GRU keeps electric and gas rates flat for FY27, adopts rate increases of 2% for water and 1.75% for wastewater

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the June 10 GRU Authority meeting, the board declined to act on requests from the City of Gainesville and local business owners to continue billing stormwater and solid waste fees on monthly utility bills; the board also set rates for FY27, keeping electric and natural gas rates flat while increasing water rates by 2% and wastewater rates by 1.75%.

Billing for stormwater and trash collection fees

During Chair Comment, Chair Eric Lawson said he had received “multiple calls from a lot of local business owners expressing concern” about the board’s failure at their May meeting to vote on an agreement between the City of Gainesville and GRU to continue billing stormwater and solid waste (trash collection) fees on customers’ monthly utility bills. Lawson continued, “I wanted to give one last chance to our board members to have a discussion and possibly a vote, since we did not vote on that last month.” Because the four members of the board were split 2-2 on the issue at the May meeting, they knew that any motion would fail, so they did not act on the agenda item.

Lawson pointed out, as he did on May 13, that the decision would result in a loss of over $800k in revenue to GRU from the fees paid by the City for the service of billing the fees. 

Director Chip Skinner said he had also received a lot of emails from citizens, business owners, and owners of large apartment and condominium complexes. He said the apartment complex owners said their lease agreements are mostly already signed, so they will not have an opportunity to adjust rents in response to the new fees, which were previously billed directly to the tenants on GRU bills. Skinner said, “I would hope that we could have some additional discussion on this so we’re not putting them in a bind as well, which is an unintended consequence of all this, and postpone it for a year.”

Director David Haslam said he did a little more research on it, and he learned that some properties don’t pay any stormwater fees because they don’t have an electricity meter, “like, say, empty parking lots that do add to stormwater; they’re not being charged stormwater.” He said other properties that shouldn’t be charged for stormwater are being charged, and he said the Property Appraiser “can fix that, apparently, better than we can.” He concluded, “I know it’s going to be rough for some people,… I get it, and it sucks, but I couldn’t imagine changing [my mind], personally.”

Director Jack Jacobs said the Authority had been “kicking the can down the road” on the issue for a year, and “it’s time to pull the band-aid off. To receive all these letters at the last minute,… I don’t know what to say. We advertised for people to come, and this could have been taken care of much earlier.” He also pointed out that GRU does not provide stormwater services, and tenants have been paying those fees, even though they have no standing or ability to challenge or mitigate the fees. 

30-year renewal of GRU’s water permit

During CEO comments, CEO Ed Bielarski announced that the St. Johns Water Management District renewed GRU’s consumptive use permit for 30 years, with an increase from 30 million gallons a day to 34.5 million gallons a day.

In response to a question from Skinner about the effects of the drought on GRU’s water supply, Water/Wastewater Officer Debbie Daugherty said GRU has not seen any significant impacts: “We just have a very secure source of water,… but we still need to conserve water here and protect that resource, so that our aquifers stay stable.”

“Social media chatter” about varying billing cycles

Responding to “social media chatter” about billing cycles that can stretch up to 35 days, Bielarski said that as the automated meters come online, the utility is looking at tightening the billing cycle. He said that people pay less when the billing cycle is at the short end of the range, and they have to pay more when the billing cycle is long, so “it’s not just a one-way street.” He said the difference should be a few dollars when the billing cycle is long, not “a $300 bill increase… When people are sitting there saying, ‘My bill has gone up,’ well, it’s gone up because the outside temperature went up, and you may not have changed your thermostat, but that unit is working harder.”

Bielarski said the LEAP program can help low-income residents get more efficient units, and the utility offers extended payment terms, “but the idea that there’s no reason for bills to go up, May through September, is simply not true.”

Setting rates for FY27

Electric and natural gas rates are again staying flat next year, continuing the pattern since the Authority took over management of GRU. Water rates will increase by 2%, and wastewater rates will increase by 1.75%. 

Public streetlight and pole rates increased modestly.

The board adopted the new rates, 4-0.

FY27 budget

The board unanimously adopted a FY27 budget of $438,436,471, which includes a General Fund Transfer to the City of $8,505,225, $103.4 million in debt service, and $25.3 million in debt defeasance.

GRU Authority corporate seal

The board unanimously adopted a resolution to adopt a corporate seal for the GRU Authority.

Gainesville City Clerk Kristen Bryant spoke during public comment on the motion to adopt the seal, saying that the GRU Authority is a unit of the City of Gainesville and is not a corporation. She said the official seal of the City of Gainesville was set by ordinance, and the City Clerk is the custodian of the seal, which is embossed on all ordinances, resolutions, certified copies, official minutes, and signature pages for bond closings. She opposed adopting the seal and put in a public records request for “all communications and memoranda between Bond Counsel Holland and Knight and any official or employee at GRU, or a member of the GRU Authority, related to the use of an alternate seal.”

GRU Director of Accounting and Finance Mark Benton said the seal will not be used for GRU bond documents, where the City’s seal is required. 

GRU Attorney Derek Perry said, “This seal is not the City seal; it’s for the Authority.” He said the Orlando Utilities Commission, “which is also a component of the Orlando government,” has its own seal. “This is for us to stamp our own minutes or resolutions,” he said.

All of the directors agreed that the seal was boring, but Bielarski said, “It’s good when [a utility] is boring.”

Ongoing Business agenda item

Following up on a request from Skinner at the May 13 meeting, the board discussed adding a section to the agenda for “Ongoing Business,” providing an executive summary of activity on the items for which the Authority has requested action. 

Skinner said, “I think it keeps us straight, makes sure we don’t have any loose danglers out there we may have forgotten about… Something very simple is what I was looking for.”

Bielarski asked for more guidance on what should go on the agenda under that section, and Lawson said that Directors could suggest items during their one-on-ones with Bielarski. 

More on stormwater and solid waste fee collection

During Director Comment, Jacobs said he spoke with the Tax Collector, who “said it is absolutely false [that people are going to] lose their house over [unpaid stormwater or solid waste fees]. It’s a non-ad valorem fee, and that doesn’t figure into the process. And, two, [the Tax Collector has] a hardship process,… so if people can’t pay certain fees or services on their bill, they can actually be removed from the tax roll, which is another reason why this needs to be on the Tax Collector’s bill, because… they’ve got the programs in place…. The converse isn’t true: [GRU does] shut off people’s power for not paying the fees,… so if we’re really concerned about… people being put out, the right decision is to move this over to the Tax Collector.” He added that the Tax Collector has a 100% collection rate, compared to GRU’s loss of about $3 million a year in collections; also, residents can pay as soon as the bill arrives and get a 4% discount, while GRU does not offer a discount on the fees. 

Following up on a comment during General Public Comment about increased SO₂ and NO_x emissions, Skinner asked Bielarski to explain why those emissions have recently increased. Bielarski said, “They’re [significantly] lower than what they were when we were running on coal and when we were running the biomass plant as a base load facility… This is like a little blip, and it corresponds to us not having Kelly (a natural gas plant, which is in an outage) and running the biomass plant… The biomass plant was never a zero-discharge facility, despite the fact that the EPA sees it that way; it emits as much as the coal plant does, or more, in certain occasions.”

Bielarski also confirmed that by law, GRU cannot reduce bills based on hardship: “The Tax Collector can, but I’m breaking the law if I treat customers differently.”