Milwaukie set to increase its tax on electric and gas bills

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When Milwaukie City Council adds a goal, such as Climate Action Plan, like it did over two years ago now, it means Milwaukie city hall wants its residents to pay for goals that the public never agreed to via a public vote.

Milwaukie City Council and city staff struggle now to fund the city's core functions of safety, library, and roads.  But instead of maybe scaling back its continual expenditure on extracurricular activities like joining the futile attempt to change the temperature of the earth (i.e, Climate Action Goal), it instead now is considering raising its Privilege tax on Northwest Natural, PGE, Comcast, and Century Link from the 2% Milwaukie Privilege Tax (shown in the typical NW Natural bill shown above here) to like 5%, which would be like a $2.50 hike per month in a typical natural gas utility bill.

For PGE residential electric utility customers, the Milwaukie proposal to increase the city's utility tax by 3% points means the electric utility bill could go up an additional $4.50 per month.

From my listening to this last Tuesday's (4/2/24) Milwaukie Council work session, it sounds like Milwaukie's Council is dead set on continuing to fund one or two city government Climate Change employees - who mainly are just pushing paper on the issue of Climate Change and doing research surrounding Climate Change.  I doubt very much if Milwaukie residents would have voted in favor of paying an extra $5 to $10 a month to hire two bureaucrats to sit around duplicating the work already performed in large part by state bureaucracies over the topic of Climate Change. 

 The way such goals (Climate Action Plan) are developed is to push a question to the public by inviting Milwaukie residents and others outside the City of Milwaukie to townhall meetings, and then having government officials and staff talk up how wonderful it would be for Milwaukie city government to take up such and such new goal.  Very little talk at these Town Halls involves the cost of taking up such and such new goal - just the imagined benefits.

I dare say that less than 5% of all Milwaukie residents even know that their City government sets new goals, let alone attend City townhalls which are usually agenda driven in favor of talking up some new city government goal.

This is one of the problems of trusting government.  Government is not so much altruistic, but rather is a self-interested body of government employees and elected politicians.  As such, Government continually looks to expand beyond the basic services of safety, libraries, parks, water and roads.

Milwaukie Council and government staff continually complain about the 3% limit on property tax increases, set by Constitutional Measures 5 and 50.  But without Measures 5 and 50 (the 3% limit on property tax increases) government would no doubt continually seek to increase property taxes in order to expand its power and benefits at the expense of the taxpaying public that it is supposed to serve. 

The 3% limit is really not a limit, because sometimes voters will allow the 3% annual limit to be exceeded if government can convince them of the need and benefits of paying extra property taxes.  And shouldn't this be the way it is with all taxes and fees - that is, Government having to ask voters for their approval before it adopts a costly new goal (such as Milwaukie's Climate Action Plan)? 

Milwaukie's Budget Committee is set to discuss and enact these proposals with amendment on Saturday, April 27, 2024, in Milwaukie's annual public budget and fee setting meeting.

(posted by Elvis Clark on April 4, 2024)

Milwaukie Mayor Batey, Councilor Stavenjord, and City Manager Ober are pushing to deny Milwaukie residents the ability to heat their homes with natural gas and/or cook with natural gas.  I had testified to City Council back on December 19th against Milwaukie's resolution to ban natural gas utility service.  [The City's gas ban resolution (not yet law, as it is just a resolution) was passed back in December 2022, led by then Mayor Mark Gamba who can only be described as a climate alarmist.  Gamba is no longer Mayor as he left to become a state representative in January 2023.]

I argued before City Council on December 19th, 2023, that natural gas home heating is a lot less expensive than heating with electricity - even with efficient heat pumps.  So, I suspect that Batey and Ober in response to my testimony invited two organizations, the Oregon Citizen Utility Board and the Green Energy Institute, to testify at this last Tuesday's City Council Meeting - held on January 2, 2024.  Both these organizations argued in their testimony for cities to begin banning natural gas utility service - such as for home heating.

Carra Sahler represented the Green Energy Institute while Bob Jenks represented the Citizen Utility Board (CUB).  Sahler is pictured above nodding towards Jenks in full agreement with his testimony favoring the City's forcing a transition away from natural gas utility service. 

There is some hope that the other three City Councilors might stand in the way and prevent the City from banning natural gas utility service.  These three councilors each voiced some skepticism about the impact on living costs for residents if natural gas utility service were to be banned or restricted.

So, I will need to respond with testimony to the Council rebutting the testimony provided by Sahler and Jenks.  The next opportunity to do so is January 16, 2024.

I believe CUB has become unbalanced and has lost its primary mission which is to represent utility customers against rate hikes.  In other words, CUB has become a facade and no longer is representing the best interests of both PGE and Northwest Natural customers.

The Citizen Utility Board is created back in the year 1984 by a ballot measure passed by Oregonians.  Here is the main question that is asked of voters back in 1984:

"QUESTION—Should a nonprofit public corporation funded by voluntary contributions be established to represent the interests of utility consumers?"

I believe voters believed then, and still do, that CUB's primary goal is to try to keep utility rate increases less than otherwise.  But probably voters did not get to the actual Policy law buried deeper in the Ballot Measure's Explanatory statement.  Here's is CUB's actual Policies enacted:

 "The people of the State of Oregon hereby find that utility consumers need an effective advocate to assure that public policies affecting the quality and price of utility services reflect their needs and interests, that utility consumers have the right to form an organization which will represent their interests before legislative, administrative and judicial bodies, and that utility consumers need a convenient manner of contributing to the funding of such an organization so that it can advocate forcefully and vigorously on their behalf concerning all matters of public policy affecting their health, welfare and economic well-being."

Do you see a problem?  CUB has competing goals, and it appears from Bob Jenks' (CUB's) testimony that CUB is choosing to sacrifice minimizing the cost of utilities to its interpretation of other matters of welfare - taking a position that reflects that CUB may very well have been coopted itself by the Green Energy Institute and other environmental interest groups - environmental organizations who seem bent on sacrificing economic wellbeing for what I will call 'environmental purity.'

(posted by Elvis Clark on January 4, 2023)