Seattle wants to raise your utility rates, and you can’t do anything about it

Over the next three years, Seattle Public Utilities wants to raise your rates by more than 20 percent.

A Strategic Business Plan update for 2018-2023 says the average projected rate increases include 3.2 percent in 2018, 8.2 percent in 2019, and 9.5 percent in 2020. The utility is recommending an average increase of 5.5 percent every year from 2018 through 2023.

“The Strategic Business Plan is helping us find ongoing cost savings and efficiencies while maintaining high-quality services,” the plan reads. “However, despite our best efforts, the cost to provide current services for the 2018-2023 period is higher than the 2015-2020 period.”

This news comes after we found out that Seattle City Light did not recover $133 million in revenue between 2012 to 2016 because customers energy efficiency has improved too much!

They told people to conserve energy, and now they say people have done too good a job of conservation. So they have to raise their rates so they can keep the revenues flowing.

When you have a government-operated monopoly you can operate completely outside of the boundaries of normal economics. Typically, when demand for something goes down, the price go down. Not in this case. Revenues are down so Seattle is raising rates because, for example, electricity still needs to be purchased.

If people waste electricity, rates go up. If people conserve too efficiently, rates go up. It’s quite a shameful game.

Maybe the Seattle City Council should pay attention to some of the nuts and bolts of city government, but there isn’t a political gain in a well-run utility.

They will just raise rates and you can’t do anything about it. You still have to buy electricity.