Open discussion about “astronomical” utility bills as of late

At the end of the February 2 Woodlands County Council meeting, Councillor Jeremy Wilhelm brought forward concerns he had heard from residents about utility bills. “I’m not sure if you guys have had these (same) conversations with residents. I know that at a Municipal level, we don’t particularly have that much control over it, but there’s a lot of chatter and discontent about the utility charge rates for electricity and gas in the Woodlands County area. I’m sure it’s province-wide. I understand that it’s the Alberta government that works with those companies to set the rates. I’m just not sure if it’s anything that we can do as Council to help support that type of situation for our residents in the municipality.”

He said recent bills have been astronomical. “I’m not sure if there’s anything we can do at our level to continue to lobby the Alberta government to help with the situation like that, but it’s of concern. Not just for me but for our residents as well.” Mayor John Burrows agreed that it was something to be concerned about and eluded that he had planned to bring it up in his report too.

“You have to be careful what you wish for. Everybody says we need to get off of coal, and we need to get onto natural gas power generation. Well, ok, but now you’re on a market-dependent resource. The reality is the export market is more lucrative than burning it in our own province for power, so we are competing against ourselves. When baseload power was generated by coal, the only people that burned coal were generating it for baseline power, so the price of coal stayed right there (motioned a steady horizontal line with his arm). Even with a carbon tax on it, it might’ve jumped a bit, but it pretty much stayed right there (still holding his arm).”

Mayor Burrows said that now that natural gas is on top for power generation, users see the market respond as natural gas prices rise. “The further we go down the road, the more we are going to have to get used to that price volatility. I honestly don’t know what the government can do about it because the market controls the price of natural gas at this point. I know exactly what you’re saying, and everyone is hurting right now. The price of gasoline is ridiculous, and the carbon taxes are piled on top of everything.”

Councillor Alan Deane, who is also a business owner, said there are a lot of fees added to a bill. “Personally, I don’t have a good understanding of how those fees are derived and whether there’s an opportunity for the government to put some kind of control into those fees.” He then stated that he wasn’t sure if “control” was the right word to use.

Mayor Burrows said that he has thought about the bill scenario on Woodland County’s end, but for a different reason. “When you get your tax assessment, you go through the different lines. When we did the three percent rebate for early payment, the three percent tax incentive, people were upset that it wasn’t three percent on the entire tax. It was just on the municipal tax side. A lot of people don’t understand how the tax notice is sent out and what everything means.” He said that he would suggest doing some short videos for residents on what the assessment looks like and a breakdown of what each line means, including which ones are set by the province.

He then tied that thought into the utility fees. “When you say you don’t know (about the fees on the bills), I don’t know either. I don’t understand these fees. Maybe we could ask for an information session on exactly what those fees are, where they come from and if we can figure out who to talk to about them. That might be a good conversation to have.”

Councillor Bruce Prestidge said that he locked in his rates to try and keep his bill down. “When we locked in, we were at 6.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, and right now, I think it’s up to 16. So, if you lock in and do equalization, you have an average of the whole year. I think our utility bill is under $200 a month for electricity throughout the whole year. It’s not like you’re getting $600 power bills in December and January. It’s another way to look at it.”

Whether or not they should hold an information session or develop ways to help explain bills to residents might come up in a future meeting.