Council Tables Electric Rate Changes

The on Thursday night tabled a vote on an amendment to the city’s electric rate ordinance that would raise rates for some customers to allow more time for discussion between the city and representatives from several local industries.

Steve Castracane, a spokesperson for Linde Gas, said during the council’s meeting that his company wants to find more of a compromise in the “design of the allocation of costs,” which he said would include the price-cost adjustment.

“PCA value is embedded into the rate structure,” Castracane said. “That’s where the rate design piece comes into play.”

The proposed reapportionment would and residual be spread evenly among the various classes of customers.

“If we’re not using certain parts of that system or we’re using parts of the system in a certain way, then we should only be charged for what we use or the way we use it,” Castracane said.

The reallocation Castracane is talking about is moving part of the industrial costs to all the other classes, Mayor Matt Santini said.

“He’s looking at the whole thing,” Santini said. “The pie is the pie. Right now, they’re talking about making their piece of the pie smaller. If your piece of the pie gets smaller, whose piece of the pie gets bigger?”

Representatives of several local manufacturers last month.

The city brought in a consultant from the Electric Cities of Georgia to perform a cost of service study and determine how much it costs to provide electricity to each category of customers. Under the proposed changes, residential customers would see a 0.42 percent increase, small general service customers would see a 1.91 percent increase, small power customers would see a decrease of 4.70 percent, medium power customers would see a 4.97 percent decrease, large power customers would see an increase of 1.77 percent, extra large power customers would see a 0.76 percent decrease, economic development would see a 1.99 percent decrease, street lights would see an increase of 19.50 percent and city government would see a decrease of 1.97 percent.

Santini said that city officials are sitting down with individual companies to show the city’s cost to provide electricity.

“We want to take care of this class of people, but we want to take care of every class of electric users, be they residential, be they small business, be they medium-sized or heavy industrial,” Santini said. “Like anything else, you really want to achieve some kind of balance. That’s why we’re continuing this dialogue with these companies, to find that balance.”

Santini said he thinks a vote could be taken at the council’s meeting on March 15.

In other business, the council:

• Approved an amendment to the utilities ordinance regarding electric rate/rider language modification;
• Approved a Satisfaction of Subordinate Deed for a first-time homebuyer who moved out before the five-year period was up and had to pay the city $4,000;
• Approved a telecommunications service agreement with the Georgia Municipal Association;
• Approved a three-year maintenance agreement with ArcMail Software for email storage at a cost of $11,873;
• Approved the purchase of four trucks for the water department from at a cost of $96,277.44. The first bid approved by the council at a prior meeting was thrown out because the specifications were for single cab trucks rather than extended cab trucks;
• Approved the purchase of chemical injectors for the water treatment plant;
• Approved the purchase of a replacement chlorine analyzer for the water treatment plant;
• Approved the purchase of relay water line on Lindsey Drive;
• Voted to reappoint Saunders Jones III to the Downtown Development Authority board;
• And voted to change the time of the council’s April 19 meeting from 7 p.m. to 9 a.m. for Civic Youth Day.