NC cities face rising electrical costs

Some cities across the state continue to charge more for electricity to help offset debt, affecting residents — and local students.

Students at Elizabeth City State University have been forced to pay increased electric bills to offset Elizabeth City’s municipal power debt, which was $95.8 million as of January 2011.

“It is very hard to live like this,” said DeVon McNair, student body president at ECSU. “I hear students talking every day about how hard it is to pay for education and rent.”

McNair said the ECSU student government is coordinating with the mayor’s office to devise strategies for lowering utility bills.

Brian Wayne, student attorney general at ECSU, said he lives off-campus and that it is sometimes difficult to afford utility bills in the winter.

But higher utility bills might be more manageable for students, he said.

“Students always have the option of going back to their families during hard times,” he said. “But many working adults don’t.”

Ken Raber, senior vice president of member services at ElectriCities — a state trade association representing various cities — said a consortium of cities borrowed money in 1982 to help finance the construction of several power plants, including the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant in New Hill.

The cities agreed to help finance the projects in exchange for receiving electricity from the power plants, but a debt of $2.25 billion has now been passed on to consumers in the form of rising electricity costs.

Rich Olson, city manager of Elizabeth City, said he receives up to a dozen complaints daily about high electric prices.

Olsen said more than 30 percent of electric bill revenue collected by the city is used to offset the debt.

The electric portion of utility bills in the city are above average relative to the state, averaging $134 for less than 1,000 kilowatts of usage for the past two years.

McNair said he believes it’s unfair that a debt from the 1980s has been passed onto residents and college students.

“I know they did what they had to do, but it is unfair to pass a debt onto people who had nothing to do with the decision at that time,” he said.

Wayne said the cities that incurred debt to finance the power plants didn’t necessarily have future residents in mind.

“I was not born then and had no contact with what was going on then,” he said. “A lot of times people don’t tell this generation how their decision will affect other people, they only think about themselves.

“I’m not saying that is what happened in this situation, but it may have had something to do with it.”

The N.C. Municipal Power Agency Relief Committee, led by Rep. Jeff Collins, R-Nash, and Sen. Buck Newton, R-Nash, met last week to discuss the problem and solutions for mitigating the effects of higher utility payments.

In a letter to the subcommittee, ElectriCities CEO T. Graham Edwards expressed his willingness to lower costs for city residents.

Raber said ElectriCities has attempted to lower costs by helping cities refinance their loans and working toward pushing back a 2026 deadline for the debt payments.

“With unemployment greater than nine percent, we know how hard this is on cities and homeowners,” he said.

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