Circle Of Blue | By: Brett Walton | July 24, 2017:
Restrictions on utilities result in weak aid programs, study finds.
Beginning this year, poor residents in Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, could apply for a $US 240 annual credit on their water and sewer bill. The City Council approved the utility’s first water bill aid program last December to ease the financial burden of a 10-year, $US 1.5 billion water system investment that caused rates to rise roughly 40 percent over five years.
There was a hitch in designing the program, though. Because of how state law is interpreted, the utility could not use its own money to fund the subsidies. Utility leaders had to appeal to the Council to use general fund revenues, which come from property and sales taxes, according to Ed Buchan, a water department analyst.
“Our own attorneys feel that we can’t provide direct assistance with ratepayer funds,” Buchan told Circle of Blue.
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