For the second consecutive year, Palo Alto residents will see a double-digit increase in their electric rates starting in July.
The City Council approved on Tuesday a series of rate changes that will collectively add about $6.79 to the average monthly utility bill, resulting in a 2.5 percent increase. The biggest hike pertains to electric rates, which are set to go up by 10.8 percent on Saturday, the start of the new fiscal year. The rate change comes exactly a year after the council approved an 11 percent increase to the electric rates.
In addition to approving the hike to electric rates, the council approved a 4.6 percent increase to gas rates, a 4 percent increase to water rates (which will be offset by elimination of the drought surcharge), a 5 percent increase to refuse rates and a 4.8 percent increase to stormwater rate.
All the rate changes except water and wastewater (which the council approved last week) were adopted by a single 8-1 vote as part of the council's budget-approval process, with Councilman Greg Tanaka casting the lone dissenting vote.
In discussing the electric rates, the newly approved budget attributes the hike to increasing transmission costs, new renewable projects coming online, substantial capital investment in the electric distribution system and lower-than-projected sales. In addition, the city is looking to rebuild its reserves, which were largely depleted during the recent drought spell, according to the new budget.
"While long-term costs did not increase significantly from 2009 through 2016, the City drew down reserves in order to avoid any rate increases over those years," the budget states.
Even so, the primary reason for the rate hike is not to replenish reserves but to "pay for long-term capital investment, operations and carbon neutral electric supply," the budget plan states.
According to the city's Electric Utility Financial Plan, rates will likely see another increase of about 9 percent next year before plateauing. The financial plan notes that in addition to lower-than-expected sales, the utility has had to contend with the recent drought, which had a "greater impact than expected on hydroelectric supplies."
"This has affected reserves, making it difficult to phase in rate increases over multiple years," the plan states.
Ed Shikada, general manager of Utilities Department, said Tuesday that the city has seen some recent improvement in the financial outlook, in terms of the role that hydroelectricity plays. The rate increase, he told the council, is "largely driven by the need for additional capital investments in the system and to maintain adequate reserves in our fund."
The council didn't spend much time Tuesday discussing the rate changes, which had already been vetted by the Utilities Advisory Commission and by the council's Finance Committee. On May 18, the committee endorsed the proposed increases, a decision that the full council reaffirmed Tuesday night.
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Comments
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jun 28, 2017 at 1:44 pm
on Jun 28, 2017 at 1:44 pm
An average 10% per year increase per year in your bill. Sounds just like Obamacare.
Just consider it a down payment on our green energy utopia. We can console ourselves with the sweet taste of divestiture from carbon based energy while we lick the bitter postage stamps to mail in the balloning utility payments.
At least Liberal Progressive governments are consistent with promising lower costs and delivering higher rate increases.
We just need to modify the promise a smidgeon. If you like paying more on your bill every year, you can keep paying more on your bill every year.
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jun 28, 2017 at 2:33 pm
on Jun 28, 2017 at 2:33 pm
Long term capital investment, but not putting the utilities underground! Grrrr
Southgate
on Jun 28, 2017 at 2:33 pm
on Jun 28, 2017 at 2:33 pm
No place but Palo Alto!
Other cities are either lowering water rates or at least NOT raising them!
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jun 28, 2017 at 6:52 pm
on Jun 28, 2017 at 6:52 pm
Actually, Palo Alto's water rates are DECREASING 2-4% with removal of drought surcharge.
See www.cityofpaloalto.org/ratesoverview and this fact sheet: Web Link
Leland Manor/Garland Drive
on Jun 28, 2017 at 7:55 pm
on Jun 28, 2017 at 7:55 pm
The outcome of a suit against the city of Hiilsborough challenging tiered water rates could have an impact on our rates in Palo Alto:
Web Link
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jun 28, 2017 at 9:01 pm
on Jun 28, 2017 at 9:01 pm
The push for solar panels on our homes leads one to wonder what the residential electricity rates would be if 50%, or more, of our homes had panels which were generating a significant amount of each home's electricity use?
It's not hard to believe that we will be seeing 35 cents/kilowatt for residential rates one of these days.
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jun 29, 2017 at 8:05 am
on Jun 29, 2017 at 8:05 am
With rooftop solar, I don't use Palo Alto power in the summer. If Palo Alto had time of day metering and reasonable rates, customers like me probably would have put on more panels so power could have been generated within Palo Alto. Instead the city's planning department made installing rooftop solar as difficult as possible.
Palo Alto Hills
on Jun 29, 2017 at 8:20 am
on Jun 29, 2017 at 8:20 am
Why can't we make the rates depend on how long you have lived here or how old you are? Why should us old-timers have to pay more?
Midtown
on Jun 29, 2017 at 9:55 am
on Jun 29, 2017 at 9:55 am
@Sanctimonious City
Regarding the "green energy utopia"....
How would YOU address the reality that's called looming climate catastrophe
(sea level rise, mass extinction, ocean acidification, mass migration,
water wars, famine, drought, floods, etc etc...)
I am all ears...
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jun 29, 2017 at 10:37 am
on Jun 29, 2017 at 10:37 am
> How would YOU address the reality that's called looming climate catastrophe
> (sea level rise, mass extinction, ocean acidification, mass migration,
> water wars, famine, drought, floods, etc etc...)
I would not engage in this kind of hysteria, for starters.
Secondly, I would seriously support the use of nuclear power to generate the world's electricity. Wind and solar have limited capabilities, and both have negative impacts on the "environment" that are only now being seen.
Palo Verde
on Jun 29, 2017 at 10:59 am
on Jun 29, 2017 at 10:59 am
How do the resulting rates compare with PG&E? Last I checked, we were paying considerably less than our neighbors who have PG&E.
Midtown
on Jun 29, 2017 at 11:00 am
on Jun 29, 2017 at 11:00 am
@Joe.
Joe doesn't like "hysteria"
I wonder what that really means... does it mean do nothing for another 50 years?
Are you aware that ALL scientific institutions worldwide urge immediate action
on this problem to avert the worst effects that I mentioned?
"hysteria", what a clown....
Besides, your nuke powers are a fringe idea not supported by anyone serious,
too expensive, takes too long to build, limited fuel supply, hard to handle/control,
no solution in sight for nuclear waste that has to be managed 10000 years or so...
Old Palo Alto
on Jun 29, 2017 at 12:07 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 12:07 pm
GreenWaste gives absolutely ROTTEN service! Their trucks damage and break our receptacles, and GreenWaste refuses to replace them!
Their office employees choose not to respond to phone calls or emails.
Their garbage route employees refuse to pick up receptacles that aren't placed "just so", and they litter our residential streets with trash and compost that we then have to clean up ourselves!
Other cities who have used GreenWaste in the past have fired them! It is entirely possible that Palo Alto is the only remaining city in the Greater Bay Area that still uses them.
If their contract isn't up yet, DO NOT give GreenWaste a rate increase-- they do not deserve it!
Incidentally, their are other waste management companies to choose from, including a couple of new ones!
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jun 29, 2017 at 12:46 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 12:46 pm
> I wonder what that really means... does it mean do
> nothing for another 50 years?
The US has been working at “doing something” for a long time now. Starting in the Nixon Admin. the country started looking at cleaning up the air and water. Many manufacturing facilities designed ways to reuse the byproducts of their energy use—called co-generation. Many other industry sectors, like steel, have actually found themselves going out of business since they could not re-engineer their processes and stay profitable.
In the early 1980s, the Federal Government began to lean on auto manufacturers to reduce vehicle emissions. This proved a very productive directive of government, and now our cars are very clean, compared to where they were 30-40 years ago.
About the same time, there was concern about a hole in our ozone layer that protects us from UV rays from the sun. The hole was linked to the use of Florine in air conditioners and refrigeration devices. The Florine was banned, and the Ozone hole began to repair itself.
In the early 1990s, the Federal Government believed that our PCs were consuming as much as 15% of the electricity in the US. Working with PC manufacturers, PCs were redesigned to power off after a certain amount of idle time. Coupled with natural developments in chip design and display design, our personal computers are very energy efficient, not to mention smaller and hence, more mobile.
Not doing anything, hardly!!!
> Are you aware that ALL scientific institutions worldwide urge
> immediate action
> on this problem to avert the worst effects that I mentioned?
ALL?
Doubtful. But maybe you could provide us a list so that we could double check your claims.
"hysteria", what a clown....
> Yes, hysteria ..
> Besides, your nuke powers are a fringe idea not supported
> by anyone serious, too expensive, takes too long to build,
> limited fuel supply, hard to handle/control
> no solution in sight for nuclear waste that has to be
> managed 10000 years or so...
Posted by someone who has no idea of what a nuclear reactor is, or capable of producing in terms of electrical output.
There are only 449 nuclear plants in the world, which are producing 11% of the world’s total electricity--
Web Link
Anyone taking the time to review the details of nuclear power would not make these silly claims.
BTW—the idea that solar is “clean” is now being seen as untrue. Solar panels have an effective lifetime of about twenty years. What to do with them after they are discarded?
The following link brings some of that inconvenient information to the public's attention--
Web Link
It doesn’t pay to engage in sandbox behavior with posters like this one, so won’t respond to his childish labelling ideas other than his as “clownish” ..
Embarcadero Oaks/Leland
on Jun 29, 2017 at 1:04 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 1:04 pm
@No Garbage Increase, I totally agree. They're a disaster and I'm tired of doing their job and picking up after them like I had to last week.
As for the cans not being placed "just so" -- expect this to get worse as the cars over-running our neighborhoods compete for parking with our 3 waste cans and their mandated separations, the road "diets" and the bike lanes.
Pay more for less. It's the Palo Alto way. Don't PA's over-paid bureaucrats and contractors ever talk to each other about how the conflicts behind their separate edicts?
Midtown
on Jun 29, 2017 at 2:33 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 2:33 pm
@Joe
Thanks for disclosing where you get your "information" from...
wattsupwiththat.com, seems to an obscure climate denier website
dedicated to circulating conspiracy nonsense...That's what I suspected...
As for the institutions, the State of California lists 198 reputable
international institutions who agree on the consensus behind man-made climate
change. These are the highest scientific bodies of virtually every
country in the world...that's what I mean by "ALL"...but can add more if
you like. Add NASA and IPCC or a gazillion others.
Wow, what a match...
It's always the same pattern. Folks who deny the consensus and
slander the science as "hysteria" tend to go off on solvable problems
with existing technology...that's part of the mix...
I am fully expecting now that you pick on my spelling mistakes next....
Mayfield
on Jun 29, 2017 at 2:36 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 2:36 pm
Ya, we were going to put in solar panels, but city council allowed a development to be built which would block all of the sunlight to our house...so now that's not an option. We have skylights on the other side of the house. Screw you city of Palo Alto
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jun 29, 2017 at 2:59 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 2:59 pm
We had a new roof installed in 2010, and had the roofers install solar panels at that time.
Unbeknownst to us, the panels were from China, and they FRIED the new roof!
We had to get another roofer to re-roof our house, after we got the first ones to remove the panels!
Total cost of two roofs plus panels in one year: $48K.
We are interested in Elon Musk's solar shingles, but we'll have to wait several years.
Caveat: solar shingles are HEAVY, if less expensive than traditional shingles. Unless your current roof is tile or slate, you will have to spend money to reinforce your roof with additional support beams.
Community Center
on Jun 29, 2017 at 3:52 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 3:52 pm
GROUNDHOG DAY!! Sound all too familiar? Seems like it just happened last year or maybe the year before. WELL IT DID ! ! ! And guess what? They will be passing on increases to you, yet again, within a year or two!!
Old Palo Alto
on Jun 29, 2017 at 3:57 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 3:57 pm
I guess we could say the same for "A resident" with regard to his regurgitation of progressive talking points regarding climate and of course, the routine name calling of one with a different point of view (a signature progressive practice) as a topper. There are as many, perhaps thousands of climate scientists with a different point of view regarding the "looming global catastrophe (sea level rise, mass extinction, ocean acidification, mass migration, water wars, famine, drought, floods, etc etc...)," i.e. they're not convinced we're doomed.
Many of the researchers on your list are funded by those who stand to profit from the fear mongering of the climate change proselytizers (think Al Gore). And for the gazillion others you didn't name.....well who knows where they get their money from.
Midtown
on Jun 29, 2017 at 4:14 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 4:14 pm
Yeah,that's it..I was waiting for that one: Al Gore...
Yes, all Academies of Science of all countries on the planet are
in the pockets of Al Gore... hahaha... good one...
Check the Forbes list, there are now at least 10 billionaires
making their riches off Climate Change... hahaha...
So tell me genius, WHICH Academy of Science makes big bucks off Climate Change?
Old Palo Alto
on Jun 29, 2017 at 5:02 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 5:02 pm
@ A resident....let me clarify. Al Gore, for one. You can look up the others.
Old Palo Alto
on Jun 29, 2017 at 9:06 pm
on Jun 29, 2017 at 9:06 pm
Here we go again... we save the cost goes up, we use too much the cost goes up. Now we have my favorite reason, global warming.. good one. We need more fiscally responsible council members. Next election ..