Electricity tariffs put the crunch on B&Bs

Sir,
B&Bs (or ‘bed and breakfasts’) are small establishments which form the backbone of the accommodation industry in this country, and there are quite a few of them in this town. Some are big, expensive establishments, no longer B&Bs but rather guesthouses, and a few are small, two- and three-room establishments in the owners’ own house. Dundee usually goes begging when accommodation for big events is needed, and a good case in point is the annual Dundee July.
I quickly filled my two rooms, but I was also inundated with desperate pleas for accommodation from people who were even willing to sleep on the floor! Be that as it may, accommodation establishments and other tourism stakeholders bring in a total sum of money into this town that touched on R60-million last year alone. This has impressed the Dundee municipality to such an extent that they have decided to charge us business electricity rates and higher refuse removal rates than normal households. 
This was done without any investigation into the feasibility of such a move, and with the current overheads, the fuel price and the cost of insurance, as well as registration costs and other legals that need to get in place before you can even open, this is killing off the smaller establishments who have to pay the same as the bigger ones.
Every unit of electricity I now use in my house, even for my personal use, now has to be procured at business rates, and these just went up again a short while ago, partly to compensate for losses incurred by electricity theft. The tourism committee started enquiring about this when Ian Grisdale was still CFO at that institution, but this was shortly before the big crunch came that removed him and other managers from office. The people that took over from them simply shrugged this off, and a deafening silence ensued while the municipality continued to suck money at an alarming rate from its ratepayers. All while they continued to spend it at an equally alarming rate on expenditures like unauthorised mayoral car trips and all kinds of strange appointments. 
Provincial intervention caused the removal – or disappearance – of one or two councillors, and a plea for reconstruction and cooperation from the speaker, who was the main mover and shaker behind a lot of these developments. The irony is that we do not have an issue with the business rates, but they were applied without exemption or qualification, and that is unfair. Why must I pay these exorbitant business rates for my private electricity use (which has now tripled in cost over the last few years), and continue to subsidise electricity theft and a municipality that continues to stagger from one crisis to another? For which WE are paying…? All approachs by us to councillors, including three letters, have been met by deafening silence. I was previously advised not to bother applying for a grading for this B&B, as my ambient noise levels are too high. With the taxi rank at the hospital across the street, and the informal taxi rank in front of my house, and the toxic presence of Coronation Park, that is small wonder. I have not seen a traffic official applying the law in this street for over five years now. Now we will consider closing or selling this B&B, as this is what the municipality seems to want us to do.
Irate And Not At All Happy