Salem’s board of aldermen at their regular meeting Tuesday night in council chambers approved a 24% electric rate increase with a $10 service availability fee for residential customers. The fee is $15 for commercial customers, and the service availability fees have a one-year sunset.
The rate change will go into effect on July-August utility bills. This rate change replaces a 34% automatic rate adjustment that would have gone into effect, according to city ordinance.
Prior to the passage of the rate increase, alderman Kyle Williams, who chairs the utilities committee, addressed those present at the meeting.
“We’ve seen this coming the last couple months. We saw that this was going to be necessary as we look at finances,” he said. “The Finance Committee, the Capital Improvements Committee and the Utilities Committee all recognize that we were having shortfalls in the past few years and had to do something. Unfortunately, it did come to raising the rates.”
Williams explained that aldermen and the committees have been working to figure out what exact rate would be needed in order to bring the city back into the green and a balanced budget.
“We did what we could, and this is what the utility committee came forth with,” said Williams.
The decision passed 3-1, with alderman Tod Kinerk voting against and aldermen Williams, Kala Sisco and Shawn Bolerjack voting for it. Kinerk said that his reason for voting against the change was because of the $10 fee associated.
“There’s been an enormous amount of time put into this by aldermen [and] all the committees, but the thing is that the deficit is real and no matter how you massage the numbers, they’ve got to come up with the money, and the method they’ve come up with is unfair,” he said.
According to Kinerk, the change hurts low-income people the most. He said that he believes the fairest way to have gone about the rate change would have been to allow the automatic rate adjustment to go into effect.
The board also voted 3-1 (Kinerk against) to approve the FY 2022-23 budget.
“It’s [the FY 2022-23 budget] still going to be a work-in-progress for the next few months,” said Bolerjack prior to the budget’s passage.
Mayor Greg Parker also addressed the fact that the board and city officials will be working to make more budget cuts in the future.
Look for more detailed coverage of the meeting in the July 5 edition of The Salem News at the salemnewsonline.com.
