BATON ROUGE - The Metro Council approved the collection of a 5% franchise fee from Entergy on some residents' power bills to help offset the shift of nearly $50 million in tax revenue with the new city of St. George gearing up to provide its own city services.

"At a time that we're having budget cuts, breakaways, losing $50 million from St. George and other things, every budget in our government has been cut," Councilman of District 6 Cleve Dunn Jr. said during the meeting.

With the franchise fee, the city-parish can see more than $3 million going into the city. Councilwoman Jen Racca of District 12 says the money will go towards multiple things, but crime prevention is one of the main reasons why they've decided to take this route. 

"We're in the middle of a crime wave. To focus on crime, to keep fighting crime, we can't let those agencies that desperately need funds slow down," she said.

Higher electric and gas bills are a mechanism the council has decided to tap into for that purpose. It only applies to unincorporated areas.

"The way that the Entergy representatives relayed it to us and tonight is that there's an expected increase in $3, tonight they said $4," she said.

To earmark the money for specific agencies it will require a separate council vote which will take place Dec. 18.