There are roughly 260 households in Lompoc that the city considers “zero usage customers” when it comes to electricity, according to Management Services Director Christie Donnelly.
In other words, these houses’ lights are rarely ever on, and nobody’s home, “in most cases,” Donnelly said at the Lompoc City Council’s Oct. 1 meeting.
“We look at those and say those are most likely … vacant homes that have meters,” Donnelly said during a discussion on the city’s electric rate structure. “[They’re] potentially bank-owned, or potentially [owned by] people who live here seasonally.”
Regardless of how little electricity they use, these customers are currently subject to a monthly $5 fixed charge, even if they don’t flip a single light switch on all month. Donnelly explained that this fixed rate is necessary to keep one class of electric customers from subsidizing another.
“Without a base customer charge, higher use customers are subsidizing lower usage customers,” Donnelly said.
The fixed fee came up when staff presented the City Council with four separate approaches to gradually adjust the city’s monthly electric billing to avoid future rate spikes.
One of the approaches was identical to staff’s original proposal—to increase the fixed fee to $11, and $5 more each year going forward—which received pushback and was ultimately tabled by the City Council in September.
Among the new approaches to consider, one option completely eliminates the charge, which Councilmember Victor Vega favored.
“This push for the mandatory minimum fee, I’m still not sold on,” Vega said. “It’s mostly a benefit to the city, and not the residents. … It’s basically just meant to shore up the boat for the people you think aren’t paying their fair share. I don’t think it’s beneficial for the residential customers.”
Councilmember Jeremy Ball expressed support for both the zero base rate option and another route that would maintain the $5 flat fee. Ball said the original approach and an additional alternative—which keeps the starting fixed charge at $5—are unfair to customers that make efforts to conserve electricity.
“There’s no more incentive for them to conserve power because they just have a cost now,” Ball said. “It doesn’t matter if a private citizen conserved; it doesn’t matter if a small business conserved in scenarios one and two, because … their rate is going to go up.”
Councilmember Gilda Aiello motioned for the City Council to accept staff’s proposal that maintains the $5 flat fee without yearly increases. However, as with all four options, the route includes cost increases based on individual customers’ electricity use, put in place to prevent future rate spikes that affect all customers.
The current average bill for electric customers in Lompoc is $61.40, according to staff, while the new rate structure (accepted by the council after a 4-1 vote, with Vega dissenting) is projected to increase that average to $66.28 in its first year, $73.04 in its second year, and $79.81 in its third year.
This article appears in Oct 10-20, 2024.