Georgetown to Increase Electric Rates

Councilman Fought has alerted citizens in his council district, via his subscription newsletter, that utility rates are going to increase in the near future.

We have been told over the last two years that our electric rates would not increase because of the long-term contracts for solar and wind generated electricity. This turns out to not be absolutely true.

The current argument is that the electric company cash reserve has been used to fund projects to accommodate the growth and needs to be replenished, even though it has been city policy that growth is to pay for itself.

So, the first question to ask is why haven't the new customers paid to expand the electric system to meet their needs? What happened? Why should existing rate payers fund the replenishment of the cash reserve?

The analysis presented by Councilman Fought focuses on increasing the fixed rate customer charge as the solution and the only options considered related to how quickly the customer charge is increased. There is another option to be discussed below.

Here are the current residential rates from the Georgetown website.

Councilman Foughts analysis selected a monthly usage of 1000 Kwhrs for a typical residential customer. At the current rate, the cost per Kwhr excluding sales tax would be 12.08 cents/Kwhr. Looking at a typical usage for April or May of 239/Kwhrs, the cost per Kwhr increases to 18.7 cents/Kwhr. This 50% increase is entirely due to the fixed charge of $20/month. Just keep in mind the large impact the fixed charge can have on your cost per Kwhr!

Now does anyone remember the City telling you that the electric company is a "profit center" for the City? In 2018 the electric company is scheduled to turn over $5.5M, that is excess to their operating costs, to the City General Fund to be used for whatever the City decides to spend it on.

The question is: Why doesn't the City use some of that "profit" to replenish the electric company cash reserve?

PS: The comparison of tax rates, water rates or electric rates to surrounding jurisdictions is completely superfluous. The only metric that matters is how much it costs the individual Georgetown tax or rate payer.

PPS: At the June 26 Workshop, the City said they are "really really" going to make the developers pay for all necessary upgrades in the future.