— Releases Low-income Needs Assessment Findings
— from OPALCO —
OPALCO led a county-wide work group to identify the needs of our lowest-income residents and to collaborate on effective solutions. The findings show there is a broad spectrum of affordability needs to address and that an effective response will require county-wide agency participation. OPALCO will do its part, proposing new measures in the Co-op’s 2016 budget to address the affordability of electricity for qualified households.
The work group, which began meeting in July of 2015, included stakeholders from island community foundations, family services, the County Housing Bank and Opportunity Council. Following three stakeholder meetings and data research provided by CLEAResult consulting group, OPALCO has released a comprehensive report of the findings, available online at: www.opalco.com/find-documents (board materials/2015/October).
The work group sought to address three key questions: who is in need, how big is the need, and how can we collaborate to best help struggling islanders. Using available market and Census data, the work group determined that roughly 19% of full-time residents fall below 150% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, representing about 1,500 island households and 3,000 people. All of the available resources for community assistance were inventoried and estimates calculated for how much additional support is needed.
For these 1,500 households, the greatest portion of their monthly budget is housing (23%), followed by transportation (16%), medical (12%) and up to 10% for electric expense (numbers vary slightly for seniors, families with children, and single adults). Effective solutions will require county-wide collaboration across agencies to improve affordability in the islands.
OPALCO underwrote the cost of the Needs Assessment and will take the lead with a solution to reduce electricity expense for those households. OPALCO’s Project PAL collects voluntary donations from co-op members to fund about 250 assistance awards of about $150 each during the heating season. To reach further, staff will recommend that the Board consider a couple of options for the 2016 budget, in addition to continuing with Project PAL: 1) Develop an Energy Assistance Program which would award grants based on income and household size using existing qualification tests (SSI, SSDI, LIHEAP, etc.); or 2) augment memhttps://www.opalco.com/find-documentsber donations to PAL with a budgeted amount to increase the effectiveness of that program.
General Manager Foster Hildreth expects to make a recommendation for an OPALCO solution as part of the budget discussion at the November meeting. Look for the November board materials posted online Monday 11/16: www.opalco.com/find-documents (Board Materials/2015/November).
Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO) is a non-profit electrical utility serving about 11,200 co-op member-owners on 20 islands in San Juan County. OPALCO provides electricity that is 95% greenhouse-gas free, predominately generated by hydro-electric plants. OPALCO was founded in 1937 to deliver electricity and improve the quality of life in the San Juan islands.
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So if you distill the issue down, I am hearing the following:
1) OPALCO has been unable to control its costs and through its actions (or inactions)has made electricity more unaffordable to a segment of the population served. Nothing new there.
2) Instead of controlling costs, they are planning to “budget” funds to help those who cannot afford to pay.
3) By “budgeting” funds to increase the affordability to the hard hit islanders, we will all ultimately pay more for the power.
You’ve got to love this OPALCO mismanagement and monopolistic approach to continuing to pass their failures through to our bills.
Don:
Full-time residents who struggle to make it in the islands face a cascading set of rising costs: ferry fares, food, water and sewer, transportation costs, and electricity. The problem is much bigger than electric bills, and OPALCO has taken the lead in bringing agencies together to find solutions. As a co-op, our membership pays the cost of service in their electric bills, and if participating in a county-wide solution to help our most vulnerable members is a Co-op priority, we have the power of 11,200 members to address the need with a minimal impact on those costs. I won’t debate you on your sour opinion of OPALCO, but the rest of the membership who are following Co-op news and developments know that our revenue challenges are tied directly to unpredictable weather-related energy usage reductions at the same time that we are preparing for the planned submarine cable replacement. I’d say OPALCO is managing extremely well in this challenging environment.
Don, As one of the participants in the stakeholder meeting, I encourage you to talk with folks that participated in the Needs Assessment Working Group, including family services, affordable housing, OPALCO, and more. They are hard working and dedicated folks. They are on the front line every day and understand the challenges and nuances of this problem.
Two things I learned from the workgroup:
1. On a scale of 1 to 10, the group ranked affordable housing an “11.” Housing is the gorilla in the room and a huge chunk of the a living wage budget.
2. On the utility side, OPALCO leads in energy assistance AND conservation. No other utility – water, sewage, or propane – comes close. In fact, when we called those utilities to ask about their assistance programs and conservation programs, they all referred us to OPALCO, citing their great assistance and conservation programs.
For a utility comparison, please see Page 11 of the Working Group Overview on the OPALCO website (www.opalco.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Needs-Assessment-Working-Group-Overview.pdf).
Take Eastsound Water as an example. They have a base monthly charge of $39, no low income assistance program, and minimal conservation programs. Even they mentioned that OPALCO has free low flow shower heads.
When the propane providers were asked about their conservation programs, most of them said “Call OPALCO, they have some great programs and rebates.”
Eastsound Sewer, when asked if they had any programs to save water, said “Call OPALCO. They have free shower heads.”
We should challenge all utilities, as well as the county, to step up just as OPALCO has done and deepen their support for low income and seniors, conservation, and especially the affordable housing situation.
I will read the Working Group Overview Jay posted (or, even better, someone could post that report or give us a clickable link to it).
Since the article reported only 61% of the monthly budget, I’d be interested to see what the other %-ages were: food, clothing, TV, other communication devises (phone, computer, smart phone, tablet). Adequate communication is, in a way becoming another basic “necessity of life”, It’s a fuzzy area, for sure, as these communication links are used for both “business” and pleasure.
I’d also like to know these additional %-ages, because my bet is that, especially in lower income households, folks are spending more on these electronic devises than one might think. And there’re no subsidies for those.
Thanks, OPALCO, for taking the lead in identifying those in need……
Thank you, Jay. And thanks OPALCO for programs of direct assistance like PAL, where members and the community step to the plate to help other members meet their energy costs. Keep up the good work, and don’t pay too much attention to the inevitable naysayers.
s
Margot:
This link should get you directly to the report.
https://www.opalco.com/docs/2015-needs-assessment-work-group-report/
There are related documents, the Needs Assessment Overview and Market Reports, to be found on the OPALCO website if you go to Find Documents, select Board Materials, select 2015, then October. Click the document icon to view the PDF. Enjoy the reading, as the results are interesting.
I know costs are increasing on many fronts that challenge those with the fewest resources and I actively support and volunteer community programs that help many of those in need in our community.
My point was that in the past year OPALCO has made multiple moves to increase the total cost of the electricity to its members and blames us for not consuming enough. When business slows down and your supply costs go up, you don’t just sit back and charge more to stay in business. You cut your costs that you can control. OPALCO as a monopoly just says “we’ll add another temporary surcharge to your bills.” Now they are going to tell us all to pay more to subsidize the people who can’t pay their ever increasing power bill. It is a downward spiral and poor management at best.
I’m a bit late to this party, but I thought I’d add my three cents before they turn out the lights.
First, OPALCO is to be congratulated and thanked for leading this study. I, for one, had no idea the low-income problem was so serious, with over 21% of all households having annual incomes below $25,000 and nearly 10% of them with incomes below $15,000. That’s a problem! It’s going to take the combined efforts of several agencies and utilities, not just OPALCO, to address it.
Second, electric utility bills are not as large a fraction as I’d imagined of the total costs these households endure, but they are probably growing a lot faster than other categories, given the recent surcharges and the planned increases in the facilities charge. On a yearly average, electric bills are probably 5-10% of the expenses encountered by low-income households, rising to 10-15% (or more) in the winter months (before subsidies). That’s when it will hurt the most and these people are most in need of help.
Third, on the questions raised about Eastsound Water Users Association (EWUA), I believe their monthly charge is $45, not $39, but it has risen only modestly since we moved to the island five years ago, about 3% per year. And the rate structure inherently encourages water conservation; if you use above 15,000 gallons per quarter, the costs per 1,000 gallons start to hurt, and most people begin to cut back. We did. And EWUA could, I think, grant 20% discounts to those households qualified for OPALCO’s PAL program.
This is a model that I think OPALCO should consider, perhaps for low-income households. Instead of charging them standard rates, and asking others to subsidize them through the PAL program, why not grant them block amounts of kWhs for which they pay a low, fixed rate if they remain below the limit?
Really, the PAL program has been averaging only about $35,000 per year and reaching only about 225 households, when there are at least six times as many in need. If every able member participated and rounded up their bills every month, that would generate only about $60,000 per year. Seems like something more than that is required.
Again, OPALCO is to be thanked for leading and funding this study. If its costs were part of the growing G&A expenses, as they must be, I think it was money well spent. Now we have to do something with the results.