Local mayors showed up Tuesday with a unified message for the Lewis County Public Utility District (PUD): don’t raise customer rates.
The group was invited by newly-elected PUD Commissioner Michael Kelly, who pressured fellow commissioners and staff to evaluate and make necessary budget cuts in order to keep rates stagnant.
While fellow commissioners Tim Cournyer and Ed Rothlin said they want to keep rates as low as possible, they stopped short of guaranteeing no increase, both pointing to the need to maintain service reliability and the danger of delaying maintenance that some PUD staff say is overdue.
Kelly raised alarm bells in July when a consulting group’s report showed the PUD’s reserved capital funds could dip into the negatives by 2027 without increased rates.
“Our community has endured enough financial hardship and as a PUD we do not need to add to it,” Kelly said Tuesday.
Cournyer, the longest-serving commissioner on the board, pushed back, suggesting it’s too early in the budget process to eliminate the possibility of a rate hike.
“I’ve said all along, Michael: my goal is to keep rates as low as we can and still run this business. And it is a business,” Cournyer said. “I’ve said this since day one, when I was elected. I want to keep the rates as low as we can. I pay a monthly bill also.”
While he would welcome an analysis on cutbacks predicating a 0% rate increase, Cournyer also added, “if it’s too detrimental an effect, then I’d be in favor of a rate increase.”
Napavine Mayor Shawn O’Neill told the PUD that it should “keep the little guy in your minds,” pointing to inflation and increasing costs for basic necessities.
“And the rates that we’ve been charged from the PUD over the past two years, they just continue to go up,” he added.
The PUD hiked rates up by 4.75% in 2020 and a 1.9% increase went into effect this January. According to data provided by PUD spokesman Willie Painter, Lewis County’s monthly cost per 1,400 kilowatt hour — including both base and energy charges — is on par with Clark County, and below Skamania and Grays Harbor counties, as well as Mason PUD 3.
Even if the PUD’s utility rates are comparable to other areas, Kelly contended, Lewis County is particularly strained economically.
Pe Ell Mayor Lonnie Willey echoed Kelly’s sentiment, saying in his town of just a few hundred, “a lot of our people are seniors on fixed income and families on low income.”
Brandon Svenson — Winlock’s mayor and chair of Lewis County Republicans — expressed appreciation with the PUD’s mission to extend broadband throughout the county, but pointed to the county’s median income, which is under $54,000 per household.
“(It’s) my understanding some of the higher-ups in the building are making well over $200,000 a year,” Svenson said. “I don’t think that that sits very well when the citizens of Lewis County are struggling to pay their utility bills.”
In 2018, the PUD hired general manager Chris Roden, starting him at a base salary of $200,000.
Mossyrock treasurer Angeleetta Hartmann — who said she came on behalf of Mayor Randall Sasser — also weighed in, saying a price hike would be a “domino effect,” impacting residents’ abilities to buy groceries and pay for medication.
While Roden said he could bring information on potential cutbacks to the next meeting, he also contended that PUD staff are already “looking to reduce costs as best we can” through their normal budgeting process. And with the state of the PUD’s infrastructure, kicking the can down the road, he warned, could simply compound costs in the future.
“Our electrical grid is behind relative to other utilities in terms of capital replenishment. Our system is in need of additional tree trimming for fire mitigation. There are a number of issues that need to be addressed,” Roden said. “I cannot comfortably say that any (budget) decrease of what has otherwise been recommended will be the best for the long-term reliability of the grid.”
When Kelly continued to push back, saying he wanted to see the science behind recommended transformer maintenance, Cournyer warned: “you’re really blurring that line between governance and operations.”
Roden agreed: Allowing commissioners, rather than staff or experts, to review a limited scope of data involved in a more complicated analysis, he said, “is near-sighted and inappropriate, in my professional opinion.”
“There’s a material amount of danger in entering into this conversation, because it is very much a myopic lens with which to gauge the appropriateness of a transformer replacement of a substation.”
The board could instead employ industry experts in another third-party review to do a separate analysis on the PUD’s budget and maintenance needs — but at a price, Roden noted.
According to PUD engineering manager Jeff Shupe, “we’re talking about 60, 70-year-old assets that, frankly, a lot of them are falling apart.”
