Wyandotte County utility raises electric and water bills despite residents’ frustration
The Board of Public Utilities voted this week to increase electric and water base rates in Kansas City, Kansas, despite growing concerns from residents who say they already can’t pay their bills.
Directors of the electric utility company in Wyandotte County known as the BPU on Wednesday voted 4-2 to increase electric rates for its tens of thousands of customers by 2.5% this year and another 2.5% next year. Water rates will increase by 6%.
“The modifications were necessary to maintain the integrity of the utility’s electric and water transmission, distribution, and production systems, and to meet growth needs in the community over the next five years,” the BPU said in a news release.
Residents have spoken out against the proposed increases, including at a public meeting last month during which one community member accused BPU of “bleeding” its customers dry. Some anguished residents, including in low-income households in the Northeast region, say they have had to decide between paying their utility bills and buying food.
The rate increases for water were the first for customers since 2013. Electric energy rates were last increased in 2018.
BPU board member Jeff Bryant said while rate hearings are “never pleasant,” it would be unacceptable if the utility did not maintain its financial responsibilities. He added that BPU put a policy in place for vulnerable citizens to offset the increases.
“Residents and businesses in our city expect us to make the hard decisions that will keep our utilities flowing today, tomorrow and into the future,” Bryant said at the meeting Wednesday.
Before the vote, one resident told board members that her services were once cut off over her inability to pay the final penny of her bill. Another “begged” the board not to increase the rates, saying it could harm residents with disabilities.
Research by the Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy organization, has shown residential customers in Kansas City, Kansas, had already been paying among the highest percentage of their income on utilities in the state.
Bill Johnson, the BPU’s general manager, has said residents and businesses are increasingly moving from the eastern side of KCK to the west, leaving the remaining customers to foot the bill as more financial strain befalls the publicly-owned utility. He also said BPU had cut its budget by $42 million and laid off about 10% of its staff since 2018 to stay afloat.
The increases had to be implemented, BPU said, in part because it needs $180 million in improvements to “maintain the integrity of its electric utility system” and more than $135 million to keep the water system running well.
Atenas Mena, co-executive director of CleanAirNow, an environmental justice organization in Wyandotte County, read a statement on behalf of a community member who could not make the Wednesday meeting.
The resident, a mother of three in the 66104 ZIP code, had a major water leak last year around Christmas. She called to report what happened but couldn’t get someone to speak to her in Spanish, her primary language.
Once her English-speaking daughter got someone on the phone, BPU sent an employee out four days later and left a note at her door, saying the issue was hers to solve, Mena read. The family then paid a plumber $3,000 to fix the issue.
Later, the woman could not pay her $2,000 BPU bill and cut off her electricity in the middle of winter. She has since gotten other charges that she does not understand.
“My experience let me know that something is not working well with the BPU,” the woman’s statement went. “And just as they demand that we pay, we demand that they provide better service.”
BPU board member David Haley, who voted against the rate increases, said he supports opening BPU’s lobby to have in-person customer service with bilingual employees.
“It should be done to have that face to face,” he said.
