PORT ANGELES — Low-income discount rates for city utility users should be available to more ratepayers — but only to electricity customers, not users of water, solid-waste collection, wastewater and stormwater utilities — the city Utility Advisory Committee has decided.
Committee members, who met Tuesday with a quorum of City Council members, pared down a previous proposal to update the city’s discount rate ordinance that would have broadened the discount-rate umbrella to increase the number of users from 340 to 1,600.
That would have increased the cost to ratepayers, who subsidize the program, from $116,000 to $424,000.
Under the revised program, the cost would increase to an estimated $150,000 and the hike would be covered by revenue from a state electric utility rebate program under which the city receives $1 in savings for every $2 it spends on the discount program from state Department of Revenue.
The committee, which includes City Council members Sissi Bruch, Dan Di Guilio, Mayor Cherie Kidd and alternate Brooke Nelson, was joined by council members Max Mania and Pat Downie.
Nelson and Deputy Mayor Brad Collins were not present.
The council members were joined by advisory committee members Dean Reed, Paul Elliott and Murvan Sears II.
A report on the possible changes will be prepared in time for the advisory committee’s 3 p.m. June 12 meeting in the City Council chambers at City Hall, 321 E. Fifth St.
A recommendation will be forwarded to the City Council for approval.
“This is the fifth time we’ve discussed this,” Larry Dunbar, city Deputy Director of Power Systems, told the committee.
“The ordinance is ripe for simplification,” he said.
“It’s old, it’s outdated and there’s a lot of burdensome requirements.”
The current three-tiered program was last amended in 1992 — and is based on 1992 federal poverty guidelines.
Discounts range from 10 percent for ratepayers with annual incomes of $17,501 to $21,000 to 30 percent for ratepayers with incomes of $0 to $7,999.
Discounts that now average $28.40 per discount-program customer apply to all city utilities and go to low-income seniors of at least 62 years old and low-income customers with disabilities.
The average electric bill is $88, Dunbar said. That is only for electricity and does not include charges for other city services.
The committee gave little support to a broader program contained in a report requested by the City Council that would have more than quadrupled the number of users and more than tripled the cost.
“We don’t have unlimited funding for people who keep coming in and applying for discounts,” Kidd said.
Under the new proposed system, the discounts would apply only to electric users and be based solely on updated poverty guidelines.
The city would anticipate more users would be in the discount program, which would help make it self-sustaining, Di Guilio said in an interview.
“By moving [the discount] over to the electric utility, we’re assuming there will be an increase in rebates and in refunds coming back,” Di Guilio said.
“We’ll use those funds to expand the program.”
Sears said in an interview that the existing program might be replaced with a two-tiered discount.
“What we want to do is make sure more people have access to the discount,” he said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
