EVERETT – It’s the middle of summer, and Snohomish County PUD customers are still having a hard time paying off last winter’s heating bills.
“We’re still getting 30 to 40 calls per day for help,” said Bill Beuscher, supervisor of Snohomish County’s Energy Assistance Program.
The energy assistance office gave out $2.6 million, a record amount of assistance during one service year, which began in October.
“We were able to put more money into helping people than ever before,” Beuscher said.
The number of people who need help paying their energy bills has continued to climb since the PUD raised its rates by 50 percent during the 2000-01 West Coast energy crisis.
“Through (last week), we’ve helped 2,080 households in crisis” this year, Beuscher said. “These are people who are shut off or within 72 hours of being shut off.”
That number breaks the record of 1,935 households in crisis set the winter before. The PUD has had record levels of disconnections since rates went up.
The amount that these down-on-their luck customers are owing on their bills is also increasing, Beuscher said.
“It’s not uncommon for us to see a heating bill in the range of $800 to $1,200,” Beuscher said of unpaid bills that build up over the winter. “Five years ago I would say $300 to $350 was the highest bill we would see.”
Beuscher’s office finally ran out of money last week, shutting its doors until this winter.
Each fall, the state announces how much Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program money the county will get. That federal program provides most of the money the county hands out.
Right now, Snohomish County is scheduled to get $1.5 million from the federal program. At this time last year, Beuscher’s office heard it would get $1.4 million, but by the end of winter that amount had grown to $1.9 million, a trend Beuscher hopes and expects to see repeated this winter.
In January, the PUD began requiring that those with spotty payment records start paying deposits.
Since demanding deposit payments, the PUD has collected $2.1 million from 6,808 customers, said Neil Neroutsos, a spokesman for the utility district. The utility is still trying to collect deposits or parts of deposits from another 5,600 customers.
Neroutsos said the PUD decided to start collecting deposits because write-offs – the amount of money the utility is unable to collect from its customers – have grown too high at the utility.
“So far this year the utility has avoided $120,000 in write-offs because of the deposit requirement,” he said. “This $120,000 would have been absorbed by the PUD’s other paying customers. They would essentially be subsidizing service for those customers who didn’t pay for the electricity they used.”
The 12,408 customers who have been charged a deposit represent 4 percent of the PUD’s 300,000 customers.
The requirement has been unpopular among many of the PUD’s customers, some of whom have seen long-awaited energy assistance checks go toward a deposit instead of paying off their overdue electricity bill.
“Last school quarter during finals I came home to my children and home with no electricity,” said Tessy Davis, a divorced mother of two.
Davis said she made her payment to the PUD, but instead of putting the money toward paying off her bill, the utility put it toward a $500 deposit she was told she owed for having a spotty payment history.
“Now it is happening again,” she said. “I just got a letter stating that they would continue to add my payments towards my deposit.”
She said she now owes $536.
“If I could not make my PUD payments, how can I possibly come up with an extra $500,” she said. “Electricity is not a commodity, it is dire.”
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