal proposal has not yet been drafted.

José Luis “Chanito” Toledo Medina said during the municipal council meeting that the city’s Revenue Law includes 87.5 million pesos from the street-lighting fee. He proposed using 10 percent of that revenue to finance an institute that would “return to the people what was stolen by the CFE,” Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission. “It is not about creating a new tax or cutting street lighting, but about using existing resources,” he said.

Asked to present the written initiative, Toledo Medina acknowledged he had not prepared one. Instead, he said he would first seek information from the city Treasury and other departments about how street-lighting revenue is spent and whether a surplus remains. He also plans to request a meeting with CFE and may later submit a proposal to the state Congress, which authorizes the city’s budget.

Another council member, Juan Novelo of the National Action Party, criticized CFE for claiming in a written report that it had invested 162 million pesos in Playa del Carmen with little visible effect. He noted that the city has endured 19 days of continuous blackouts, along with leaning utility poles and broken manhole covers that create public safety hazards.

“The subsidy is over, and now you pay what you have to pay; we are the ones who pay the highest electricity rates in the state,” Novelo said.

In response, city General Secretary Luis Herrera Quian said he attended a meeting with residents the previous day, led by CFE personnel and State Government Secretary Cristina Torres Gómez. The group agreed to hold working sessions every 15 days to monitor progress on commitments made.

Those commitments include an overhead power-line project at the intersection of Lilis and Constituyentes to relieve overloads in the Las Palmas, Xcacel, and Misión de las Flores subdivisions. A new electrical substation behind the General Hospital is expected to begin operations in eight months.

Mayor Estefanía Mercado also discussed with Governor Mara Lezama a proposed private investment of 250 million pesos to build an additional substation in the city’s northwest. “Yesterday there were no blackouts, but we will keep monitoring this situation,” Herrera Quian said.