The Snohomish County Public Utility District board is giving its customer-owners a belated 2018 Christmas present. The board is planning to increase rates early next year (“Snohomish County PUD plans a 1.3 percent electricity rate hike,” The Herald, Dec. 24). The rate increase is already included in the recently approved 2019 budget.
The board has again failed to find ways to reduce overall costs. Instead, under the lame veil of reducing external contractor fees and employee travel, the board maintains that this action also provides better cost controls. A limit on new hires, less external contractor fees and reduced employee travel is something the board has never wanted to do or been able to control.
There is no mention of realistic cost efficiencies or improved service to its electric and water customer-owners. There is no mention of efforts that could provide costs saving which would give its ratepayers a rate reduction.
Potential cost reductions leading to a more efficient and less costly utility could include: a review of its inflated compensation system; changes to purchase power agreements; contracts with other less costly power suppliers; unnecessary construction projects; improved electric system efficiencies; and redundant operational programs and systems throughout the organization.
With all of the past system and operational labor-saving programs that the PUD asserts it has already implemented, a rate reduction seems more appropriate than an increase.
The board could take a proactive effort to reduce an already burgeoning budget of almost three-quarters of a billion dollars. It is not too late for a New Years Resolution to improve service for 2019.
Ignacio Castro Jr.
Edmonds
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