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Electric bills spark debate in Hubbard
Hubbard
Ed Palestro, the city’s electric department foreman, played the part of electric- bill interpreter Wednesday at city hall to a crowd of residents, some claiming the city has unfairly charged them.
“I want this to be a friendly presentation,” Palestro said before the meeting began.
The biggest question for Hubbard residents was the “O Charge,” or the power-cost adjustment, that appears on their bill and fluctuates each month.
“I would like to have some truth,” said Anne Zivkovic, a 59-year-old lifelong resident of Hubbard.
Zivkovic believed the city was using the O Charge to shuffle more money into its general budget.
Residents such as Zivkovic wondered not only why their electricity bills increased but why they seem to jump up and down monthly.
Zivkovic called herself conservative in her power use. She and her husband don’t own a central-air system and normally watch television in the dark, she said.
Yet Zivkovic said their monthly bill increased from $65 six months ago to $159 two months ago before decreasing.
Even when she and her husband visited Europe over the summer, she said her electric bill was the same despite their absence most of the month.
The city “told me it was because I didn’t have food in my refrigerator,” she said.
Zivkovic said it is the same for her mother, Anna Bruner, for whom Zivkovic pays the bills.
“We all experience the highs together and the lows together,” Zivkovic said.
Jan Bolchalk, another life-long city resident, claimed Newton Falls and Niles, two municipalities that also provide electricity, charge less.
“We want the city to explain why we are paying more,” she said.
Palestro didn’t know the rates of Niles or Newton Falls but explained that the O Charge fluctuates based on how much the city is being charged to purchase its power and how much the consumer is using.
Currently, Palestro said, the city is under contract to American Municipal Power and the O Charge is based on energy demand. For example, the cost of electricity goes up during the summer and winter and tends to decrease in fall and spring.
“You’re probably using more [electricity] than you think,” he said.
Palestro said a portion of the O Charge is placed into the light investment fund. The fund, he explained, would pay for immediate repair of substations or other parts of the electrical grid. He said if there were no reserve fund, the city would have to turn to creditors and bonds to pay for repairs.
Currently the reserve fund holds $4 million, a figure Palestro believes is too low.
“It should probably be $4.2 million,” he said. “We cannot exhaust all reserve capital and strictly rely on the bond market,” he said.