Customers to benefit from locked-in fuel prices

Customers of City Utilities will reap the benefit of locked-in fuel prices in their electricity rates for the next six months.

A fuel adjustment factor of 0.021 cents per 100 kilowatt hours will be credited to customers bills from October through March 2002, the Board of Public Utilities' management and finance committees were told at their monthly meeting Sept. 19.

The credit is 0.06 cents higher than last year, Cathy Meyer, of CU's finance department, told committee members. It represents a fuel adjustment credit of about $3.3 million to customers because projected fuel costs are expected to be less than anticipated from October through March 2002 compared to last year at this time.

Meyer also told the committees that the gas-recovery adjustment factor, effective from October through March 2002, will be 0.0149 cents per therm. Customers will also receive those monies as a credit on their bills.

After the meeting, Board Chairman Chris Nattinger re-flected on the passage of the controversial water rate increase by City Council on Sept. 17.

"We went through quite a lengthy process and ... though at times it appeared to be unnecessarily drawn out and repetitious in some of the things we did in trying to explain our positions, especially with certain council members ... in the long run it was a healthy exercise," Nat-tinger said.

He added that he believes the debate opened up channels of communication and understanding between council members and the utility staff and board that had been clogged or were nonexistent before.

Even those council members who would never accept any proposals regarding water rate increases sent to them, Nat-tinger said, are "better informed about how the utility works, how it's structured, that the water is a separate entity from the rest of the services, and the need for financial strength and bond ratings, and good-business-sense practices as are applied to this business. That's the way the charter intended it, and that's the way we tried to approach it."

"It's not that they're won over by any means or that they'll support the next proposal we send ... but at least I feel good that they have a better understanding. We have a better understanding of where they're coming from on some of these issues there's a little turf involved in some of this."

Nattinger said that one of the things he wanted to accomplish during his tenure as chairman of the utility board was to increase understanding and communication between the utility, its board and the council.

He said he remains convinced that the rate increase proposal that targeted the summertime high-usage customers was "the better one for the future," but added that "we have lots of other subjects we need to ad-dress. I'm glad to have it behind me and to go on to something else."

He said the utility board, like council, is a policy-setting board, and shouldn't "micromanage."

"We're not here to do Mr. (Robert) Roundtree's job or Mr. (John) Twitty's job. It's not for us to second guess them, and I know that Mayor (Tom) Carlson feels the same way about the city."

And, "City Council can't get involved in the minute detail on any of these things they'd get lost in the maze."

Nattinger said he admired those who chose to serve on council. "It takes a great deal of patience."