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JAMESTOWN, NY (WNY News Now) – The Jamestown Board of Public Utilities are explaining what their newly released 2023 fiscal plan means for customers in the coming year.
During the BPU’s November meeting on Monday, a draft of the 2023 electrical budget was released. While there will be no increase to customer’s bills this year, there are a few concerns that were brought to the table.
“We’re a municipal utility right, so we’re not here to make big profits,“ explained General Manager Dave Leathers. “Each division is different, but the electric division gets a contribution from our off-system sales profits. Because we have a power plant and because we run a power plant the first 1.225 million dollars of profits go to the operating budget. In our current draft of the budget it shows a year end net income of about 1.2 million dollars so that says the division overall separate from those off-system sales profits is break-even.”
Some of the contributing factors include inflation of natural gas and electricity prices, and state legislation like the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, and other climate based ordinances.
“Realistically 2023 and 2024 are likely to be more engineering studies, feasibility studies, more preparatory work,” stated Leathers. “And I would think actual dollars being expended are three to five years out.“
In the end, the General Manager believes that there will not be any major changes in billing for their customers this year.
“From a dollars perspective, how significant of a rate increase would we be looking at in probably the late 23, 24 timeframe,” explained Leathers.
For 2023, water rates are expected to go up three percent. For divisions like wastewater however, there will be no change in this upcoming year.
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