By Erica C. Barnett
City Councilmember Dan Strauss, along with Council President Joy Hollingsworth, is proposing legislation this week that would expand access to the city’s Utility Discount program by expanding eligibility in two stages—one in 2027 and one in 2029—to include people making 60 percent and then 80 percent of Seattle’s Area Median Income. The discount program provides a 60 percent discount on City Light bills and a 50 percent discount on Seattle Public Utilities bills.
Currently, eligibility for the discount program is is limited to people who make 70 percent or less of the state’s median income, which is much lower than Seattle’s—around $73,000 for a single person, compared to about $102,000 in Seattle. According to an analysis from the mayor’s office, about 31,000 more households would become eligible for the program if the city bumps eligibility up to 60 percent of median income, and another 48,000 would become eligible if that’s expanded to 80 percent.
Earlier this month, Strauss said he was surprised recently to learn that someone he considered well-off had signed up for the program when they lost their job. “That just reinforced for me that is absolutely the seniors, the parents of the kids that I grew up with” who need the discount program, Strauss said. “This is an important affordability program for everyone in the city, and we have to have that safety net, if they need to use it, available and easy to sign up for.”
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According to a fiscal note, increasing the threshold for the program to 60 percent of area median income would cost about $5 million for Seattle City Light and $13.9 million for SPU. The money would have to come from a rate increase of 0.5 percent for City Light and 0.1 percent for SPU, Strauss said, or an average increase of about 77 cents a month. City Light is currently considering separate increases to pay for, among other things, a maintenance backlog.
Enrolling eligible ratepayers in the discount program has always been a challenge; currently, about 36 percent of eligible residents, or around 39,000 people, are enrolled. Strauss’ and Hollingsworth’s legislation does not directly take on this problem. The program is also not available for renters without their own City Light accounts whose landlords use ratio utility billing systems, or RUBs—a type of third-party billing that allows landlords to pass the cost of a building’s overall utilities on to tenants and does not reflect how much service a tenant actually uses.
The council’s governance and utilities committee, which Hollingsworth chairs, will take up the utility discount legislation at its meeting on Thursday.
Seriously? ONE person lost their job! Oh my! Let’s make sweeping legislation to help people making 100K a year? PALEEZ! I do not mind taxes. So long as it’s for reasonable costs. It takes 3 kids to pay for one seniors lifestyle. MANY do not need the money. It’s a cash windfall of 1 trillion a year from young to the oldest American’s.
OF COURSE Joy is in the middle of it. Reelection is coming and those high end income voters will remember this right? It’s a bad idea. It’s clearly politics.
I think the numbers cited here are 100% of the state and city AMI for one person, not the actual and proposed income limits for the program. Which is a little confusing. To me this seems like a reasonable way to redistribute money.