By JIM BUTLER
At some point the fiddler has to be paid or the music stops.
That’s where the City of Alexandria seems to find itself with utility rates, last changed 10 years ago.
Consultants have recommended pricing that would boost the base cost of electrical, gas, water and sewerage service by about $50 monthly. City Council members are likely already hearing squawking.
No one wants to pay more though the alternative is rarely mentioned – that being how long the system can keep subsidizing the General Fund.
This fiscal year about $11 million is budgeted for transfer to the General Fund. Without it, something would have to be cut, or an alternative dollar stream developed. (Over the past eight audit years the transfer total is about $77 million.) Electricity is the system workhouse and gets most attention when hot or cold weather drive consumption up or a rising natural gas fuel adjustment bumps bills.
The study pending consideration in City Hall is a tough sell to customers engaged in ongoing battles with rising costs of living. Those same rising costs are eating away at the Utility System’s razor-thin margins. (The study recommends including an annual rate adjustment tied to the Consumer Price Index.) Since the city first generated its own power more than a century ago the system has provided a General Fund transfusion.
That one of the three elected city fathers under its long-time commission form of government was Commissioner of Finance and Utilities was no afterthought.
(The other two were Mayor-Commissioner of Public Safety and Commissioner of Streets and Parks. The commission form was junked in the 1970s under the current home rule charter. The first mayor elected under the mayor-council form was a former Commissioner of Finance and Utilities).
What does the recommended alternate of five propose? A snapshot that includes doing away with a host of rate categories in favor of flat rates for similar accounts:
- Electrical – A 1,000 kwh residential customer would pay an average of $15.89 more monthly. An actual bill of this past April was $114.24. It would have been $127.83 under the recommended change;
- Gas – increase base monthly rate of $4.50 for in-city to $12, outside from $6 to $16; change monthly volume charge per thousand cubic feet to flat $5.50 and $6.25 per mcf;
- Water – increase minimum monthly from $5.79 to $15.25; Sewerage – 5,000 gallons monthly, increase monthly rate of $6.62 in-city to $26.61, outside from $21.74 to $33.11.
These numbers are Alternate C of five outlined in the report. A and B are on the lower side, D and E the higher.