Find Eric.

He's a probation officer for the city, helping clients comply with court orders by connecting them to classes, resources, and more.

He's part of the municipal.

Good morning.

Welcome to the City of Cora Springs regular council meeting, Tuesday, October 14th, 2025.

Already, October.

Will the um clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Bailey.

Here.

Councilmember Crow Iverson.

Here.

Councilmember Donaldson.

Here.

Councilmember Gold.

Councilmember Henjam.

Present.

Councilmember Lionweaver.

Here.

Councilmember Rainey.

Here.

Councilmember Risley.

Here.

Councilmember Williams.

Here.

All nine present.

Moving on to the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please stand this morning for the invocation.

And today we're honored to have Pastor Stan Lightfoot from Rustic Hills Baptist Church.

Good morning.

Green light.

No, it's on.

Understand you have a busy agenda today.

So I've crafted a one-hour prayer to help you.

Yes.

Thank you.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you for these folks who are standing in front of us.

Thank you for thank you for the work that they do for their love for our city.

We're grateful for that.

We live in tumultuous times.

Things are happening all over the world and here at home that almost defy imagination.

We are both blessed and challenged to live in these days.

One blessing that we enjoy is that our God who is sovereign over his creation is never caught by surprise.

And we can rest in that knowledge.

Another blessing we have is the leaders that you have put in place.

Give them wisdom and discernment for the challenges they face.

But this morning, Father, I want to pray especially for these men and women who serve our city.

Thank you for them.

They strive to do what is best for Colorado Springs.

Give the members of City Council wisdom as they make decisions that impact our city and all of us who live here.

Guide the discussion and the decision the decisions reached this morning.

May we be able to continue living quiet and peaceable lives because of the work done here today.

We ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

The Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the remote for which he stands.

Thank you.

Moving on to the consent calendar, we will now consider the consent calendar for today.

These items will be acted on as a whole unless a specific item is called out for discussion by the council member or citizen wishing to address the city council.

Are there any wishes to pull an item off the consent calendar?

Seeing none, we'll take a thumbs up.

Okay, moving on from consent calendar.

You need a motion.

We need a motion from Councilmember Risley and a second from Council Member Bailey.

Okay.

You're good.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 4BE.

Will the clerk please write an item 4BE into the record?

Recognition.

I don't bye they.

A resolution recognizing 2025 as Arts Month in the Pikespeak region.

Okay.

My will the city clerk please read item 5A into the record.

A resolution recognizing October 2025 is the as Arts Month in the Pikes Peak Region.

Councilmember Hindum.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh good morning, everybody.

And I would like to actually um make sure you know standing here at the podium is the board chair of the uh cultural office of the Pikes Peak Region, um Scott Levy.

And he will be speaking to us a little bit today about uh the arts in Colorado Springs.

And actually, I think um, Emily, I'm not sure if you have a photo, a slide to display as well.

Um I'll let you work that out with Michael Andor Alex.

There was a special photo that Councilmember.

Oh, there it is, right there.

Um that is Councilmember Gold and myself uh Friday night at our Ent Center for the Arts at the Production and Um of Cabaret, which was an incredible show.

Um so we have some outstanding art right here in Colorado Springs.

Um Scott, I'm gonna go ahead and have you say a few words and then we'll uh read the resolution.

Certainly.

I I was proud to direct that production, so thank you so much for coming.

Oh my gosh, you're kidding, I shouldn't have remembered that.

I read the notes, but you were the director.

It was an outstanding show.

It was incredible.

Um I am Scott R.

C.

Levy.

I have been a citizen of Colorado Springs for 14 and a half years.

I moved here to become the producing artistic director of the theater company at the Fine Arts Center, where I served for a decade.

I uh then left the Fine Arts Center and have been the executive director of Green Box Arts in Green Mountain Falls for the last four and a half years.

Additionally, beyond serving as the board chair of the cultural office of the Pikes Peak region, I of course raised my family here.

I also teach directing at the uh University of Colorado Cairo Springs and get to do fun things like direct cabaret from time to time.

So, as uh the board chair of the cultural office, and through my experience over the last decade and a half in our amazing city and our amazing region, I just wanted to note that from the cultural traditions of the youths to the rarefied air that brought the General Palmers and the Spencer Penrose's to create the seeds of the city we know today, from our legacy cultural organizations like the Fine Arts Center, which, as you may know, started the Broadmoor Art Academy in 1919, and was the first multidisciplinary organization, arts organization west of the Mississippi, to the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, which just last weekend started their 99th season of professional orchestral music, from the new gathering places like the U.S.

Olympic and Paralympic Museum to the Ent Center for the Arts, where Cabaret launched Theater Works' 50th season in the last month, from organizations dedicated to creating the artists and concerned citizens of tomorrow, like the Colorado Springs Conservatory, the Youth Symphony, the Children's Corral, the Youth Documentary Academy, and this weekend, speaking of film, the longest running continuous women's film festival in North America, the Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival, occurs in our city this weekend, to the dozens of gathering places in the creative corridors throughout the region, from the thousands of actors, painters, musicians, photographers, and others that make the quilt of our community whole to the current Pikes Peak poet laureate Ashley Cornelius and her beautiful words to Colorado Springs native Patrick Schern, whose work at Green Box that we presented over the summer resulted in over 100,000 visits from people from all 50 states and over a dozen international countries.

The arts and culture sector in our city and the entire Pikes Peak region is essential and an imperative part of our neighborhoods, communities, and all of us.

The Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region is there every step of the way to advocate, gather, and support our entire arts and culture sector, which is so imperative to our community's health, economic development, and well-being.

And I thank you all on the council for the recognition of October being arts month in the Pikes Peak region.

Thank you, Scott.

Um, and thank you for reminding us of what a rich, diverse um uh panoply of art we have in the Pikes Peak region that really enriches our life and Green Box as well.

Wow.

And I don't know if you were if if you were talking about the uh installation over the lake.

Yes.

Which is yes, off the beaten path by Patrick Schern, who was born and raised right here and is being deinstalled as we speak this morning.

Exceptionally beautiful.

So thank you very much for that.

So let me read the resolution recognizing October 2025 as Arts Month in the Pikes Peak Region.

Whereas the month of October has been recognized as National Arts and Humanities Month by thousands of arts and cultural organizations, communities, and states across the United States, as well as the White House and Congress for nearly 30 years and for 12 years here in the Pikes Peak region.

Whereas the arts and humanities enhance and enrich the lives of every American, including those of us living in and visiting the Pikes Peak region.

And whereas the arts positively support mental well-being, community cohesion, education, healing, economic vitality, tourism, and our quality of life.

And whereas the arts and culture for profit and not for profit sectors represent over one trillion dollars in American industry, 4.4% of our national GDP, $18 billion in Colorado that supports 4.85 million American jobs, and in Colorado, 104 at 104, and 163 jobs.

It's a very specific number.

Whereas cultural heritage, creativity, and innovation are an intrinsic part of the history of Colorado Springs and our shared future.

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Colorado Springs City Council that Colorado Springs recognize City Council recognizes October 2025 as the 12th annual arts month in the Pikes Peak region and call upon our citizens to celebrate and value arts and culture in Colorado Springs and to specifically encourage greater participation by those said citizens in the local arts and humanities in their community.

Thank you again, Scott.

We'll bring it up to the dais if there are any comments.

Councilman Gold.

Thank you, Madam President, and thank you, Councilmember Henjam.

Um, we have such a booming arts community here in Colorado Springs.

I really hope that not just this month, but every month and every day, every week, you choose to participate in our arts economy here in Colorado Springs.

The arts is such a wonderful way to uh express yourself, to see yourself through through mirrors and to see others' lives through windows.

Um it is a great teaching tool and a great connector, and I hope that you enjoy all that we have to offer here in Colorado Springs.

I do want to um plug that there is a wonderful uh visual arts um I don't even know what to call it, showcase at Meanwhile Block Downtown called Transcendent Femme.

10 out of 10, highly encourage all to attend.

Thank you.

I have a motion from Councilman Gold and a second from Councilman Williams, and so we need to vote on this.

And the motion passes none to zero.

Um so if you could meet us up front for a celebratory picture, we have to get the okay, moving on to item 5B.

Will the clerk please please read item 5B into the record?

A resolution honoring the U.S.

Senate's designation of October 14, 2025 as National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk, recognizing the importance of protecting free speech, encouraging open dialogue, and condemning political violence.

Councilman Williams.

Good morning.

Thank you, President Crow Iverson.

For those of you who may not know, Charlie Kirk was a member of the United States Air Force Academy Board of Visitors.

So he was relatively close to home for at least a sector of our community.

And they released a statement saying, we are shocked and deeply saddened by the murder of Charlie Kirk, a member of the U.S.

Air Force Academy Board of Visitors, the Board of Visitors Chairman, Congressman August Pfluger shared the following about Mr.

Kirk.

I had the privilege of serving alongside him on the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors this year, inspiring the next generation of service members together.

My heart aches for the Kirk family as they navigate this unimaginable loss.

Please join me in lifting his family and our entire nation up in prayer.

Mr.

Kirk was a passionate champion for our academy.

It's timeless mission and the extraordinary cadets who have dedicated their lives to service before self.

Our prayers and condolences are with Mr.

Kirk's family and loved ones as they mourn his loss.

And from my perspective, um, I never thought something like this would happen in my lifetime.

You get to, at my age, you get to hear about JFK, you get to hear about Martin Luther King, but to have it happen and happen in America is um, I think, at least for me, it was something I never expected.

But at least what I've gleaned from the experience is we all need to continue to bring love and grace to all of our interactions.

Um we're going to be talking about later today.

Lots of love, lots of grace, lots of understanding.

And again, I most of you were here to talk about net meeting, which I'm also excited to talk about.

But again, love and grace as we interact with each other on a daily basis.

A resolution honoring the U.S.

Senate's designation of October October 14th, 2025, as National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk, recognizing the importance of protecting free speech, encouraging open dialogue, and condemning political violence.

Whereas Charlie Kirk was fatally shot on September 10th, 2025 in a targeted act of political violence while speaking at a public event in Orem, Utah.

And whereas, on September 18th, 2025, the United States Senate unanimous unanimously adopted Senate Resolution 403, a resolution expressing support for the designation of October 14th, 2025 as the National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk, in recognition of his contributions to civic education and public discourse.

And whereas, in passing the Senate resolution, lawmakers from across party lines affirmed that the principles of open debate and the peaceful exchange of ideas are fundamental to America's constitutional republic.

And whereas the resolution encourages educational institutions, civic organizations, and citizens across the United States to observe that day in remembrance and reflection.

And whereas the City Council of Colorado Springs recognizes that no individual should be threatened, harmed, or assassinated because of their expressed beliefs, that freedom of speech must be vigorously protected, and that respectful civil discourse is essential to the life of a free society.

Whereas the city encourages public institutions, schools, universities, civic groups, media, and individuals within the Colorado Springs within Colorado Springs to observe October 14th as a day to reflect on the values of civility, respectful disagreement, and the importance of protecting discourse from violence or suppression.

And whereas the memory of citizens who participated in public life, even when their views were controversial or strongly debated, serves as a reminder of our shared responsibility to preserve open dialogue, protect dissent, and condemn any violence intended to silence speech.

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the City Council of the City of Colorado Springs that the City Council hereby honors the U.S.

Senate's designation of October 14th, 2025 as the National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk, and affirms its support for the principles behind that resolution.

The City Council condemns all acts of political violence, intimidation, or assassination carried out in attempt to silence speech or beliefs.

The City Council reaffirms that freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the open exchange of ideas are core to constitutional republic governance, and that no person should be harmed, threatened, or silenced for expressing their convictions.

Dated at Colorado Springs, Colorado, this 14th day of October 2025, Lynette Crow Iverson, Council President, to give them the power and the confidence to stand up and let their voice be heard.

I started this organization when I was 18 years old.

I decided uh not to go to college.

I didn't get in my dream school, which was the United States Military Academy at West Point.

I have this idea to galvanize and motivate the future youth of this country around a core set of ideas, not just political parties or politicians, and the ideas are really America's the greatest country in the history of the world, Constitution is the greatest political document ever written, and free enterprise the most assured way to lift people out of poverty and create prosperity for all.

Those are the three big ideas.

Um, and I think that's something that can win.

We as Christians are called to go into the public arena to correct error with truth.

So I go to college campuses, and there's a lot of error.

We're all sinners.

We are all live in error.

I'm far more interested in what God wants of me than what I want of from God.

I have to say this without getting emotional, but I'm very proud of my husband, and I know many of you are too.

You have worked so hard, and I know a lot of you have seen obviously his videos on TikTok and all the stuff he does on campus, but no one gets to see him from my angle except for myself and our children.

And the sacrifices that he made this year, he's amazing.

I'm very blind.

And I I would not have been able to do any of it without Erica.

And that's the real truth.

I'll tell you what.

You are here as a grassroots response to the top-down revolution happening in this country.

I want our turning point USA students to receive a round of applause.

These are the freedom fighters of America.

And the media said the turning point could never run a ground game.

They weren't experienced.

They didn't know Charlie, right?

This is the greatest generational realignment since Woodstock.

This generation is the most conservative generation that we have seen in well over 50 years, and the numbers show it.

What young people especially are screaming at is they say, give me a structure that I can live my life by.

And especially with young men, more challenging of them.

More saying, you know what?

Honestly, I'm not gonna talk down to you.

Stop being a boy and become a man.

You want to learn what that means?

Come to church and I'll tell you what it means to become a man.

Because we have the greatest story ever told.

What can I do to save the country?

You answer that question every single day because you are doing the work to save this beautiful republic.

You are doing something that is bigger than you.

If everything completely goes away, how do you want to be remembered?

I want to be I want to be remembered for for courage for my faith.

That that would be the most important thing.

Most important thing is my faith in my life.

I'll bring it back up to the dice for any comments.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

First, I want to say that uh Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood, and I support the strongest penalty for his murder, which in the state of Utah's death.

Um but beyond that.

What I worry about here uh at City Council in Colorado Springs is that we in doing things like this aren't seen as uh uh uh an apolitical body.

We're not elected as Republicans, we're not elected as Democrats, we're just elected to do certain things for for the citizens of Colorado Springs, and essentially is those things are provide public safety, take care of our roads, take care of our parts, things like that.

It may not be glamorous, it's not national news, but it's what we're elected to do.

And my what worries me is that we alienate, and we've seen that with the emails we've received.

We've received probably almost 200 emails now, and I've seen three that were in support of this, and all the others were against it.

Um alienating citizens who we need to maintain their belief in us as fair and apolitical.

So, regardless of my personal feelings about Charlie Kirk or or you know what he uh uh spoke about, I think this is a mistake.

Also, there were four of us who never even saw this resolution until we started receiving emails uh that were upset about it.

Also, we're not going to allow public comment today on this resolution, either here at this moment or at the end of the day when we allow public comment really for anything not on the agenda.

That's extremely unusual.

In fact, I don't know if we've ever done that for a resolution.

That's not true.

The end of public comment is open to any public comment.

Okay, well, I think that's different than what was explained yesterday.

So is my are we are citizens to understand they can comment on this uh at public comment today at the end of the day?

Yes.

Okay.

I guess the caveat there is that it's I think it's full.

I I think uh public comment is filled with with other items.

I don't want to mislead lead people where they come thinking they're gonna get to speak and then they don't.

Is that correct, madam president?

The public comment was only on the resolution because we don't ever take public comment on resolutions.

That public comment at the end of the meeting is always open to public comment of any public comment.

Then I'll I'll take it that that means there's there's gonna be time for uh citizens to speak.

Um citizens have asked, you know, why why does this get special attention, for example, not the legislators who were killed in Minnesota?

Uh and I think that that's a fair question.

So again, I don't think this is uh gonna have its intended consequence if the concept if intended consequence if that was to bring people together.

I think it's actually uh causing concern among citizens that the the uh city council body is becoming more political and bringing national um partisan issues into into what we deal with here when we have plenty of other issues uh local to deal with.

And and because of that, and because of the uh fact that we're not going to allow uh citizens to comment on this today, and I would say that is unusual.

Usually we say, hey, is there anyone that wants to comment on this?

And then people come up and say things about the resolution.

Um for those reasons, I would ask that we table this, and I make a motion that we table it.

Councilman Rainey.

Well, I think we need to see if there's a second uh on on the motion.

Sarah I'll second the motion.

Okay, there's a motion on the floor.

Let me record that first, then I can put your motion in.

So the motion is to table the resolution.

Um we have a motion from Councilman Donaldson and a second from Councilman Hincham.

Right, right.

So we'll vote.

Amen.

Are you pulling there?

You go.

Madam President, I I would ask that we allow uh any comment on that motion before we vote on it.

We've already voted.

Nancy.

And the motion fails on a four-to-five vote.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um I will say that uh I had a speech prepared, and on my drive in, I actually uh I bowled it up.

I decided to not give some really structured speech, and just kind of to speak directly from the heart.

Um and there's gonna be a little bit of duality in what I say.

So hopefully you you clearly understand the words uh that I'm trying to convey.

Uh as my uh colleague uh councilman Donaldson stated, uh the murder uh of Charlie Kirk uh is horrendous.

Uh I think everyone will agree that the um prayers and thoughts um for his wife and kids and family and friends continue uh to echo across this country.

Um one of the things that I think we can all agree on is that there is no room in our society for political violence.

I think we all can agree on that.

Um no one should lose their life for speaking out.

Matter of fact, that's why all of you are sitting here because of freedom of speech.

If that was not the case, you would not be sitting here today.

And those that are in the hallway and those that are downstairs and out on the sidewalks.

Um I will tell you, uh a lot of you may or may not know this, but Charlie Kirk was scheduled to be in Colorado the day after Utah.

He was scheduled to be in two different locations.

Uh, and one of those locations, uh, I was actually scheduled to be there.

And uh through a local radio station um and some other folks, uh, there is a uh an agreement to introduce me to him uh in order to invite him to an event, nothing dealing with city council, but something outside the scope of uh regular uh political activity for him just to speak to people.

Um there are a lot of things about Charlie Kirk uh that I think we can all agree, whether you opposed him or whether you were for what he stated, the one thing that he did is he galvanized a very unique movement of civil discourse.

And I think that is something that we have to get back to as a nation.

We have to forget about just Colorado Springs.

But as a nation, we have to get back to civil discourse.

So I want to take the time to quickly just read this one little uh statement.

Frederick Douglass, uh, who definitely was one of the great Americans who uh was uh very adamant about free speech, and he wrote one of the finest speeches of free speech that you would ever want to hear, and I I highly recommend if you have time, Google it and go out and take a look at it.

It's called A Plea for Free Speech in Boston.

And one of the statements he stated is in it, he declared that liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.

And that's where we're starting to get to as a society is that because I may disagree with you for whatever reason you your words don't count anymore, or my words don't count anymore, and that's not who we are as Americans.

It's not.

Um whether it's Frederick Douglass or Lenny Bruce or JFK or Ida Wells, Ronald Reagan, whether it's President Trump and now Charlie Kirk.

We are at this weird crossroads as a nation.

And I do hope uh that today helps everyone reflect that is just a society that we really want to be.

Even today, there's a lot of anks and there's a lot of anger on a lot of topics that are on the agenda.

But I would hope that respect and dignity is at the forefront of that civil discourse.

We can have different ideologies, but if silk if respecting dignity is not what we are starting with, then we've already failed.

Now, I will be very blunt.

This is the second part of what I was saying.

I I will not be voting for this resolution.

I will not.

But hopefully, what you caught from my words is that I do believe in what Charlie Kirk was trying to accomplish.

Because whether he was galvanizing a young GOP base, or whether the folks that opposed him, they started to come out, especially young people, and started to articulate themselves.

People in college campuses across this great nation started to articulate in places that they would never speak out publicly on.

And that's our next generation.

I look at the faces in this audience.

I mean, you know, we're getting older.

I'm getting ready to turn 50 next month.

We're getting older.

So we gotta prepare the generation behind us to do it the right way.

So I will leave you all with those words uh that hopefully we reflect on respecting each other and and having some dignity.

Thank you, Madam President.

Councilman Lane member.

I wasn't really gonna say anything today because there's so much stuff going on, but I I really appreciate what Roland um uh brought up, but I don't think um the audience understands or the people watching really understand.

The emails that we got were despicable.

We several emails said I wish I pulled the trigger.

Several emails were full of raging hate.

We as a country have to pull back and understand that we that's not how that's not who we are.

We can't let that define us.

We have to find a place of discourse.

And for those reasons, I actually will be voting today for it because I want to elevate what Charlie Kirk actually represented.

He represented a civil discourse.

He represents, let's have a conversation.

Let's discuss how we can find common ground.

Because what we end up doing is we end up finding this place that heck, 60, 70, 80 percent of what we believe is is the same.

We all value very similar stuff.

And and there's some fringe things that we may never agree on.

But the I have never today for the first time I thought about what's my exit strategy if a gun showed up today.

I have never felt that ever.

I'm really glad that this dais is bulletproof.

Because I for the first time we have extra security today.

It's just not okay.

That's just not okay.

I shouldn't have fear.

And fortunately, I have a deep faith in Christ.

And if he takes me, he takes me.

But I think that's what Charlie Kirk kind of represented is um I was really moved by that video that we watched.

And um and I hope that's um, I hope that's a way we all reflect is that we live the best life we can.

And we honor everyone, even if they don't have the same beliefs as us.

Everyone has value.

And so I will be voting today because I feel Charlie Kirk had value.

And he had potential.

And we didn't get a chance to experience everything that he was going to be able to contribute, which is highly disappointing.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

I I just want to point out that uh of the 165 emails that we had received before uh earlier this morning, we've received more, so it's probably close to 200 now.

There were several which were disturbing, a few that were one was sick, but and there were a few who said some I don't remember any that said I wish I had pulled the trigger, but some said he got what he deserved.

A few.

But more than 90 percent were rational letters from citizens who just disagree with Charlie Kirk's his views on on different issues and his way of of uh interacting with students.

And they they simply said uh, would you please keep city council apolitical?

Will you please stay out of national stuff?

Why didn't you do this for the uh legislators in Minnesota who were shot?

Don't start down this path because how are you gonna not do this for the next person on the other side and this side, and you're just going down a bad path.

And so I think that's those are very reasonable emails, and uh there were a couple uh similar to what what my colleague has pointed out, but I don't want to leave the impression that the majority uh were like that or even a significant minority.

It was a few.

Councilman Hinchem.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um I I actually wish we were not um dealing with this resolution today because we have some very important business related to utilities that we need to be voting on.

Um but but here we are, and uh uh you've you've heard a number of comments.

Um I I agree with councilmember everything that councilmember Donaldson said, and I want to add that I am actually deeply concerned about the First Amendment in the United States.

And it was horrendous what happened to Charlie Kirk.

It is horrendous when violence happens because someone is expressing their viewpoint, be it on the right, be it on the left, be it whatever it is, that is one of it's the first amendment of our constitution.

And so I'm very, very concerned.

And so here we are, we are talking about it.

Um I was Sunday at my church, um, the editor in chief of the Boston Globe, Robbie Robinson, who uh, if any of you saw the movie Spotlight about the um scandal in the Catholic Church and the abuse of uh of children, sexual abuse of children.

Um he was the investigative reporter in that situation, and he came to speak to our church about the First Amendment and about freedom of speech.

And I stood up and I asked him a question about this resolution today.

I said, I'm I'm struggling because I certainly support free speech and First Amendment, and much of what is written in that resolution.

Um I fully support.

What I'm struggling with is the naming of one person who's very polarizing.

And you've heard about how many people have written, and and so many people are are very upset by singling out this one person.

And people were suggesting, well, can you can you add other names?

Can you have people on the left and the right?

Can you just take his name out and have it be just about free speech?

Um, Mr.

Robinson said to me, you know, you're in a no-win situation, you know, you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.

So it's an opportunity for education.

Um so the thing that I would like to highlight, and I I find this just profoundly disturbing and confusing because Charlie Kirk and President Trump were clearly very connected.

And um yet our president publicly asserted that TV networks that are overly critical of him should be shut down.

And and so it's confusing to me when a talk show host makes comments that are critical of a president and his offended and and wants them to shut down.

Or that our president has publicly accused the problem of political violence as being driven by radical left-wing lunatics.

Were it a rat radical left-wing person who had been killed and promoting this?

Would this council be voting on this?

I'm not sure.

Um then you have uh a professor at the University of South Dakota who's been suspended and is facing termination because of a post on his personal Facebook post sharing his concerns about the statements of Charlie Kirk, the hateful statements of Charlie Kirk.

That professor has as much right to make those statements as Charlie Kirk does to make his statements.

We all have those rights.

And I suppose we'll see in in a vote uh a very interesting mix of opinions about this particular resolution.

Um it is ironic that we are not taking public comment, and I I do disagree with our president that we have allowed people to comment on resolutions before since I've been on council many, many times.

Um we just did on the public arts.

We had someone from the public speaking on that resolution.

So we do have very important business to get to, and I think the vast majority of you are here and ready to make your comments to us about solar, so I will stop my comments.

But um I I felt it was important to uh to offer a different perspective.

Thank you.

Councilman Gold.

Thank you, Madam President.

Today feels heavy, doesn't it?

Feels very heavy.

You know, I moved to Colorado Springs four years ago after living abroad for most most of my adult life.

Had come back from a deployment to Kuwait in 2020 that was supposed to be a few months that lasted almost a year.

So when I came here in 2021, um I felt heavy.

But Colorado Springs felt light, I felt positive, I felt hopeful, and I fell in love with the city, and I fell in love with the city because of the people of Colorado Springs.

It was a city that just radiated light, like literal 300 days of sunshine that radiated joy, and I received so much healing through the people of Colorado Springs.

And I received so much healing through the people of Colorado Springs.

Today doesn't feel like that.

And it that saddens me.

It disheartens me because I believe here at City Council, we have a job to be that light of Colorado Springs.

We have that job to be the hope of Colorado Springs.

We had the job to instill positivity into our future of Colorado Springs.

And what our body is doing and has been doing is failing you.

And let me show you some examples.

We have failed you with focusing on our city with our Carmen Line annexation that you, the people, overruled.

We have failed you with the closure of Meadows Park.

We have failed you by wasting your time with not one but three non-sanctuary city resolutions that don't mean anything.

We have failed the one percent of our staff of the city of Colorado Springs who we have had to lay off.

Those are people who are entering in the fourth quarter of this year with no job.

That is failure.

We have failed you when we go into 2026 with no fire academy.

So I'm asking you, the people, to look at each and every one of us up here.

Look at our election timelines, and make sure you vote for people who focus on our city and not political performance.

Thank you.

Let's vote.

And then motion passes on a five to four vote.

Moving on to item 5C, will the clerk please read item 5C into the record?

City Council appointments to boards, commissions, and committees.

City County Board Drainage.

We will start with a vacancy occurred on City County Board Drainage due to a resignation on September 29th, Council liaisons Tom Bailey and Commissioner Bill Wysong, along with representatives from Public Works and El Paso County Engineering conducted interviews.

Resty Smith is recommended for appointment as a voting member to fill the citizen at large position, and Mark Sherwood is recognized for reappointment to a new term.

Councilman Bailey, do you have any comments?

No, I don't, Madam President, other than uh to thank the people that applied and the uh uh applicants who were selected for these important positions.

This is the work of the city and the county, and I don't believe that either of those are here.

No.

But uh thank you.

But uh and and thanks to all of those who do apply to do the work of the city.

I appreciate it.

Moving on to Fire Board of Appeal, vacancy occurred on the fire board of appeals due to a member's relocation on October 2nd.

Councilman Liv Council liaison Brian Risley and Fire Marshal Chris Cooper and board chair Mike Riggs interviewed applicants.

Thomas Brasswell was recommended to the be elevated from alternate to voting member, and Joseph Baraziza is recommended for appointment as an alternate member.

Councilman Risley, do you have any comments?

Thank you, Madam President.

I don't know if either of the gentlemen are here today, but I just want to extend my gratitude to them and all the other volunteers who uh serve our our city.

Oh, and I do see you, Mr.

Braswell in the back.

Yeah, thank you for being here, sir.

Planning commission.

A vacancy occurred on the planning commission due to non-renewal of a term on September 19th and 24th.

Council liaison, Steve Donaldson and Tom Bailey, along with Kevin Walker, planning director, and Ken Casey, Commissioner Chair conducted interviews.

Shiva Willoughby is recommended for appointment as a voting member, and Richard Ingle is recommended for appointment as an alternate member.

Council members, um Donaldson or Bailey, do you have any comments?

Um I just want to thank those two citizens for the willingness to uh serve all of us on the on the planning commission.

Stormwater advisory committee, two vacancies occurred at the stormwater advisory committee due to member relocations on September 29th, Council liaison's David Leinweber and Nancy Hingem, together with public works staff and committee chair conducted interviews.

Alexander Keel is recommended for appointment to the resident position, and Kayleigh Bull is recommended for appointment to the nonprofit position.

Council members line member Hingem, do you have any comments?

Um I just want to thank all the people that did apply.

Um we did have um we only had one person apply from the nonprofit chair, so that was kind of an easy vote.

Um, and the other one we had several, but um that's how that kind of came down.

It would have been nice to have more people from the nonprofit world kind of consider being a part of that group.

But anyway, that's all I say.

Uh and I would just add an appreciation as you've heard for all of our boards and commissions and stormwater in particular.

Um, you know, you all probably have your own experience of stormwater where you live.

And uh, we do a much much better job of stormwater management in Colorado Springs under our stormwater enterprise, and very grateful to Alex and to um Kelly, uh, who will be serving on the stormwater advisory committee?

Thank you.

So, no further comments.

I have a motion from Councilman Risley and a second from Councilman Williams.

Let's vote on the slate.

And the motion passes nine to zero.

Moving on to item sixa.

Um the clerk please read item six A into oh, it's mayor's business.

Does the mayor have any business this morning?

No, ma'am.

Okay.

We'll just move on.

Two nine A.

Will the clerk please read item nine A into the record?

Public hearing for the consideration of the Colorado Swings Utilities 2026 rate case consisting of resolutions setting certain elector rates within the service series of color's utilities, certain changes to electoral grade schedules, accepting conclusions and recommendations concerning the public utilities, regulatory policy, act standards, certain changes to utilities, rules, and regulations and the open access transmission tariff, and adopting the transmission formula rate, initial rate, and implementation protocols for Colorado Springs Utilities Transmissions Owner Filing.

So today's hearing will proceed as the following the city attorney's introductory briefing, then we'll move on to city attorney's poll of regarding ex parte material, the rate case presentation, public comments, citizen council, city council comments for utilities to address.

We may take a break in there if we need to, depending on how long we go.

Utilities response to public and city questions, city council deliberation and discussion of any amendment to the proposal or tariffs, exec exit executive session for legal counsel if needed.

We we may reserve the right for that this morning.

An identification of issue by city attorney's office and council direction regarding each proposed tariff.

And so we're going to start with the city attorney's office introjectory briefing.

Good morning, Chris.

Thank you very much.

Good morning.

I'm Chris Bidlack, Senior Attorney with the City Attorney's Office Utilities Division.

And as President Cryverson said, I will commence the hearing, provide the instructions to council on the function of the hearing before handing it over to utilities for their presentation.

The City Council's authority to establish rates, charges, and regulations for utility services, is contained within the Colorado Constitution, Carl statutes, the Carl Springs City Charter, the City Code and City Council's rules and procedures.

Article 20 of the Colorado Constitution provides City Council with the authority to establish electric, natural gas, water and wastewater charges and regulations.

Article 6 of the City Charter provides the authority to operate electric natural gas, water, and wastewater systems.

The power to establish tariffs for electric and natural gas service is provided provided inside municipal limits, lies exclusively with city council.

City Code, Section 1, or excuse me, 12118E direct City Council to establish rates for electric and natural gas service that are just reasonable, sufficient, and not unduly discriminatory.

Under Colorado Revised Statutes 40-3.5-102, the city council's rate setting decisions for electric and natural gas customers outside of municipal limits are not subject to prior review by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission if the rates and charges are identical to those imposed inside municipal city limits.

Under Colorado Revised Statute 3135402, the rate setting decisions of city council and water and wastewater magics are not matters are not subject to outside regulatory review.

City Code Section 121108F provides that water and wastewater rates for customers inside and outside of municipal limits must be in such amounts as the city council in its discretion determines to be reasonable and appropriate.

Typically, rates are considered just and reasonable if the rates balance one, the utility's interest and recovery of legitimately incurred cost and reasonable return on its investment, and two, the customers' interest in being assessed charges that approximate the cost associated with provision of that utility service.

City Council's role today.

Part four of the rules and procedures of City Council, together with section 12108 of the city code, set forth the process that governs the city council's hearing today.

In setting rates, charges, and regulations for electric, natural gas, water and wastewater services, the open access transmission tariff, and utilities rules and regulations.

City Council is acting in a manner analogous to a quasi-judicial role.

Unlike actions taken in your typical legislative role, such as adoption of an ordinance, your decision to establish rates must be based on the record before you.

Yes, despite what I said when we set the hearing, I will be fair and impartial and will make my decision based on the information presented today as part of this hearing.

Councilman Hindum.

Thank you.

Yes, I'd like to uh have for the record that on Friday of last week I attended a meeting uh hosted actually symposium by COSA, the Colorado Solar Storage Association symposium that was held at the Chamber of Commerce.

I reached out to uh Mr.

Bidlack, our attorney, to ensure that I was it was acceptable for me to attend that.

Um, and I received the instruction that I could as long as I did not discuss the rate case.

Um, and uh the focus of that symposium, by the way, was balancing local and state priorities for renewable energy, uh, data centers, large load loads, and battery systems.

Um, I also uh reached out to Mr.

Bidlack to ask if I could watch a recording of the CSU uh community town hall that was held a week ago tonight, I think it was.

Um, we were instructed and encouraged not to attend as council members, and I did not attend.

Um, but uh uh recording was uh put out by the Springs taxpayers, and before watching that, again, I uh I asked Mr.

Bidlack if I could watch that recording.

He said you certainly may, as long as you uh make sure it's known in this portion of the hearing and also can remain partial and imbalanced in my decision, which I believe I can.

Those are my ex parte for the record.

Thank you.

Councilman Williams.

I attended the meeting last Tuesday, but didn't talk to anybody except for Tristan and I had a debrief, but that was about it.

So I haven't talked to anybody else.

Thank you.

Councilman Bailey.

Not sure it's necessary, but I think the uh uh we've kept a record of all the emails that we've all received.

I did read all those things and uh um considered that.

Also had a conversation with a neighbor just as I was doing my uh occasional, less occasional or less frequent than I'd like, walk through the neighborhood, but uh talked about his experience as a solder customer, but I didn't offer any opinions or anything on either side.

I am certainly content after reading through the uh reading through the rate case and spending some time with it that uh I can be impartial in considering uh the proposals.

Thank you.

That's all.

All right.

Thank you very much.

With that, I will turn it over to Mr.

Shirola for utilities presentation.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, Council President Crow Iverson, President Pro Tim Risley.

My name is Scott Shirola, the manager of pricing and rates for Color Springs Utilities.

I'm I'm sorry to interrupt.

I do have a quick procedural question.

I only read the hearing piece into the record.

Do I need to read 9B and C into the record?

They're at the end of this.

Correct.

Those are separate agenda items.

So I just want to clarify because I'm going to make sure we do this.

They are separate and they are listed on here for you to read.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Before I get into the really the meat of the proposal, I want to highlight that Clark Springs Utilities has complied with all the procedural pieces of the rate filing as spelled out in city code and in council rules and procedures.

That included providing a copy of the draft proposal to the city auditor's office on August 8th.

We brought a resolution to city council on September 9th and distributed that through the hard copy binders provided as well as through the email of the rate filing to city council members on September 9th.

Copies were also provided to the city clerk's office at that time.

On September 11th, notice of the proposed changes were published in the Gazette.

On October 1st, as we'll provide more detail, utilities modified its proposal and published provided that material to city council on October 1st as well as the city clerk, and then published notice to customers again on October 3rd related to those changes.

Additional supplemental supplemental information was provided on October 9th, and now we're here at the rate hearing to hear utilities proposal and from customer comments.

As Mr.

Bidlack mentioned, you will review the draft decision and orders on October 27th at the work session with a vote on the decision and order and draft resolutions on October 28th.

Have a other material that'll be presenting on briefly that's in the rate filing before you that's not related to net metering.

I've structured the presentation to cover that material first so that the net metering information will be covered toward the end of the presentation and can be grouped together with the citizen discussion after utilities presentation.

But as Mr.

Bidlack mentioned, our rate proposal does include changes to electric rate schedules, utilities rules and regulations, utilities open access transmission tariff, and does propose the transmission owner filing to the Southwest Power Pool as part of their filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

In terms of draft changes to utilities tariffs, uh first I'll cover the changes to our electric tariffs.

Uh and then as I mentioned, I'll save the net metering changes until later in the presentation.

So I'll cover some information related to our proposed addition of a large load rate schedule, our changes to rules and regulations as in addition to some clerical administrative changes.

One of the hottest issues in the electric utility industry is the challenge of meeting the needs of serving large industrial loads.

Commonly these loads are associated with data centers, specifically data centers uh focusing on AI needs, but they can also be related to uh manufacturing and other types of industrial loads.

And these loads come with the unique challenges for utilities in terms of not only the infrastructure to be able to serve these large loads, but also the resources, the actual electricity to be able to provide service.

The good news is for Color Springs utilities is we're not the first uh in the landscape to be able to be able to propose a large load rate schedule.

Uh as you can see on the slide here, many other utilities across the country have proposed large load rate schedules to really address the unique cost of providing service to these types of industrial customers.

And doing a survey of many of these large load tariffs, utilities uh has worked with the consultant to find really key themes and tariff principles to build into the proposal that that we're bringing to you today.

The first is helping our community sustain its economic development.

So providing an opportunity for economic development and state, but keeping all of our rates competitive by appropriately developing rates that are cost-based for new customers that may be large load customers, and not having a cross subsidy between existing customers and those new customers joining our service territory.

Then other industrial rate schedules to ensure that resources and infrastructure adequacy is achieved for the utilities as many of these examples of these large loads across the country can be numerous hundred megawatt type customers, so very large loads.

And with that comes unique challenges.

So part of our proposal really is to minimize the cost shift between our existing customers and any new large load customers that may join our service territory.

One other consideration consideration is with utilities proposal to enter the Southwest Power Pool Regional Transmission Organization.

So getting into what this new large load rate schedule really includes.

It is applicable to industrial customers with a load greater than 10 megawatts.

In addition to that, the service condition conditions include service through an initial 10-year contract.

So if a new prospective customer comes, they're served under an initial 10-year contract, which they'll be responsible for obligations that arise out of their uh providing them service.

As I mentioned, the rate schedule has the inclusion of aspects that require the customer to fund infrastructure upgrades to not only the distribution system but also the transmission and potentially substation systems to provide service specifically to those types of customers.

The service is contingent upon utilities completing studies, uh, both utilities as well as any studies that the regional transmission organization may need to complete in order to service to begin to the customer.

Utilities recognizes that some of these loads may be very large and utilities may not have adequate resources to serve the customer initially.

And so within the schedule, we provide an opportunity where we can enter into market purchase power agreements and pass those costs on to the customer to be able to provide a resource to actually serve their energy needs until utilities can build the infrastructure and the generation resources to serve those long-term.

In addition to collateral requirements that the customer would be responsible for 36 months of collateral to again safeguard early exit out of our service territory and leaving existing customers with uh cost of uh the infrastructure and resources to serve those customers.

And the last thing I'll mention there is this service uh does add a late fee because the minimum bills required to serve these types of customers can be quite large.

We thought it was appropriate to include a late payment fee for these types of customers to keep payment timely.

With that, I'll move to the other change in our electric rate schedules.

Can I have a question from councilman line member?

Yes.

Yeah, I just have one question.

What what is binding in that 10-year contract?

I mean, um obviously we we probably want to do some kind of investigation with the company that we enter into a company uh contract with.

But you know, they could just leave.

So what what prevents them from leaving in five years?

So, pretty much however we do with everything with infrastructure, we do require them to pay as they go up front.

So there's no clawback really with our programs, you know, with this investment infrastructure.

So it sort of protects us if they up and leave.

Then we're looking really at 10 years where they're sort of paying into reserves, so as we build new infrastructure, they're paying as they go as well.

So we feel this is the best way to isolate our current ratepayers from it.

So is there an inherent risk, you know, at some point inherent risk kind of breaks down, like after three, four or five years or something like that, we have less risk.

Is there some kind of like measurement that way that you guys have calculated or looked at?

There is.

So during the initial 10-year contract period, the customers are responsible for the minimum bills uh throughout that 10-year period.

So they're really when they're signing that initial contact, that initial tenure contract, they're agreeing to pay their monthly charges for that 10-year period.

We do collect three 36 months of collateral upfront, either cash or letter of credit uh to secure 36 months of that 10-year period, but the customer is responsible for all 10 years.

Also during that 10-year period, there's some additional charges listed on the slide there, the resource adequacy charge and the system support charge.

Those are marginal cost intended to uh help utilities fund uh future resources to serve the customers long term.

After the 10-year initial period, those additional charges are removed and aren't are not applicable to the customer anymore, and they are charged as every other existing industrial customer.

So we're really viewing it as that 10-year period represents that period of additional risk.

And after that, uh they are served just like every other customer.

My last question is um it is a little bit unrelated, but we need to touch on it just because for some of these customers, water becomes a big issue.

And um, although today we're just talking about electric, we will have consideration of water use, correct?

Absolutely.

And uh in a few slides, I'll actually speak to some changes to utilities rules and regulations where we have some large load study fees that are applicable across the four services.

One of those, one of those is related to water.

Uh but then uh we also uh can look at additional provisions in addition to that of how to serve uh customers with really large water demands.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh moving on to the other change in electric rate schedules, and it's related to our contract service military wheeling.

What that service really is is the military uh as a federal entity has a allocation of hydropower from another federal agency that uh they are the owners of the case.

I have another question from Councilman Hinchum.

I'm sorry, uh actually going back, Scott, I apologize.

I was kind of I'm I'm looking at the issues for decision that we all have.

Um was a part of our package, and there are a number of questions under the electric service and related to um industrial, um, and I don't know if it's gonna be addressed separately or if it was with large load, but the first question was should utilities freeze participation in the industrial service time of day voltage.

Will you be addressing that in your slides?

I was not going to address that.

So there uh, but that's a great question.

There is a an existing large load rate schedule.

There's three existing there's the three existing industrial rate schedules that right now could have customers over 10 megawatts on them.

So they're uh one is a transmission level service.

That's the one referenced in the uh issues for decision.

I'll speak to that in a minute.

Another one is industrial service for customers over four megawatts, and uh another one is industrial customers over four megawatts that also have a 75% load factor.

So uh steady users across time periods, uh, but large customers.

With the addition of a new rate schedule for customers over 10 megawatts, we needed to redefine a couple of our other industrial schedules so that they are limited between four megawatts and 10 megawatts, so that anybody over 10 would move to the large load rate schedule.

The exception to that is the transmission voltage service uh that we are freezing participation on.

There's currently one customer on that, and it's a unique situation that includes other arrangements with other utilities.

And so it really doesn't fit uh with other participation, it's really unique to the specific customer.

It's really unique to the specific customer.

And so we're freezing participation on that until we figure out the most appropriate way to address that rate schedule in the future.

Okay, so just so I'm clear then as we get through this entire hearing and all the things.

That one that number one question is that there's a unique customer in which in this case we're choosing to freeze the decision on that customer until we have the opportunity to figure out what is the best way to address that customer.

Correct.

And for the record, that is an internal CSU account customer.

It's not a customer, it's a it's a water customer within CSU.

It's CSU as a water customer for the electric service.

Thank you.

Yep, Councilman Lineweber.

So she mentioned the time of day thing, and I did pick up on that.

Um we have a lot of customers in this room right now that would love to supply energy during the middle of the day.

And will we have a rate case that caters to a business that uses power during when the sun shines?

You know, just to get to the point.

Because obviously one of the one of the issues that we'll be presenting is is how much cheaper energy is at one o'clock.

And so it's like we want to we want customers at one o'clock, right?

So will there be an incentive for you know the business hours of day?

Thank you.

Thank you for that question.

And uh we actually have that as part of what city council approved last year with the energy-wise rates.

Uh, part of energy-wise rates for residential commercial and industrial customers was uh the standard energy-wise rate, which has the on and off peak periods with the on-peak period during the hours of 5 p.m.

to 9 p.m.

But in addition to that, there's the energy-wise plus option, which adds a off-peak saver period during the hours of 9 a.m.

to 1 p.m.

when the cost of energy is the lowest.

So that option, as you've stated, provides customers that can use more energy during the middle of the day.

That rate option allows them to do that and at lower cost.

Thank you.

I just wanted to highlight that feature because we but we're talking rate case, and that I think in terms of industrial, we want to encourage those type of businesses here.

Absolutely.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

I want to piggyback off of that question and then your comment.

And for clarity, being a part of the Southwest power pool.

Well, maybe I would have got an answer there.

Is there any potential restrictions that that power pool may have doing at 9 a.m.

and 1 p.m.

period that will have any effect on any rates?

Uh not for our base rates.

So the energy-wise and the energy-wise plus rates uh that I spoke to are really rates associated with the cost of our infrastructure and the cost of our electric system.

Entering the Southwest power pools, we'll speak to in a in a few minutes, is really associated with the purchase of energy and the cost that we recover through our electric cost adjustment.

It also has on and off peak uh pricing.

Uh so there is an opportunity by entering the Southwest Power Pool as that market can optimize generation resources across a broader pool.

We will benefit from lower cost broadly, but there's nothing inherent.

So we'll we'll benefit by lower cost energy, you know, over time through participation in that, but there's nothing with that participation that influences our base rates and actually participation in that we see there could be an opportunity to lower our ECA rate during the middle time of the day because we would expect market cost to be lower during the middle part of the day.

You know, looking at other renewable resources, part of that broader market and optimization across the you know, a broader footprint.

We should see uh lower cost, especially during the middle part of the day by participation in that.

But those would be reflected in our uh on peak, off-peak, and off-peak saver ECA rates.

Okay, thank you.

As I was mentioning, the the military as a federal agency has a portion of energy that they are owners of related to some federal power with the Western Area Power Authority or administration.

And you Scholar Springs utilities wheels that power through our distribution system and through our transmission system to provide that energy to the military installations.

Currently, our cost recovery for that wheeling service, the cost of bringing that energy through our transmission and distribution system is recovered through two different rate mechanisms.

This recovered from the transmission cost is recovered through the open access transmission charges, and the distribution cost is recovered through our electric rate schedules through our military wheeling rate.

With us entering the Southwest power pool, as we'll speak to here shortly, our open access transmission tariff will be rescinded if approved by city council.

And what we're proposing for the military is we essentially recover, we redo our cost of service for military service, and we combine the transmission and the distribution piece into one rate through our through our retail service and our electric rate schedules.

So there's really combining two rates into one.

The approximate charges are essentially the same for the military customers.

Councilman Hintam.

Scott, could you just give a little more as to the rationale for that recommendation that we include both transmission and distribution together at the same rate?

Yes, so it's really the the military has expressed that they do not want to be a transmission customer uh within the Southwest Power Pool.

Uh they don't want to participate in the market in that manner.

And as our retail customer uh, as we provide service to the majority of their needs through through our energy resources, uh, we wanted to be able to provide uh to meet that customer's need of not wanting to participate in the Southwest Power Pool by really just allocating them costs within our retail cost of service.

So uh adding that to the distribution cost and being able to provide that through one bundled rate versus charging them through two different mechanisms, uh, especially with the one mechanism for us going away to receive to be billed specifically for the transmission piece, they would have to be participants in the Southwest Power Pool.

So we're really treating them as a retail customer and serve them through our electric rate schedules.

And and do you know why they don't want to be a part of the Southwest PowerPool on a transmission?

I do not, but I think just broadly it comes with more complexity for a customer, and uh they trust college.

I don't want to speak on behalf of the military, but we have a great working relationship with our military installations, and so for convenience and meeting our customers' need, we thought this was the right proposal.

Thank you.

A few changes to our utilities rules and regulations.

Uh, the first one relating back to the large load rate schedule that we're proposing.

There's a few references in our URRs, our utilities rules and regulations that we've added to specifically identify requirements for these types of customers to fund substation and transmission cost specifically used to serve them.

Uh we've also uh proposed the addition of some of a provision for when utilities has proactively gone and built transmission to serve these types of customers that we can establish a recovery agreement to refund to collect that cost as these types of customers connect to that transmission system.

Uh as I mentioned earlier, another change to our URR is some revisions to our large load study fee.

Uh and the changes really are clarifying uh some of the language there, but then also lowering the load thresholds of when study studies have fees for customers.

Currently, uh that provision has fees.

Uh, there's a misprint on that slide.

The electric fees uh apply for studies for customers over 20 megawatts.

Uh for gas, it's 10 decatherms per hour, and for water and wastewater, it's uh one MGD or one million gallons per day.

Uh the recommendation from our uh planning team is to lower those thresholds so that study fees are applicable earlier, are at lower uh size thresholds, uh changing those to five megawatts, two and a half decatherms per hour, and a quarter uh million gallons per day.

Councilman Hintham.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Scott, sorry, I'm just really trying to follow this um this sheet that we have, and it looks like we've now moved on to URR, the utilities rules and regulations, and the first question there.

Did I miss it?

Um are you not addressing questions five and six on the issues for decision?

Should utilities make administrative changes, removing the fixed seasonal options as exceptions to availability under the community solar garden program and updating the reference lettering order to reflect those exception removals, and then the last one I guess is clearful clerical modifications, which I could understand why you might not be addressing.

Yes, I uh I have not addressed those yet.

I I addressed those on the next slide.

Um, but um feel free to ask that again because I don't call them out specifically by reference on the case again, just trying to follow the the sheet that you've given us.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Uh the last proposed change on this slide is the addition of a another hydraulic analysis report fee.

We currently have several uh fees applicable during the development uh process that are they they vary based on the complexity complexity of the study and the acreage of the land being developed.

We it was identified that there's some studies that require a lower level of analysis than the current lowest fee of sixteen hundred dollars is necessary for.

So really we're adding a lower cost fee of 200 per hour for studies that can be completed with a lower effort than the sixteen hundred dollar minimum fee as it's currently stated in the tariff.

Uh now I was going to address the cleric the clerical tariff corrections.

And uh I wasn't going to specifically mention all those referenced in the issues of decision from Mr.

Bidlack, but uh if I miss any, uh remind me what those are listed there.

But there are some on the community solar garden where utilities had a conflicting rate code reference between uh earlier provisions in the energy-wise transition terms in our general section of the tariff and the community solar garden.

We're eliminating that confusion.

Um the reference is that the residential and commercial options for the fixed seasonal rate is available for thank you, Chris, is available for solar garden customers.

The reference in the solar garden tariff implied that it was not available to solar garden customers.

So we're removing that reference from the community solar garden piece.

Um that's that one.

And then several other administrative clear um corrections are really just uh slight changes to how we're referencing things in the tariff, where we've said uh, for example, I believe uh our small commercial service was for customers not exceeding 10 um KW.

Uh just clarifying that that's any 10 KW in any of the previous 12 months and and things of that nature.

Great.

And I will just say for those in the audience that uh I I am quite certain that the reason we're not addressing number three in the electrode grade cases, that's what everybody's here to talk about, and that would be saving that for the end, I'm assuming.

That's correct.

Thank you.

The other item related to electric service that actually has its own resolution on the 27th and 28th, is related to the public utility regulatory policy act.

And in 2021, the investment in infrastructure and jobs act uh added two new standards to PERPA that utilities are required to uh evaluate for adoption.

Uh those two new standards relate to demand response and demand flexibility and support for electric vehicle charging.

With the approval of the five-year rate case and the energy-wise rates, utilities staff believes that we address both of those new standards with energy-wise rates.

Both in terms of demand response, the energy-wise plus option has critical peak period component to it, where customers are given a price signal 24 hours in advance that there's going to be a critical peak event the following day and provides them an opportunity to shift their usage the following day in response to that.

Also, energy-wise rates broadly provide customers an opportunity to shift usage off peak and reduce their bills.

So with that, really staff's recommendation to council is that our energy-wise and our existing tariffs and programs satisfy these two new standards, and so no additional action is needed to adopt them.

Moving on to changes to our I should have mentioned on the previous uh slide also we have an administrative change to our open access transmission tariff, just uh correcting a date uh stated in there.

And now as we move to our open access transmission tariff and our transmission owner filing, as I mentioned, utilities is anticipates joining the Southwest Power Pool Regional Transmission Organization, and the anticipated date for that is April 1st of 2026.

With that, utilities is proposing to rescind our entire open access transmission tariff because we would no longer uh maintain our own tariff as we would be uh a zone within the SPP tariff itself.

So we would no longer have our own tariff, we would be a transmission owner that would file uh our cost information with SPP, who then files it with FERC, and we essentially have a zone related to our transmission cost within the SPP tariff.

The documents that were filing with this rate case in support of that filing with SPP and subsequently FERC are a transmission uh formula template or a formula rate template.

Uh we've filed that both in blank form and populated with projected 2026 forecast data to establish our 2026 annual transmission revenue requirement within SPP.

We're also filing protocols which stipulate uh how Springs Utilities updates that ATRR, our annual transmission revenue requirement annually, and the process for interested parties to intervene in that process.

In addition, uh our filing consists of supporting materials as uh entities may be interested with the population of the formula template itself.

Any questions on the transmission owner fees?

Councilman Hinge?

Uh no, again, just going going to order of uh since that was number two under open access transmission tariff.

The first question was should the standard large generator interconnection procedures be revised to correct the allowable extension of a requested commercial operation date to December 31st, 2029.

If you could please explain that correct.

Within that section, uh, there was a date that was I believe dated 2027.

Uh it was corrected to 20.

This was the date you were referring to.

That's the date I got you.

I just directing that to 2027.

Okay, thanks.

And now the reason we're all here, we made it.

Over the last decade, Springs Utilities has been evaluating, discussing planning, and now implementing energy-wise rates in an effort to modernize our electric rates to better align with the dynamic cost of providing electric service.

Changes in refor resource portfolios bring changes in utility cost.

And the rates customers pay play an important cost in reflecting that cost of on utility system.

Or more accurately stated rates that align with utilities cost are important to provide customers a signal of the true cost of providing electricity as it changes throughout the day.

Energy wise rates provide customers an opportunity for bill savings when they can shift some of their usage out of the higher on peak period to the lower off peak time frame.

Doing that, of course, help has helps customers lower their bill, but it also helps utilities avoid paying for expensive purchase power during those on peaks times, and it also helps utilities to avoid or delay infrastructure investments that are needed to serve customers during that higher on peak demand period.

Net metering customers have an important role to play in this effort to shift usage out of that on peak period, but so far energy-wise rates have less have left them excluded.

This proposal establishes a rate structure that allows net metering customers to participate in shaving the peak based on the unique way that they interact with utility system.

Before we get into the details of the proposal, I'd like to spend a few minutes really just defining what net metering is.

Net metering is a unique program provided by utilities that enable customers to interconnect their own solar systems with utilities distribution system.

This interconnection allows customers to be both generators of electricity and consumers of electricity.

As noted in Mr.

Bidlack's instructions, municipal utilities benefit from local governance under state law.

Colorado revised statutes, as as noted on the slide, there 40.42104 gives credence to that local authority by establishing a separate subsection applicable to municipal utilities.

And this subsection is noticeably broader and less descriptive than subsections applicable to other types of utilities within Colorado.

Specifically, net metering is the offsetting of consumption with solar generation in real time.

So as solar customers are generating electricity, they're naturally consuming less energy from utilities grid.

So net metering recognizes as customers general generate electricity, they're reducing their consumption from the grid during those times.

Net metering also allows customers to be credited for excess generation during time frames and apply that or carry that those credits forward to future time frames.

So as we'll see in a few slides, most excess generation comes in the middle of the day when solar panels are producing most of their energy.

So it's resulting in excess generation credits that are then used either later that day, but they can also be used not just in later hours that day, but in following days, in following weeks, and in subsequent months.

Really, that one-to-one carry forward of energy credits uh through the calendar year.

There are provisions for cashing out excess generation credits through at the end of the calendar year.

Um many utilities allow an option for customers and as well as utilities, Springs Utilities does customers to elect to continually roll forward from year to year.

Uh statute uh applicable to municipal utilities states that rates should be non-discriminatory.

This language is noticeably broader than the language applicable to other utilities, which is more descriptive in stating that you know, really the rates can't be different from other rates charged to other customers.

But applicable to municipal utilities, it's intentionally broader.

And then the statute goes on to state some of the interconnection standards and size specifications for these types of systems.

I'd like to state a few things of what net metering is not.

Net metering is not the storage of excess generation during those times when more is being generated than being than is being consumed, unless a customer has their own battery.

But the grid utility system does not store electricity to provide customers that energy back at a future time.

Also, net metering is not selling excess generation to utilities on an hourly, weekly, or month to month basis.

Again, it is crediting back, exchanging kilowatt hours across time frames.

Turning a little closer to Colorado Springs, wanted to really highlight some of the interconnection process and really the tariff and line extension standard authority.

I'd like to start by stating that Color Springs Utilities does not and has never sold our installed solar panels for customers.

Nor has utilities provided advice on a customer of whether solar is right for them.

Utilities' role in this process is to provide information on the process on our rules and regulations and on the net metering agreement and on the our electric rate schedules as applicable at the time.

So really the process from the customer standpoint on the left side of this slide is to decide if solar is a viable option for them to choose a trusted installer and then working with their installer going through the application process for interconnecting with utility system, go through the permitting process with the regional building permit and so on, and then eventually a meter is installed and service can begin.

On Springs Utilities side, our engineering standards team really keeps control of our electric line and service standards that systems that interconnect with our system need to comply with.

Rates, rates, rate designs are not stated in the net metering agreement.

The net metering agreement just points to utilities tariff and clearly states that it is changed by time to time by city council.

Councilman Hincham, do you still have a question?

Actually, I'm gonna wait until he finishes this slide.

Car Springs Utilities started providing net metering service in 2005 with a program consistent with the state statutes that I just described as applied to municipal utilities.

The graph on the right highlights participation in net metering by year.

And we can see early on in the 2005-2006 range, a very small number of customers.

Utilities initial tariff actually limited participation to 50 customers, eventually increasing that and eventually eliminating that limitation.

Starting also in 2006, utilities started offering rebates associated with these systems.

The rebate in 2006 was $4 per watt.

In exchange for the rebate, Color Springs utilities received from the customer the renewable attributes associated with the solar generation.

So the Color Springs Utilities customers benefited by receiving those renewable energy credits that could be used to comply with state mandates for renewable energy.

Carl Springs continued to gradually reduce the rebate amount as the really the cost of solar panels declined through this time frame.

But again, we were receiving those renewable energy credits from customers participating in the rebate by them electing to transfer those attributes to us.

The rebate was reduced down to 10 cents per watt in 2022 and was ended at that time.

Starting in 2017, we start to see really exponential growth in the number of customers participating in net metering.

And in the last several years, we've seen more than a thousand new net metering customers per year joining that program.

When net metering was first established, in addition to the federal and state incentives that solar receives, it was well known that the energy rate in the net metering program, the energy rate that utilities charge most customers during those times as a kilowatt hour or energy rate is another form of financial incentive for the net metering program.

And that was an intentional part of net metering as it was being established in 2005.

As the solar industry, you know, was really in its infancy, uh, the solar technology was relatively new, that incentive was really established to through the net metering rates in order to help the industry and the technology mature.

We can see with the exponential growth as we've seen over the last several years that that is indeed what has happened.

The adoption has greatly increased, and the cost of solar panels have greatly decreased as well.

We have a question from Councilman Hingem now.

Thank you.

Um Scott, I'm really sorry, but I I my attention wandered momentarily when you started on the incentive portion of what you just said.

Could you just repeat the beginning of that statement?

Sure.

I was just stating that uh when net metering was established in Colorado and in other states in this time frame, it was it was known that the net metering policy and the simple rate design of a energy per kilowatt hour rate was another form of financial incentive for net metering and for the solar industry.

It allowed the industry an opportunity to get another form of incentive to help adoption of solar across in this case the state and the city, but also across the country.

Councilman Lineweber.

Scott, um, I don't know if you're going to get to this, and if you are later, it's just while I'll hold off.

But I this seemed like an appropriate time because you've brought it up a few times.

Um there's a state mandate that was kind of given for green energy, and we had to meet that mandate, and solar generation from homes helped us, but I've never really understood like how much did it help us.

My assumption is it helped us a little.

Have you ever looked at the percentage or what could you are you gonna get into that state regulatory mandate that we were under and how solar generation from residential helped, but and then what was the level of help?

Right.

We we can get into that a little bit later.

We have a slide to talk both about uh renewable energy from really customer solar and then from uh utility scale solar, um, but we can follow up with specific information too on the state mandates.

Of course, they uh that's been a moving target as you know.

But we can we can follow up with some additional information there.

Because some of it was that we incentivized, like you're talking about now, because we needed we needed help to achieve those mandates.

And I I've never quite understood how what to what degree did the residential solar help us achieve those mandates.

So yeah, we'll follow up.

Great, thank you.

Okay, as utilities was observing and and seeing this change locally, uh, but also I'd note that this exponential growth that we've seen here in Clareto Springs is also playing out you know across the state and across the country as well.

Uh utilities really started preparing and looking at our rate structures broadly, but including that rate structures for net metering customers.

As really is starting in 2018.

In 2018, there was actually a strategic initiative of the organization focused on rate structures and primarily electric rate structures.

Uh this slide really highlights the board engagement related to rate design and specifically to uh net metering presentations or portions of presentations designated by the the yellow stars on the particular on the particular boxes.

So going back all the way to 2018 in presentations to the board related to really the the energy vision was was being shaped, the 2020 IRP was process was playing out, the Drake power plant discussions were playing out, and utilities uh was speaking with the board about electric rate designs and included information on the unique load curves of uh net metering customers, uh customers with solar and the challenges associated, uh not with those uh not only with the loads, but with the uh the cost recovery associated with serving those types of loads under our existing rate structures.

Uh again, uh through the energy vision workshops additional, that same type of information was presented there in 2019.

Uh also in 2019, utilities provided a presentation to the finance committee uh specifically on net metering and the challenges of cost recovery and the cost shift that happens under our current rate design.

And and when I mentioned cost shift, it's cost shift uh to other customers within the classes uh that need to fund the overall revenue requirement.

Um I'll highlight one box that's not highlighted with a yellow star, and that is in 2020, the very top uh box there, a rate design workshop.

In 2020, uh we had an outside consultant lead a workshop with the board at that time to prioritize rate design objectives.

Uh the uh that was the successful workshop, and the board prioritized five objectives for us, which we'll cover later in this presentation.

But those objectives were specifically applied in putting this proposal together today.

Uh additional net metering changes were included in the 2021 rate case that uh increased the uh is actually part of the rate case presented to um both the finance committee, utilities board as well as city council.

They actually increased the allowable system size for residential systems from 10 KW to 15 KW.

Scott, we have a question from Councilman Henjam.

Uh Scott, go ahead and finish uh this slide, and when you're done, I'll ask my question.

Thank you.

Uh moving further to the right in the 2023 rate case, utilities made subsequent changes to the commercial size limitations for uh interconnected systems, raising that from 25 to 150 KW.

And then in that same rate case, uh city council approved the establishment of an interconnection application fee.

Scott, I have a count uh question from councilman Williams.

I was gonna wait till after Nancy.

So once I get through the slide, then I can speak after Nancy, but thank you.

In last year's presentation to Utilities Board on the 2025 rate case, which included the uh not only the five-year rate case, but also the energy-wise uh proposal.

Specific information was provided on why net metering customers weren't part of the energy-wise transition that most customers uh would be seeing uh over the coming year, uh particularly this October.

Uh and the response at that time was uh really we took a pause in in our efforts for net metering customers, and that pause was a result of a statewide working group that was established in 2023 in response to challenges across the state and concerns with proposals that were being developed related to net metering.

And the governor saw those challenges, and I'll speak more to this on the next slide, and formed a stakeholder group of interested parties, including utilities, environmental groups, uh solar associations, uh customers and so on, customer advocates.

Um of respect for that process, utilities wanted to pause because the goal of that process was to see if legislative changes were going to be coming that would change the net metering statute, which may change how utilities prepares a proposal for rates uh related to net metering service.

So in 2023, we took a pause, did not include proposed changes in last year's rate case, and we presented that information as part of that rate case presentation to utilities board, um stating that we're considering future changes, but we're waiting for that process to play out.

That process has played out, and that's why we're here today.

Uh additionally, last year utilities presented information to the finance committee again specifically on net metering and the challenges of cost recovery and the cost shift, uh, but then also specifically on a project COPE at a request of one of the board members on how net metering uh could potentially work with project COPE.

And then of course, we've presented to the board uh the chain proposed changes as part of this year's rate case.

Okay, thank you for for that uh extensive background.

I really appreciate that.

And clearly um there's no question you you you've been aware and looking at uh the reality of these customers for a very long time.

Uh what I'd like to though ask is um in the draft 2026 rate case, the one that we're considering today, if we if we should be voting on it in two weeks.

Uh that particular model has had not been presented to the board um prior to I think it was August 18th was the date that you presented to uh that to us.

Is that correct?

The specific rate design in this year's proposal um was not presented this year.

I I would say dating back to 2018, uh, that specific rate design was one of many options being considered um early on, starting in 2018.

Uh, but no, it wasn't included in the presentation to council this year.

Or or shared with the board in that specific detail that I can recall.

Not in that detail.

Yeah, then I'm not sure.

It's always, yeah, sorry.

It's okay.

Um it's always a struggle to balance the level of technical detail to get into gauging that with you know the policy interests of the board, uh, engaging what that right level is.

Um I so you you have a big challenge in that every two years you have new board members coming on and uh educating all of us around all the elements of utilities is is quite a significant thing.

So I I really appreciate that.

I just really simply want to state for the record that um and while I was chair of the finance committee, I and I certainly know we had talked about net metering.

I don't recall anything close to um going in depth in the model that we are um considering today.

So um that was first presented to us, I believe it was August 18th of 2025 for the 2026 draft rate case.

And my recollection around uh 2024, and I'd have to go back and um and look at those uh minutes or that recording of the finance committee in 2024.

Um I do remember the net metering and project COPE very clearly.

Um that was council member um O'Malley's uh that was something he was very concerned about, and uh uh that that's what I remember the focus of net metering being not on the reality of the impact to our system overall.

And that's I think all I have for right now.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And yes, we've got a lot of boxes and stars, but um, council member Hunjam was correct.

What we're discussing today is relatively um recent for all of us concerned in this room.

But with everything sorry, on here, the main changes that actually came to fruition.

I want to make sure I heard you correctly, were size and the implementation of an interconnection fee correct net metering changes that were brought into actually came to fruition as opposed to or discussing.

Correct, that came to city council were changes in size and the uh the adoption of an application fee, and then there was some changes to the of course the annual cash out charges were updated in that time frame as well.

Was there an application fee prior to that?

Was there?

It did.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

So for the record, um, when you introduced energy wise.

I actually raised the question because I have solar.

Why can't I participate?

Because I wanted to figure out a way to lower my energy costs, because I was bringing my EV at home and I was charging it when I pulled into the garage.

And I suddenly realized that that might not be a good time to do that.

And so I elected, not because of any financial concern, but that I would figure out my programming on my charger and get it to recharge at midnight.

So my cars are charging at midnight.

So I did it because, well, I sit on council and the board.

Um, so I did the good thing.

But there was no, and and so we did have a brief conversation about the fact that the incentives, and I think this needs to be highlighted.

We're a community that believes in conservation, and we want to do the right thing.

And so sometimes financial incentives help get us there.

We've seen those in terms of water.

We have learned as a community how to adjust to our water needs and and really should be up.

We we should be applauding ourselves daily about how well we conserve water.

Now we're at a place where we realize we need to conserve energy during five and nine.

And that's what energy wise really was.

But net metering was left out, and I remember particularly you stating that it's left out because of what you have said, and I want to reiterate there's things happening up in Denver that we have to pay attention to.

And so before we can really address net meter metering, we have to understand what might come down from the state.

So we did have a conversation about it.

So it's not like we were completely blind, but we were really waiting for well, you took the pause.

So I wanted to highlight that that this isn't something that was totally off the table.

So thank you.

I'm gonna provide a little more detail on that stake, that statewide working group that was formed by the governor, formed it in 2023.

Its work really uh took place in 2024, and its formation was really a result out of a familiar dynamic that's taken place in Colorado, and I'm sure in other in other states as well, uh, that played out really as a another local utility, proposed changes to rates, including changes to net metering rates, and in response to those proposed proposed changes, in state and out out of state special interest groups opposed those changes and helped to organize even local uh local opposition to those reforms.

Uh seeing seeing those concerns growing, the governor really formed this working group in response to that dynamic uh happening again.

And the Center for the New Energy Economy really facilitated the process.

The hope of the hope of the working group's uh uh work was really to help form a consensus on potential reforms to the net metering policy in the state, and with the hope that those reforms uh based on the consensus could be adopted by the state legislature in the future.

Utilities did participate.

Uh College Springs Utilities did participate, uh, had representation in those working groups that really met eight times uh throughout 2024 uh through the time period of February to August.

Utilities uh broadly speaking, uh participating in the in those work groups indicated that the state statute does not provide sufficient flexibility to address concerns about recovering cost and emerging challenges, such as managing peak load.

So that is kind of a collective response of utilities across the state, not just municipal utilities.

I would add that municipal utilities added to that by saying municipality municipal utilities assert the right to develop rates that are just reasonable and sufficient.

And of course, here in Colorado Springs, that's our city council's authority to do to do that.

Unfortunately, this working group did not reach a meaningful consensus.

And so we essentially left the landscape where our we picked up the landscape for net metering in Colorado where we left it in 2023, where we took our pause, uh, really causing utility staff to pick up where we left off and bring the proposal that we're discussing today.

Councilman Hint or Williams.

Thank you.

Can you give us an idea of what was being discussed?

Were there any particular options that came to light that you know maybe those in the room might want to see as alternatives?

I believe the the specific uh case that uh that started the working group was a utility uh proposing to add a delivery charge uh separate from uh separate that wasn't net metered in the in the normal sense that other energy charges are.

So it was the addition of a of a delivery, a separate delivery charge for energy.

Um so I would say that that was met with opposition, also seeing flat fees for uh grid access charge be opposed.

Um I can't think of an example of changes to net metering that haven't been opposed, to be honest.

Um, so really we're left with our proposal seeking to provide the most cost reflective approach for net metering while providing customers an opportunity to engage uh with shaving the peak during those on peak time frames.

Wanted to spend just a minute to uh speak to the uh utilities cost recovery broadly.

And today when we speak of our proposal, we're really speaking to our base rates.

Utilities recovers cost uh really through three uh separate uh categories of cost recovery, uh being our our base rates, which recover the cost of our system.

So if you think of our our plants, our substations, our pipes and wires, our customer systems, those are all uh recovered uh through base rates.

Our what we call our fuel rates recover the cost of our commodities that go into the electric generation process, such as coal, natural gas, also purchased power for renewable energy purchase power agreements that we have.

All those more market or commodity costs are recovered through our lock electric cost adjustment, and then the electric capacity charge recovers the cost of bringing those commodities to our community through other entities systems.

It could be other entities transmission systems uh such as the uh natural gas pipelines or electric transmission systems.

Wanted to highlight here uh and again just uh recognize net metering customers' important contribution to renewable energy within Colorado Springs with the more than 9,000 net metering customers.

The collective amount of solar that they bring uh bring on, and think of this as name plate capacity, bring onto our system is equivalent to almost 50 megawatts of power.

Providing that a little bit of scale with other solar energy on utility system through purchase power agreements.

Springs utilities has approximately 290 megawatts of solar as part of our energy portfolio, with renewable energy more broadly uh comprising about 27 percent of our total portfolio.

Uh those solar purchase power agreements, as I mentioned on the previous slide, are recovered through our electric cost adjustment.

Our electric cost adjustment rate right now is a little under three cents per kilowatt hour.

Wanted to just provide some distinctions between that and the bundled effective rate of net metering service as it's really exchanged across time periods on a one-to-one basis.

Specifically, Color Springs utilities under our frozen rate schedules, so not the energy-wise rates, but the flat rates, including our access and facilities charge, which is just under nine cents, our ECA rate, which is just under three cents, and our electric capacity charge, which is less than a cent, together include together are summed to about 12 cents per kilowatt hour.

You have a question from Councilman Hingel.

Thank you.

Scott, is it true that 50 megawatts of power is enough to generate power for about nine to 10,000 homes a year?

I'm not that good on math on the fly, Miss Henjam, but take your word for it.

I'll ask a question that I knew the answer to, which is that is about what 50 megawatts will supply.

Thank you.

So just I just wanted to highlight uh really the distinction between fuel and non-fuel rates, but then also how the net metering as it is exchanging the fully loaded kilowatt hour rate across timeframes.

So essentially, when a net metering customer has excess generation during the daytime, they're exchanging that for a fully loaded kilowatt hour future uh later in the day or future times at the equivalent of 12 cents when uh the utilities really avoided cost of energy is closer to three cents.

Now I want to turn in really into the heart of the proposal and dive into utilities cost of service.

I apologize uh for the table with a lot of information here, uh, but really it is the heart of our proposal and is the basis of our rate proposal.

The table on the left highlights the total residential rate classes, uh classification of functional expenditures.

So these represent the revenue requirement or the amount of revenue that Springs Utilities needs to collect from residential customers to provide them electric service.

So these are annual uh electric revenue requirement amounts.

You can see they're broken up into different categories based on uh that column labeled function, represents really parts of the electric system, ranging from generation, transmission, and then different components of the distribution system.

And then uh as we move across to the right of the table, we see the cost broken into categories of per customer cost, energy cost, and demand cost.

And we go through a process where we really allocate these uh these cost two rate classes based on really 10 detailed cost allocations based on how rate classes contribute to attributes of cost causation that are widely used in the electric industry.

Uh to give some examples of differences between energy and demand cost and per customer cost for generation.

You can see that costs are both classified as energy and demand.

We can think of energy cost as costs that vary based on the amount of energy generated by the utility or consumed by the customer.

So they're they're volumetric with the amount of consumption or generation.

In terms of energy cost uh that are generation costs, you can think of those as operation and maintenance costs related to plant maintenance.

So as generation plants run more, produce more electricity, they need more routine and scheduled maintenance to keep them operating reliably and safely.

You can relate that to just operating your automobile.

The more miles you drive, the more frequent you have to have oil changes, tire rotations, air filter changes, those types of things.

Those are energy types of cost for generation.

Demand costs, on the other hand, are costs that don't vary based on the amount of overall consumption or generation, but vary based on the level of peak usage and the capacity being there to serve at peak times.

An example of that type of cost are really fast start, rapid fire generating units, uh, maybe those at sitting at the Drake site, where they may not be running continually, generating a lot of electricity, but they're there ready to serve our communities load really during those peak times when we need them.

So those are demand-related costs that are there really to serve the peak.

We can see that transmission has both costs classified as energy and demand, similar to two generation.

And then as we move into the distribution cost, really substations and the higher voltage primary service lines are considered entirely demand related as they're designed and constructed really to be in place to serve peak demand.

And then moving to customer cost, our per customer cost, you can see that portions of our distribution system are classified as customer.

And those types of costs are things like service lines, meters, our billing system.

It doesn't matter if a customer uses one kilowatt hour or a thousand kilowatt hours in a month.

They need to have a service line to provide them service, they need to have a meter to be able to read their usage, they need to receive a bill to pay for their usage and so on.

So those costs that vary more on the number of customers and not usage or peak demand are classified as customer related cost.

Summing these types of costs together, we see that the total revenue requirement for all residential customers is approximately 193 million dollars.

And we've simplified this table with the with the chart at the right, just to put those into columns of customer energy and demand, with demand representing that the largest portion of costs on utilities system for serving residential customers.

Taking that same information and putting it into more of a dollar bill graphic, we can see that energy costs represent about 22% of the overall cost to serve residential customers.

Whereas the per customer cost represent about 30% of the cost, and demand costs represent about 48% of all the cost to serve residential customers.

I'd like to note that Colorado Springs Utilities utilizes the cash needs basis for determining our revenue requirement.

That means we don't include things like depreciation, a return, like investor-owned utilities might, and those sorts of non-well, returns a cash item, but depreciation is a non-cash item.

We include really the real cash expenditures that we have related to providing electric service annually.

Those include things like our payments on principal and interest on infrastructure that we've built, that include uh cash-funded capital that we're, you know, as we're making investments in infrastructure, our OM costs that we you know maintain and operate our systems.

Those are real cash expenditures.

So when we see this dollar bill, those are portions of real dollars that utility spends to provide service to residential customers.

Look to more of a and relate that to our current rate design and specifically our frozen rate design that most customers will be moving off of, but right now is frozen for participation, really for net metering customers.

So we see the the cost of service chart on the left, again, 48% of cost being demand related.

And in at the right, just to speak through the total, the total cost that's collected through our various non-fuel charges.

Again, these don't include the electric cost adjustment or the electric capacity charge.

Our access and facilities charge is set to recover most of the per customer cost, which is really the industry, the real industry standard is to try to recover customer costs through your customer charge.

So we include most of our customer cost in the access and facilities per day charge.

You can see a small portion of cost of per customer cost in the access and facilities per KWH column.

So we are currently recovering some of our customer costs volumetrically through our energy charge.

And then you can also see that all of the energy cost and all of the demand cost are recovered through a volumetric energy charge currently today.

This tends to work in terms of recovering the overall cost as long as customers are billed proportionate to the amount of energy they consume from the grid.

You can still recover your revenue requirement by including energy and demand cost through energy charges.

A utility can still recover its costs volumetrically, assuming customers are built proportionate to their usage.

However, it may result in intra-class subsidies from one customer type to another as customers use energy differently.

Some customers use more energy on peak versus off-peak.

Some customers use different amount of energy compared to uh their per day charges.

So energy-wise rates reduce the opportunity for interclass subsidy by taking that demand cost, that purple portion of that bar, and assigning it to the on-peak energy charges.

So now we have a more fair representation of energy-wise charges as we recover demand costs through on peak charges and really the energy charges through through off-beat charges.

That's a gross uh generalization, but that's the general idea is assigned that demand cost during the on-peak period for most customers.

But as I'll describe here in the next few slides, that still doesn't solve uh the issues for net metering customers.

I apologize for the complicated uh table here, but it's important to understand the way net metering actually interacts with utility system.

So speaking through this table a little bit, we see hours one through twenty-four of the day.

And I've really highlighted the on-peak period uh in the yellow, the yellow bars going across uh across the table.

That yellow highlighted area represents our on-peak period of 5 p.m.

to 9 p.m.

The generation column represents a customer's uh generation from their solar system.

And as you would expect during the morning hours when the sun's not up, solar systems not generating generating electricity.

So we see zeros during the early morning and the late the late night hours with the generation happening primarily during the middle of the day, which is intuitive.

The next column over is the use.

So this is total household consumption, and it ref d represents just that the total household usage of energy um hourly.

And then the next two columns, uh, the next column highlighted in blue represents the customers' usage of energy from the grid.

So as we can see in the morning hours before the solar system is generating electricity, the customers is using energy from the grid to meet their energy needs during those hours.

As the customer starts to generate electricity, uh, looking at hour seven there, they start to see uh a little generation from their solar system.

And again, this is an example.

It doesn't represent any particular customers or every single customer's electric generation, it's just an example.

Scott, how much longer do you have just because a couple of council members have asked for a short break?

And it was about 20 minutes more, then we're gonna take about five minutes.

I would say it's a little bit more than that.

More than that.

So we're gonna take a five minute break for some right.

Okay, well, Nancy needs to take a break, so we're gonna take a break.

You want a ding or something?

We're gonna get started again.

Um we have a hard stop at twelve o'clock because we have a working lunch, so we will be stopping at twelve from twelve to one and resume as close to one one oh five as we can um to go into citizens comments.

So I just want people to understand on this particular agenda, we will not start citizens' comments until after one.

And um knowing that it's gonna be a longer day if there's citizens here waiting on citizens' comments not on today's agenda, it's gonna be a very long day.

You might want to check in and out with our staff over here.

Um, because I'm anticipating that being late into the evening.

So um Scott and Madam President, if I could, I uh so if there are citizens here waiting to comment even on this, and you want to go away until one o'clock and then come back, that's fine because we won't even start citizen comment, or you can stay and listen to the rest of uh Scott Schroller's presentation.

Madam, that's correct.

Madam President, may I have councilman seconds, please?

Thank you.

Uh please if I could have your attention.

Uh before you leave, if you're gonna come back before you leave, I've asked the um city administrator to put up the schedule, the agenda for the this entire hearing.

I think it's important that you see this.

Um we are taking a long time.

I know it was posted as a half an hour on the agenda, and that's made some of you angry, and you have other things to do.

I appreciate that.

This is very, very important for us to hear all of it to understand it.

You please allow us the time to ask questions and understand we're making an important decision today.

What I want to highlight for you is that on number seven, um, number six and number seven, the utilities will be preparing responses to both city council and public questions.

So when you come to make comment, you don't have to just make comment, you can ask questions, and utilities will respond to them.

So that's all I wanted to say.

Let's keep moving.

Thank you.

Uh picking back where we left off.

Again, this is an important slide demonstrating how how uh customer solar interacts with utility system.

And so I want to highlight uh the table at the left one more time with the the hour column representing the the 24 hours in the day.

Uh the yellow box going across the column, really highlighting utilities on peak time period of five to nine p.m.

That I'll speak to later.

The the next column to the right, the gen column represents customer generation from their solar system.

The use column represents total household use of electricity.

The next column to the right, the column uh labeled use from the grid represents the usage that the customers actually consuming from the grid during times when their household usage exceeds their solar generation.

I have a question from Councilman Williams.

I have a question from Councilman Williams.

Thank you.

Again, as was mentioned, this particular portion of information I don't know why my microphone's having a bad day.

Was presented on the first time I ever saw it was August 18th.

For those in the audience, the information we received on August 18th was the same on August 20th.

It was not the same information you received in an email the following day.

And it's not the same information that we are discussing right now.

So one of my concerns with this is the fact that as a person voting for something that's going to affect your lives.

This is the third rendition.

I'm also going to and I also have to apologize because I spent too much time in the hospital in July, so I will not physically be here in the afternoon.

But I did want to comment on this because as a board member, I think that this should be vetted beyond the shadow of a doubt.

This is again the third rendition.

Now it's an average in that five to nine period, but I'm not personally ready to move this forward until it feels like there's an answer and there's an answer that we've been able to have this conversation and more of a question and answer and all the things that go with this change.

So I figured this was a good time to mention that since I won't be sitting in this seat, but I will be listening and I will be commenting over the course of the next nine, 10 hours, however long we're here for the rest of the day.

So thanks.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

Scott, um, has anything changed on this slide since we this the slide I I did update the table itself and to try to make it more reflective of the median customer used um that we've been using for uh communication purposes.

Um the essence of this slide has not changed.

Uh the numbers changed, but the the concept is identical.

It's just the the specific numbers in any specific hour have changed to be more reflective of that median customer, as the example before will really was represented a pretty small net metering system.

Okay, so you would say this is uh more accurate or more useful to use uh to make our decisions based on because it's more it reflects more of a typical customer, not a the small end of the scale.

I would say this is more reflective of the of the median net metering customer than the original information.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

And we won't have people yelling out questions, you'll have a have a chance to speak.

Yeah, and this represents uh a summer, a summer period.

Councilman Henjam.

Uh thank you.

And Scott, I I'm uh you have to help me understand how this chart and the numbers here fit with the chart in the actual filed rate case um on page four under section C.

It's the same concept.

It's it I'm guessing it's just one customer and not multiple.

Correct.

This is just one customer example, and it's it's not made, it's not intended to imply the the widespread, the the specific numbers aren't intended to represent anything.

It's more the concept of the hourly interaction that we're trying to communicate.

And I do really want to understand the hourly interaction, which I'm sure you're gonna get to.

That's really important because I still don't fully understand it.

Um, but having said that, I do have a question about what was your data sampling.

I mean, how many customers did you choose from, et cetera.

Sure.

Would you like me to address that now or later?

You can wait until later.

Okay.

I I'll probably address it through the presentation.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I just wanted to take a moment because um a vast majority of our customers are not solar customers.

Uh I mean, it's like not even close.

And um this chart really, I think also could stipulate that during that shaded area, a vast majority of our customers are gonna be paying a higher rate because of the energy-wise program.

But during the non-shaded rate, they're gonna be paying a lower rate because energy's cheaper during that time.

And I think that's important to kind of understand that a lot of customers that aren't in this room today, likely are going to be paying a premium rate during those four hours.

That's correct.

Right?

That's correct.

Thank you.

Okay, I describe the the highlighted blue column being the use from utilities grid when the customer's solar generation is less than the total household consumption.

Uh represents when the customer's solar generation exceeds their consumption, it is reflected in that in that column.

And then the net column is probably what most of us are familiar with.

It's really just the net between the use from the grid and the excess generation.

It's the the sum of those two uh those two columns.

So as we as we think about this diagram and really the the interaction that happens throughout a typical day, and then we see I've highlighted at very blue at the bottom of that table, just taking the sample day times 31 to get it in more relatable terms of monthly uh monthly energy.

So again, not all days play out exactly like the previous days, but in this theoretical example, it it does.

Uh so again um as solar solar systems are not generating electricity during the morning and evening hours, customers are using energy uh from the grid.

As we move into more of the middle hours of the day, we see the customers' generation generation starting to produce electricity, and that is offsetting the customers' uh usage uh from the grid in those hours.

So I want to just point out in hour seven, for example, the customer's consumption is 0.96 uh kilowatt hours.

They're generating 0.11 kilowatt hours.

So their consumption from the grid is 0.85 kilowatt hours.

So they're actually pulling energy from the grid, but they're also meeting some of their own needs with their solar system.

Uh during the previous morning hours, they're pulling all of their energy from the grid as their solar system's not generating electricity.

As we move a little later into the day, we see that it actually flips and the customer is generating more electricity than they're actually consuming.

So those represent excess generation credits.

And we can see uh those all the way through our 16.

Um again in our 2017, there's no longer excess generation credits, but the customer is still offsetting their household consumption uh with their own usage, but pulling in uh a quarter of a kilowatt hour from the grid.

And then as we move into that yellow highlighted area that's representing our on-peak time period, there is some solar generation taking place.

Uh, but for the most part, we see the customer reaching their peak usage during that on-peak period, just like the rest of our residential customers.

And so we see usage from the grid during those hours of five to nine pm.

When we look at this across the day, we see that the total household generation was just under 22 kilowatt hours.

Total household use was almost 26 kilowatt hours.

Total use from the grid was approximately 15 kilowatt hours, and the customer exported almost 11 kilowatt hours.

So in net metering terms, there were four kilowatt hours that would be billed under the net metering tariff.

Extrapolating that to the to a monthly term, again, multiplying that by 31.

Net metering treats the customer as though they can they're billing them for 127 kilowatt hours because they're getting credit for the excess generation credits to offset generation uh in future time periods, but they actually consumed 461 kilowatt hours from utility system.

So when I speak to uh the fact that net metering policy by crediting excess generation in one time frame to offset consumption in another time frame, it underquantifies the amount of energy being used from utility system.

It treats it as though that energy is being virtually stored in a battery and giving back to the customer to offset their energy.

But that is not how net metering works, as we stated earlier.

That energy is instantaneously sent back to the grid and used by other customers, and the net metering customer is bringing in energy from utility system, our generation, transmission, and distribution system to provide them energy at later parts in the day.

But the way that net metering credits excess generation during the midday hours against that consumption later in the day results in that underquantification of the number of kilowatt hours that are billed in that month.

I have a question from council.

You don't, okay, sorry.

Councilman Lineweber.

Um I just want to clarify one thing, and that is if a solar customer has a battery.

Obviously, they're able to store their own energy and they could use it during that peak time.

It kind of changes the dynamic and the importance of a battery, is that correct?

It does.

It a hundred percent changes the dynamic.

So now that that energy is not sent back to the grid, it's actually stored in the customer's battery system and actually used on site later.

So it it totally changed the dynamic that I went through.

Uh, what happens with the net metering policy without a customer battery is it uses utilities grid as a virtual battery, uh, but in actuality, what is happening is utilities grid is incurring expenses, especially during those on peak hours to provide energy, you know, through our generation, transmission, distribution systems uh back to the customer during those times.

And so a later question of mine would be um have we how and I don't want to answer this now, but have we looked into incentivizing customers to look at batteries to offset this?

Because this is really a city problem, right?

Um so perhaps that might be a way of offsetting that in some shape or form.

But that could that will be a like a later conversation.

Thank you.

I I wanted to also note that we've really highlighted that I've highlighted the complications of exchanging credited excess generation during the middle part of the day and crediting that against consumption later in the day and how that underquantifies.

But that's magnified when net metering policy uh provides for not only netting within a particular day, that exchange within a day, but it exchanges it over a course of a week, a month, and then month to month.

So that really compounds that that underquantification of energy uh over time.

I want to pull up just a simple illustration of our system cost again, and this looks familiar to uh council members that were part of the energy-wise presentations and and last year's rate case.

I would note that the previous slide, the under-quantification of energy produces charges not proportionate to the cost of providing service, even if utilities cost were completely flat throughout the time period of the day.

It's underquantifying.

And so that's under recovering costs related to serving net metering customers.

But we know that our cost is not flat throughout the day.

We know that excess, we know that our on-peak period is more expensive in terms of providing service to customers, and it's more expensive because demand cost is attributed to those on-peak hours.

Again, if we think of generation demand cost, those uh fast start generating resources, the cost of those is attributed to those on-peak hours when they need to be available to quickly increase and serve our customers' peak load.

Uh, but similar cost uh for demand costs is attributed to that on peak period for the demand, the distribution system, the transmission system, substations, and so on.

So the the on-peak period has higher cost, primarily because of the demand cost, as we spoke to in the cost of service study.

When we uh look at a question from Councilman Hincham.

Thank you.

Um, Scott, actually, if you uh it goes to this slide, but also the previous slide.

I just want to um highlight a statement that is in the memo at the beginning of the rate case that you sent to us that's in the public record.

Um under the interaction um you give this single individual sample, same thing, and it says for this sample daily period, net metering underquantified the customer's consumption from utility system by four kilowatt hours, extrapolated over the course of a month or year, the underquantification of imports and exports can result in significant cost shifting to other non-net metering customers within the rate class.

I genuinely don't understand, like talk to me like I'm a third grader.

How does the underquantification of imports and exports result in significant cost shifting to non-metering customers?

Sure.

And uh we'll be able to see this graphically a little bit on the next few slides, but um I'll address it here as well.

I mean, as long as you can help me understand.

I think this is a good time to address it.

So we'll we'll quantify that cost shift in terms of the median net metering customer uh in a few slides.

But at a thousand-foot level, our rates are designed to collect the over the overall revenue requirement allocated to the residential class.

That was the 193 million dollars represented in the table uh for the cost of service.

So all residential customers' rates are designed to collect that 193 million dollars, regardless of if they're solar customers or non-solar customers, they're part of that residential class.

That cost does not go away when charges for net metering customers do not collect the full cost of service.

Utilities doesn't have a profit that the revenues come out of.

What it essentially means is in that process of designing the other residential customers' rates, they're set higher than they otherwise would be to collect that shit than if rates for net metering customers collected the full cost of providing service to them.

So rates for all other customers are set higher to collect an additional amount for uh in consideration for the under-recovery of providing of cost recovery for net metering customers.

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Williams.

Thanks for that explanation, Scott.

Just as a follow-up, we didn't wake up today and figure that out, did we?

We knew that when this started at the beginning.

We knew it five years into it.

We knew it 10 years into it.

We knew it up until every day until now.

So my concern is that we knew that when we put this in place.

And I think there needs again needs to be a different conversation and a different approach on how we get from where we are, where these individuals in the room have found themselves or the utility of has found themselves and how to get from here to there.

So you're absolutely right.

That is a true statement, but the entire time we've known this as a utility.

We knew it when I was on the board last time, and we've still done everything in our power to say, hey guys, put solar on your roof.

So I just want to make sure that I I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Yes, thank you for that.

And I did indicate when we spoke to the establishment of the net metering policy in Colorado, it was a known that the cost shift and the under-recovery from net metering rates was a known issue.

So uh thank you for pointing that out.

I think for utilities, what really changed is when we start to see the exponential growth in the number of net metering customers really starting in 2017, and that aligned with when we started efforts of redesigning rates as I indicated on the slide of board engagement.

Uh that known under-recovery of providing service to net metering customers is one thing when there's a thousand net metering customers, but when there's 9,000 and a thousand more customers growing each year, that becomes a that cost shift to other customers becomes uh more urgent to address.

And utility staff is actually responding and bringing this proposal as directed based on instructions uh through the board through the excellence and governance policy manual to provide rates that are just reasonable and sufficient, and then also our rate design guidelines.

So I would just uh provide that.

Councilman Williams.

Hi.

So I think we're just stuck because in reality, maybe at 2,000 customers we should have had this conversation.

But we didn't cut it off at 2,000, and then we got stuck in the mess of is the state gonna do something, is the state not gonna do something, which to me I think that was a great stall tactic because it doesn't sound like anything productive came out of those meetings.

And here we are today.

But um, and I know we had that on the timeline, but do we know?

Again, I don't think I was on the board when we got to 2000 why we didn't have this conversation at that time.

Yeah, and just um Tristan Gearhardt, Chief Planning and Financial Officer for Colorado Springs Utilities.

Thank you, board member, or excuse me, councilwoman Williams, uh, for your question.

There was a few things that I just wanted to um stop and highlight here.

So I this is the right slide for us to be on as well.

As we look at the initial um phases of this program, um, that point that Scott brought up where we are purchasing recs along with the rebate that's going along.

I do want to highlight that that is value that goes back to all of our customers that helped us with that subsidy as we moved along.

So, in other words, those recs that we were purchasing until 2022 through these rebates, we were able to take any revenue that came from those, selling them, applying them for state credits.

Those were all things that um were impactful for us to be able to show that there is value to the other customers.

In 2022, we uh turned off the the rebate program that was there.

We no longer were purchasing those recs from customers either.

So at the same time, we're seeing exponential increase in customers.

We'd also removed um the rec purchasing, which further exposed us to the cost subsidy that was going on, and I think highlighted the activity that we were showing that we were doing in that time frame.

How do we line this up with our energy-wise program that's there looking at the five to nine period for all of our customers, wanting to make sure that we look at things for net metering customers as well in the way that we incentivize them to shave that peak that's there from a time frame uh standpoint?

Um last year getting energy wise rates, time of day rates in for our customers was uh critically important for us.

Again, looking at what was happening with the state, we hated to put something in place and then have it reversed um immediately after.

This uh year break in between has given us a chance to at least see how that was going to shake out before we put this in place, and then from a implement these rates, it gives us um until the beginning of 2027 to have direct conversations with each of our net metering customers to look at impacts and ways that they can um participate in that peak shaving to achieve everything that we're looking to to address the cost shifting that we are seeing between our our different customers that are out there.

Travis Deele.

Yeah, one thing to add on this too, uh sort of going back to councillor member Williams's um comments was changed, is we've actually got our own solar come online.

So during those time frames, we have a magnitude of solar, one of the largest solar farms in the state of Colorado come online, multiples others.

So now you have a different cost shift of available resources that is competing against.

So that is the biggest difference for the cost of the ratepayers.

We have the same type of power more available than we did previously when this started at a heck of a lot cheaper rate, and that competes with it, so we're getting power now a lot cheaper.

So that cost difference has magnified because of that availability of solar.

So everything has changed.

Councilmember since you've been there.

We talked about this, I know personally.

Everything has changed.

So I think going back and trying to mundate quarterback, what was done back then probably isn't apples to apples, unless you really look at everything.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I just think that um there's a degree where installers, like I was told that I really need to maximize my morning sun.

And that's not the case.

I need to maximize my afternoon sun.

And every installer, if he would have liked every installer that's listening to this right now needs to change their design to maximize afternoon sun.

We may have cloud cover, more cloud cover in the afternoon.

Yes.

And you may reduce total, you know, production.

But the design clearly changes with this format.

And the the thought of just not bat, not battery to supply the whole night, but the even the the question of hey, get a battery that will last you four hours, that becomes a bigger conversation now than it ever has.

And so those were those are conversations that, like with my installer, I would have liked to have had, I guess, is what I'm trying to get at.

So I think to Brandy's point, that's I think some of the issue is I don't think um the the commercial installers weren't really kind of informed.

And they're the professionals, and they didn't make those kind of suggestions.

So I'll uh move through this slide.

Um Scott, it's 12 o'clock, and we have a working lunch with the mayor.

So we're going to go ahead and adjourn.

Um, I'm going to go to the uh summarized on the previous slides a couple slides ago in the table in a more graphical representation of it.

So uh with the chart at the left, you can see uh for a typical net metering customer again, the solar production from their solar system is represented by the yellow line with the solar generating most of its energy during the middle part of the day.

The blue line represents the net energy that the customer is using.

So you can see as the solar system is generating its electricity during the middle of the day, the net energy is actually negative.

But as we move into the uh on peak time period, those hours of five to nine, the typical net metering customer is using energy very similarly to the rest of our residential customers uh as there's less solar production during those during those hours.

Uh again, speaking to the complications of cost recovery, again, that under under quantification of energy that results um in terms of billing net metering customers for the amount of energy consumed from the grid by netting excess consumption in different time periods with actual energy consumed by the grid uh throughout the day.

I have a question from Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I think this is really a key graph, and I just wanted to kind of highlight it so that people can understand it.

But the the graph on the right is demonstrating the cost of energy, like if we were to produce it, is that production cost, or like if we bought it on the grid, or if we what's the actual cost there?

The illustration is total delivered cost.

So it's it's our non-fuel cost of uh generating, but the non-fuel generation plus the transmission plus the distribution cost.

So it's it's the total deliver cost minus the ECA uh actual energy component.

And so what you don't have is you don't have any kind of numbers there, you just have kind of like a graph.

And so um, am I anticipating that those numbers are like two cents or three cents per kilowatt in the middle of the day?

Correct, and it it varies whether we're talking about the overall electric system or the residential class in particular.

Uh, but in general, well, we know that our in our energy-wise rates vary by season as well, with summer rates higher than uh the the winter on peak pricing.

Uh but generally the the off-peak period pricing would be uh less than less than nine cents because our flat rate today is about nine cents per kilowatt hour.

So energy-wise rates, the off-peak rate uh is less than that rate 88% of the time.

So some of the but it's even more or less during the middle of the day.

Correct, closer to that two, three, four cent um level.

So one of the common questions that people have had in the prolifer of emails is why can't I trade my energy production during the day for my peak time?

And this kind of illustrates that in a real graphic way that you know what extra energy someone is maybe producing during the day, quite frankly, isn't worth as much as we thought it might be 10 years ago.

It's it's it's just and for the rest of the customers.

So of the nine, well, I don't know.

What are we talking about?

95 plus percent of customers who don't have solar, they're asking you to find the cheapest energy you can purchase, right?

Right.

And so that puts a lot of pressure on us to kind of find good fair ways to kind of balance out all of our customers.

So I I really like this graph on the right demonstrating how much more the energy cost is.

And I think that's really kind of a pivotal.

I think that's that's probably the most key slide.

The key graphic is that graphic right there.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think Councilmember Leinweber described that that graphic very well.

And in essence, just reiterating what he said.

Uh part of the complication of the recovering cost from net metering customers is the way that the state statute establishes the net metering policy and crediting excess generation uh in past time periods to offset consumption from their grid in future time periods.

And the time periods that we're really talking about here is excess generation happens during the middle of the day when our energy when our overall cost is lower, and consumption, similar to all other residential customers, is at its peak during those hours when delivering energy is highest.

And that's really hits at the at the nature of the complication with net metering rates with an energy rate structure.

I'll I'll move on from there to discuss really our work with the expert consulting firm in the electric industry uh that are experts in not only cost of service for electric utilities, but also rate design for electric utilities.

And we've worked with them on a on a number of efforts, including our energy-wise rates, and then we've been working with them on net metering rates over the last uh several years, really.

Uh the consultant, as part of this process, helped us to estimate the median cost shift, uh, the amount that our current rate structure is under recovering cost in providing service to net metering customers.

The consultant did use a our cost of service data, so they used our 2025 cost of service as was used in the five-year rate case last year, supported all of our uh energy-wise rates and so on.

They used that cost of service and they used our load research sample as uh developed by another consulting firm.

Uh particularly they used a subset of that statistically valid sample uh for the net metering customers.

That sample size was 28 customers uh for the net metering piece.

That was a small subset of the overall sample used for establishing the rates.

That subset of 28 customers is a stratified piece uh of the overall stratified, it's a piece of the overall stratified sample, uh statistically valid, and that 28 customer sample was not used in any way to establish the rates that we proposed.

The rates that we proposed are based on the overall residential data and the overall statistically valid sample, not the net metering specific subset.

The use of that specific subset was solely for estimating the level of cost shift for the median net medium net metering customer.

So through that process, they used a published industry uh reviewed process for estimating that cost shift uh between customers uh based on the cost of service methodology.

Based on that cost of surface methodology for the median customer in that sample, they estimated that our rates under recover approximately $600 per year from what it takes to provide service to uh a net metering customer.

We've extrapolated that to demonstrate with knowing that now there's over 9,000 net metering customers.

If 600 is representative of the median, it's probably pretty representative of the average.

We've extrapolated that to the 9,000 customers to provide the estimate of approximately $5.5 million of potential cost shift uh that other utility rate payers are bearing in their rates as we're under recovering from net metering customers.

That equates uh that under recovery represents about $50 per month for the typical or median net metering customer.

If we look at that cost shift to other customers, there's about 210 uh thousand other non-net metering customers, dividing that under recovered cost uh into those customers.

The other customers are making up that shortfall by about $25 per year per customer or about $2 per month for a typical non-solar customer.

Councilman Hindum.

Inka, if you could go back, Scott.

I I just for my own understanding, I need to repeat what I heard you say just to make sure I understand how you got how you used the 28 customer database.

So I think I heard you say those 28 customers weren't used in determining the actual cost recovery amount.

But but the way I heard you describe the way you use the numbers, it was a factor in the decision.

Is that correct?

I would I would say that the so the overall residential sample size is over 700 can 700 customers.

That sample was selected by a consultant that specializes in load research, sales and load forecasting.

They stratified, designed and selected our sample of residential customers broadly.

Within that sample, they selected 28 net metering customers as a representation of the overall residential class.

That's approximately 4.5% of the of the overall 700 sample, and net metering customers represent about four and a half percent of our overall residential customers.

The 9,000 is about 4.5% of the 200 and 20,000 residential customers.

That the consultant that worked on our net metering analysis used is a subset of that 700 uh sample size.

It was used solely to estimate the cost shift.

So they performed uh bill analysis on what our current uh rate design, they applied it to that sample of 28, and then they determined what was the cost reflective, how much it costs utilities provide service to those 28 customers.

Based on that analysis, they determined that for the median customer in that sample of 28, our current rate design underrecovered $600 per year compared to the full cost of providing service.

Um I stated also uh just earlier that when we go to the rates that we actually propose that we'll get to here in a few slides, but we actually proposed in terms of the access and facilities charge per day rate, the access and facilities per KWH rate, and the demand charge that we're proposing, those rate calculations were not based on the sample of 28, but they were based on the overall residential class usage and uh forecasted bill in determinants for the overall rate class of the seven based on the 700 customer sample, not the subset of the 28 sample.

Okay, I think I understand that.

And then just not to be confused on this slide, the $50 a month, which is what you started with your first supplemental filing or with the first filing supplemental filing, actually.

Um that 25 in the second bullet has nothing to do with the additional supplemental filing in which you changed it from 50 to 25, correct?

It's just a coincidence that those numbers are the same.

That is a coincidence.

Thank you.

I would note that this method of estimating cost shift and under recovery cost of uh providing service is is not something unique to Colorado Springs utilities, as uh councilwoman uh Williams pointed out earlier.

This is a known issue that was known at the time net metering policies were put in place.

Uh our consultant has published work where they did the same analysis for other utilities across the country.

And not a surprise that this the cost shift for Collier Springs utilities is somewhere in the middle of the overall range of other utilities that they at that they studied.

As you'd expect, uh some of these results are based on where these utilities are located, with uh the higher cost shift utilities being those in California, where there's more uh not only more solar adoption, but higher utility cost in general.

Um, and then you know the overall underlying rate designs play an impact on what a particular uh cost shift is for a particular utility.

But I wanted just to point out that we our our result is somewhere in the middle of this range studied.

Councilman Henjam.

So um, Scott, non-solar customers are not generating energy when the sun is up, but solar customers are.

So, what's the value of that solar generation during that time?

I mean, how are we calculating that?

What's the value to CSU?

Yeah, great case.

And it comes a little bit of the response is a follow-up to uh Councilman Limeweber's question about the compliance with state mandates.

So one of the benefits is when utilities uh had the solar rebate in effect, and in terms in exchange for accepting that rebate, utilities received the renewable energy credits to count against our uh requirements toward the state mandate.

We have a mandate under the state statute for a 10% of our energy usage coming from renewable energy sources, and and we meet that requirement.

Uh utilities provided the board a compliance report in August related to this information.

Of that 10% requirement for renewable energy of our overall energy portfolio, net metering customers represent about 9% of that 10% uh renewable energy.

But utilities are the rest of our customers do benefit from the renewable attributes in meeting that state mandate.

And also during those middle middle of the day hours, uh, we're able to avoid purchasing other power to provide some amount of other power to other customers.

That was excess generation as entering the grid and being used by other customers.

But I would also note that those hours of the day are less expensive to serve customers.

Uh so um that's taken into it.

And is that value considered in the overall calculation?

The value of that generation, even if it's even if it's low during those peak hours, peak hours of generation.

Is that calculated?

The value.

The rates that we've proposed are based on the cost of service of providing service to net metering customers.

Our base rates recover the cost of our system and in our of our infrastructure.

We're not proposing any changes to the energy component.

So net metering customers can under our proposal will continue to net and carry forward the cost of that not only the access and facilities per KWH charge that we're proposing, but also the value of the ECA charge, which really accounts for that energy piece that's being sent back and counted as the excess credit.

Tristan Gearhart, uh CFO just uh stepping up here again.

I just wanted to um Miss Henjin um answer this as as succinctly as I can.

So in that middle part of the day, we have energy out there that is much less expensive than the um all in 12 cent um per kilowatt hour credits that we are seeing for the uh net metering.

So um, from an energy standpoint, it's not um the lowest priced um energy that I can buy for all of our customers at Colorado Springs.

So it's not necessarily helping at that time of day.

And what is happening when the sun goes down and we don't have generation going on at the um net metering uh customers' solar facilities is now we still need a system that's big enough from a demand side to be able to meet all of those needs.

That's what's really driving this five and a half million dollars is that whole effect that's going on there, and it's both on the energy production side since we have so much more um solar that's available now.

Our net metering solar that we're effectively um exchanging at a uh rate that's much higher than what the market price would be for energy in the same period of the day.

At nighttime, we have customers that look very much like all of our other residential customers that we have to build a system that's equally as big to give them full access to the grid to be able to build that up and be able to support the energy that they are looking for.

What we're proposing from changes today really uh deals with that demand.

The how big do we need to build our system to support all the customers that are connected to it at that point in time in the day?

Okay, well, and this gets to maybe the bigger strategic question about our energy portfolio, which we'll say for later, but um just one last question about uh this energy that's generated that either the the solar pan solar customers can't use or we can't use.

Are we do we have any capacity in the battery systems that we have purchased for our larger arrays for the more industrial solar?

Do we have any capacity that could be used for for uh rooftop solar?

Yeah, and again, when we look at those batteries, um, just from an overall economic standpoint, what we're looking to put into those batteries is our least expensive energy.

And from the way that things are set up right now, this net generation uh uh net metering uh solar generation would not be our lowest cost energy.

So we're looking to put other resources into that 100 megawatt battery that we have so that we can release the least cost energy during the highest peak time just from the um highest cost period of time that's out there.

So we have a hundred megawatts of battery.

We're looking to put the least expensive amount of energy to store in and release and lower the cost during that high um point of the day that's out there.

We wouldn't take what's one of our more expensive um cost of generation and uh net metering solar and put that into the batteries.

So you're saying net metering on solar on homes is more expensive than the energy that's produced at a solar farm, is that right?

It is, yes, by a factor of four or five times.

Okay.

Thank you.

I think a common question that we receive is why can't net metering customers uh just be billed the same charges as other residential customers under the energy-wise program.

And unfortunately, the answer is that does not reflect the cost of providing service to net metering customers because of the way the net metering program is structured under state law with the exchange of energy uh in terms of one-to-one uh across time periods.

Uh again, net metering doesn't just stipulate exchange of energy one to one uh within a given day, so during the middle of the day, one day to the evening hours that same day, but also from day to day, week to week and month to month.

That effect of exchanging those credited excess kilowatt hours across time and combined with the under under quantification that we discussed earlier uh really leaves us with the establishment of a rate specific to net metering customers that is cost reflective, and our proposal is to establish uh a demand charge uh to to do that, and that's also the recommendation from our consultants that we've been working with.

Again, I wanted to just come back to this graphic of system cost and remember that we use the cash needs basis for our revenue requirements.

So each of these portions of the dollar represent real cost that utilities has uh to provide service.

Environmental benefits, although very valuable, and you know, we need to meet state mandates, and there's other reasons for uh environmental benefits, they don't reduce our obligations to pay our principal and interest payments to bondholders.

They don't reduce our cost of performing plant maintenance.

Utilities needs to recover the cost of providing service, and we've illustrated that a volumetric energy per capita per KWH charge does not recover that cost because of the limitations under the current state statute.

We provided our proposal for that that we've brought in in this rate case in compliance with the rate design guidelines as is as established by utilities board in 2020, specifically under board instruction pricing of services, utilities is to develop rates that are just reasonable and not unduly discriminatory.

Under the rate design guidelines, the board established five priorities as we design rates, and these are prioritized in the order as uh given by the board.

The first priority is economic efficiency, and that's that rates act as a price signal reflecting the true cost so that customers can make informed decisions based on the true cost of electricity whenever that is being consumed.

The second priority is revenue stability.

As I mentioned on the previous slide, utilities has real obligations and cash expenditures to provide service.

We need reliable revenues to be able to meet those obligations.

The third priority, equitable for all customers.

And this really speaks to shifting costs from one customer class to another.

And any rate structure does that to some degree, and we know in terms of our in the past, we have had industrial rates that are under cost of service, and other rate classes are making up some of that revenue revenue requirement.

As part of utilities' five-year rate plan rate case last year, through that five-year period, utilities is moving each rate class toward 100% of their cost of service through that five-year period.

So we're making a conscious effort to eliminate any cross-subsidization between rate classes.

And with energy-wise rates, we're trying to eliminate cross-subsidization within rate classes.

That is energy-wise is still not enough to eliminate that intra-class uh subsidization between non-solar and solar customers.

Uh, and that's why we believe the demand charge is the best way to do that as it reflects the cost causation.

The other uh the last two priorities as established by the board are customer satisfaction and customer bill stability.

Yes.

Councilman Hincham.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

So, Scott, this slide actually really gets to the heart of where I'm struggling as a member of the essentially the public utility um commission here.

Um and these are these are great guidelines, and they were put together by a set of a body that none of which is sitting here right now.

Um they're solid, they're good, um, and and I support them.

Um what I'm struggling with is that you all have, and and and this is really important.

I mean, uh we need to address this reality of the cost.

I am I am not disputing that whatsoever.

Um but the rate case, the design that you put before us was put before us on August 18th.

And in my four and a half years on the board, I have developed a profound amount of trust and respect for you and every leader at utilities.

And you've done an exquisite job of making sure whoever's sitting on that board or that council at the time, and it changes every two years.

You make sure that we understand whether it's Eastern wastewater, how we're gonna do that, you actually seek our input, you present over months the same information multiple times, getting input, making sure we're aware and understand.

You did that last year with a five-year unprecedented five-year rate case that you had, I believe it was a unanimous vote on from this from the city council.

Um, that was really significant and had a good decent amount of public pushback, nothing close to this.

But what you missed this time is in particular on equitable for all for all customers.

The folks sitting in this room do not feel what you're doing is equitable.

Um, customer satisfaction, they're certainly not satisfied, and their bill stability is going to change.

And so that is the essence of my frustration with what you are bringing before us today, is you have not for me, you have not given this body the time to digest and understand the specifics.

We're still asking questions.

Um this should have been done over the last six, seven.

Well, actually, as the point was made earlier, you saw this coming years ago.

And so um, and granted, I know you all have been working behind the scenes on this, but this is the body that approves it.

This is the body that's responsible to the people out here.

And I know you know that you've helped, you know, you've helped you help instill that in each and every one of us.

So this is where I'm this is just really where I'm struggling.

Yes, Miss Injuma.

I I appreciate your comments here, and I know that there's a lot inside of this that um comes back to that.

We and uh, you know, as the CFO for the utilities, I'll wear that all day long.

If there was not enough time that um went into uh talking about this ahead of time, I'll I'll wear that.

Um, but what I would say is we followed the process that we have for other rate cases, and these rates do not go in effect until 2027.

If we look at the timeline that came for these rates compared to what we did for five years' worth of rates last year, it's the same timeline of when things were introduced.

We um had a lot of discussion that went on about these things, and when we look at these um priorities that are here, what I feel like my job as the CFO of the utilities is, and um, that's why I wanted to be standing up here, not Scott.

When I look at these, I have to look at 250,000 electric customers, and how does that apply to each and every one of them?

Not just 9,000 customers, 250,000 customers.

What is fair inside of these rates for them?

What is equitable, what is uh just reasonable and non do not unduly discriminatory.

If there's a cost shift that is happening between customers, I have to look at that from the perspective of all 250,000 customers and make sure that we are presenting rates.

I believe that's our requirement.

That's what the board has instructed us to do.

Bring rates that uh address that as best we can.

It's tough inside of this, we're working off a forecast, we're looking at those things.

They're not going to be 100% perfect, but if we're aware of a five and a half million dollar shift, we should be bringing something that in the best way we possibly can deal with that shift between customers, address that.

And I do believe that that's what we have here.

I believe it addresses each of these um items that are out there when thinking about the larger system of 250,000 customers, 220,000 residential customers.

Those 220,000 customers were not involved in a decision on rooftop solar for other customers.

And I can't ask them to uh come back and subsidize that five and a half million dollars now that we're aware of it.

Councilman Williams.

And Tristan, you're absolutely right.

That is not your job.

That is our job as the board.

But if I read this slide right here, number one is rates that are just reasonable and not unduly discriminatory.

And for whatever reason, we got to ignore that one every year up until now.

So I have a hard time looking at this and being told today, October 14th and 2025 that this is number one, and this is the first thing we look at when it hasn't been done in 24 or 23 or 22 or 21 or fill in the blank.

And I get that there's reasons that have justified that in some way, shape, or form, but it was still a true statement today.

And yes, you you're looking out for everybody, and there's all of the other customers, but the previous boards to this one made the decision to continue this practice, even though it was unduly discriminatory.

And you're absolutely right.

The timeline is such that this does not have to be implemented or it's proposed to be implemented until 2027.

So it does not need to be passed today.

We don't need to rush through this process and we have that time.

But if we do pass this today, undoing that is going to be a lot more difficult than just having the conversation and figuring out how we get from here to there.

And as a board member, I don't feel like I was given a chance to weigh in on other options and then take those to the community and then have that bigger conversation because it has been unduly discriminatory.

We have known that.

So let's unravel this unduly discriminatory in a way that isn't just ripping off a band-aid because we know it's 0.2% of a $2.2 billion budget or 2.3, whatever we're passing this year.

And and really run it through the fine tooth comb and have those conversations because it hasn't been done until now.

I don't know why we we get to be the ones that deal with this, but you know, I'm glad that that we're all here because we're very interested.

But I don't think that because we've been able to ignore number one for you know five, six, seven, ten years.

That means that that today is the day that we fix it.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um I want to take a different angle at this.

Let's kind of get off of this for a second, uh, putting my business development hat on for a second.

Have you all engage with the solar industry currently to see what their thought is?

Because I'm just go hypothetical.

Let's say I owned a solar farm or let's say I'm selling solar panels.

What should I tell the ratepayers now?

Kind of curious from a business perspective, because this is gonna have I know what we're looking at right now.

What I'm looking at, it's a second and third order effects.

So from a business perspective in a solar industry perspective, what are the ramifications?

And from a broader solar industry perspective, we have been asking those questions.

That's why we've ended up with the um purchase power agreements that we have for large-scale solar, which has come back in at uh a much lower price that's there.

So, really, as we look at this moving forward in those second and third order effects, my some of my concern is goes right to the first um sub-bullet under um economic um efficiency here.

We're not sending the right price signal to um the uh solar industry in Colorado Springs because what we were looking at is a five and a half million dollar subsidy that is coming from other customers in order to make that viable in Colorado Springs by not properly addressing that and saying here is the true cost of solar rooftop solar in Colorado Springs, we will continue to perpetuate that problem.

It doesn't stay at five and a half million dollars, it grows larger.

We felt, and again, if we had the opportunity to have brought this last year safely inside of what was going on from a state perspective, we would have tied this directly with the the five-year rate case and energy-wise rates that are rolling to effect right now.

We're at where we're at right now, and um moving this forward in 2027 gives us every opportunity to deal with that five and a half million dollars and send that proper price signal to the uh industry of what it truly costs to have rooftop solar and still be able to be connected to a utility system.

Our um net metering customers ultimately are still connected to that to the system when their panels are not producing, and we have to build a system large enough to cover that as well as the other 250,000 customers.

So let's stay on rates.

As a rate payer, what's my incentive to go out and get solar panels right now?

It's a uh financial decision that I think every customer uh makes out there and has to do it inside of the rates that we give them.

So customers and what I would just say inside of this is customers make all kinds of uh uh purchase decisions behind their meter, and um they do that with the existing knowledge of what rates are at that point in time.

Uh uh, let's take net metering out of the equation.

If you're a customer that went out and bought an electric vehicle, that's a large purchase.

You're making assumptions on what your fuel savings will be based on utilities rates that are in effect at that time.

In the last five years, we've now upped those rates, and people's payback on those electric vehicles have changed.

We do not guarantee rates because we are a municipal utility that has to set rates that recover the cost of service and try to do that as efficiently as we can amongst all customers.

Thank you.

Councilman Bailey.

Thank you, Madam President.

And the uh at the risk of bogging this down even further, I'll I'll make a comment, but my intent is to try to move things along.

I I I've listened to a lot of comments about maybe what past boards and past councils have done.

And to me, the you know, inaction or inattention of anybody that came before I got up here six months ago, is irrelevant because I can't do any job now is to fix those problems to address those problems.

We have in front of us a proposal that does that.

And we've had this in one form or another, substantially the same.

We've known what we're gonna see for at least two months now.

We've had plenty of time to read through the book, we've had some supplementals, we've had actually we've had some very good um response and adjustments from utilities based on the uh concerns that utilities board members raised and the public has raised.

We reflect that have reflected that.

So I I guess what I what I would just like to see is let's finish this process, let's finish listening to this, and not kick the can down the road yet again.

The cost keeps going up every single day.

This delta that we're trying to address goes up every single time a salesman sells a homeowner on putting solar panels on their roof based on bad information and bad assumptions.

And that's we we can't afford to do that.

The price signal that you're talking about is something that this rate case addresses.

And yes, somebody threw out the number of what small percentage of the total utilities budget, this five million dollars is that's the point.

The rate case addresses a huge amount of stuff, and we've got a hundred people in the room who are unhappy about having to pay back the subsidy that they've been getting for the last however many years.

So we explain that their capacity.

So I I just there may be time for public comment later.

But I'm talking now.

We have to clear the room because you won't listen.

Then maybe there won't be.

That's right.

You need to you will have time for public comment.

So please be respectful because we have been respectful and let him finish his comments, and then we will be respectful to you during public comment.

Let's try to have some decorum in this chamber.

So my point is what I just wanted to finish this is that just reasonable and not unduly discriminatory rates are perfectly reflected in the rate case that we have in front of us.

We can all look and figure out, do the math.

There's lots of engineers in the room.

There's lots of different ways to come up with the solution, the five five and a half million dollars, whatever number you want to come up with, we can come up with that any number of ways.

The fact is we've got a proposal in front of us.

We should consider that proposal and address the problem, address the deficiency that we have in the revenue from net meter and customers today.

Thank you.

So uh I'm gonna apologize to Scott.

I know we have several more slides that are in here, and I would like to move them through them rather quickly, knowing that we do have a lot of uh customer comment that is to come here.

So just um in very brief summary, the rates that we are looking at here and what was proposed has changes that go to the access and facility charges per day, those are those customer charges, the access and facility charges per KWH, those are energy charges, and the addition of a demand charge.

When it comes down to this case in its uh most basic form, that's what we're looking at and putting um in front of city council right now.

Just when we look at a demand charge in general, what does that mean?

Um energy usage, I think we all understand we consume so much energy, we track that in kilowatt hours.

A kilowatt by itself is what a demand charge is based on.

What's your instantaneous pull off of us off of the system?

And I do like this graphic that we have here.

If you think of demand, it is really the flow that's coming out of your shower head.

Um that is the instantaneous demand that you're you're seeing with the the kilowatts that you are pulling through.

Um, what's that water pressure like?

The uh energy use side of that is really how much uh water is going in to fill up the tub.

So as we're looking at things, what we've seen is um basing rates based on energy alone because of the way that they are credited out, does not cover all of the demand cost.

In order to do that, we need a demand charge that's based on your instantaneous pull to be able to do that.

In our initial proposal, it was going to be based on the yellow line that you see here, which was the highest demand in any given month during the five to nine Monday through Friday peak time that was there.

Going through and doing that in a lot of conversation with many of our customers really brought back the point to us that it was going to incentivize some behavior that we did not want to see inside of the energy broader energy wise program that we have.

Um just to be as frank as I can, many customers who um are here and even sitting in this room, um, let me know that they are very energy conscious, but that yellow bar, if we set the rates based on that, was going to incentivize them every single day Monday through Friday, five to nine to use at that same level because that's what they were going to be built on.

That does not incentivize the type of behavior we wanted to see from uh customers across the peak, being able to shave the peak, being able to ex uh extend our assets that we have put in place.

So if you look at this graphic, and I know um there's not numbers on here specifically, but it's really looking at in um any given month that's out there, there's about 20 to 22 on peak periods Monday through Friday, 5 to 9 p.m.

The change that we made with the supplemental filing was to go back and look at what the highest point in demand on all 22 of those uh points would be and take an average.

What that does is if you're a customer that did for whatever reason need to use more electricity, more of your devices at the same time, and had that yellow line that happened, you have the other 20 times in a month to be able to reduce your use across the peak and move forward um with rates that would be able to both send a signal from a price standpoint from a demand standpoint, use the demand calculations that we have and achieve some amount of recovery of the um five and a half million dollars through that demand charge, which covers the amount of usage that we're looking for from customers.

When Jim has a question, sorry.

Yeah, it's all right.

Thanks, Tristan.

Uh it's great that you listened to the the customers and got an honest answer and modified the rate case just what, like 10 days ago or whatever.

Um, but I guess that again just points to had had we been working with customers over a long period of time, you might not have had to file uh uh a supplemental so quickly.

I mean, it just happened so fast.

So um I just don't understand when you came up with this model and how you you changed it based on some feedback.

What what else can we figure out?

So uh again, the yellow line that you see here is industry standard when it comes to charging a demand cost.

That's what came back from our consultant and all of the pricing information that we have out there.

It's what many utilities across the utility uh uh country are looking at when it comes to demand charges for uh net metering solar customers, um, looking at that highest point that's out there.

We made a decision um based on feedback that was out there.

We found three or four other utilities that are looking at demand charges for their customers, Salt River uh power in particular down in Phoenix that use the average.

And one of the biggest concerns that I do have is if we have every one of our 9,000 um solar customers go through and change their behavior where they are using at that highest peak, we cause another problem from a demand standpoint in the infrastructure that's needed to be put in place, which is counterintuitive to what we are trying to do through energy-wise.

So as we receive that feedback, we move from what is industry standard to um something that is a smaller, it is um uh a approved method that's out there, it's used by a smaller number of utilities, but it also aligns very well with what we are trying to achieve in the five to nine Monday through Friday uh period of time.

If you look at the way this calculation runs through, so um to put some numbers to this, that blue bar that goes through, which would be the average of all of the other lines that are there.

If that averaged out to one and a half kilowatts pull through as the average demand, that would calculate at 43 cents times the one and a half kilowatts that are there times the number of days in the billing period.

So when you do all of that, that would uh come out to about $19, $19.48 for one and a half kilowatts used across that period of time.

Um just as we we look at things here, I'm gonna move on to this uh uh chart as well.

And Miss Injum, I do I do believe this speaks a little bit to what we saw as well.

Um being able to spread the usage out across the uh peak period for our solar customers, um, not as many devices at the same time.

So you'll see on there in the graphic that is on the right hand side, different electric devices, a dishwasher, uh electric clothes dryer, uh vehicle charger, and an oven.

If you use all of those at the same time, you would have a higher kilowatt demand that's going through your system.

We believe that the rates that we have established with the average demand um used as the billing determinant um encourages what we're seeing uh we would like to see, which is lower demand, spreading those uh um devices out over different periods of time, and ultimately um allows us to use our infrastructure longer.

We get more usage out of it because it we don't have to build to a bigger peak if people will use uh energy in this fashion.

We believe that it also gives um customers the opportunity to shift some of their overall kilowatt hours used over that time.

So, really from a net metering proposal, this gives two options to net metering customers to be able to move their usage in the way that they use their energy to be able to lower their bill, which is um really from an energy wise what we're trying to send a price signal to all customers, move some usage off of the five to nine period and find a way to be able to reduce your bill by doing so.

So we do just want to be able to point out that um the net metering proposal that we have is a continuation of the traditional net metering, one for one exchange of those credit hours that are are there.

We're keeping with those provisions.

We are um modifying some of the pricing that goes along in the per kilowatt hour access and facility charge that is there just to make sure it is appropriately priced.

We are um recognizing that the um in order to maintain the system that is needed to serve all customers, including net metering customers, at that peak time, there's a demand charge that's needed to be able to adequately address uh address those demand costs that we're we're seeing.

Um we believe that this uh maintains sustainable rates not just for net metering customers but for all of our customers, and um does deal with the the increased cost that we are seeing across that critical five to nine period.

Just in summary, as um I talk about what we have for net metering key considerations.

It really comes down to these these principles.

The sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day.

There's going to be a point in time where solar panels are not producing energy.

And when those solar panels are not producing energy, customers that may have those uh attached to their homes and businesses are still using energy, and we need to serve that energy.

There's a cost that comes along with that.

We have to build a system that's large enough to be able to support those needs whenever any of our customers ask for that energy.

And our um rates that we currently have established, it is not covering the net metering customers' full cost of service.

That's happening because of the interplay that happens with the uh crediting of hours in the middle part of the day with higher parts of the day from a cost standpoint.

We feel that it was important that we bring this case forward now to make sure that our um rates are just reasonable and not unduly discriminatory to any customer in order to make sure that we address as much of the cost shifting cost subsidy issue as we can across our entire customer uh base.

But we bring these um these motions in front of council for them to be able to decide what is the best way that we can deal with things.

We believe in the rates that we have brought forward, we believe that it helps with an issue that is out there and has been identified, and we do believe it's appropriate that we would move forward with these rates.

We have um described these things and uh new numerous different um avenues from our website, emails to customers.

Um we had an open house last Tuesday, we've had media interviews, we've had one-on-one meetings with customers, all of these things to make sure that we're trying to get out the message as best we can inside of the time frame that we've had here.

Again, um, just highlighting that we did have the event last Tuesday night and it um had um a lot of people that showed up at that um appreciate the feedback that continues to come from customers.

We know that this is not an easy topic for any of our customers, but we are trying to make sure that we're um adequately taking the time.

I know this has been a longer presentation, probably one of the longer that we've had, but this is a complex topic, and we wanted to make sure that we are addressing as many of the questions that we heard from things like the um uh public forum from emails that have come in to city council, trying to um address as many of the points that we can related to um what we feel and why we are proposing that we bring forward these things right now.

Councilman Rainey.

Was that the in other presentation or that's the last slide um in our part of the presentation in your part of presentation?

Okay.

I I think the one thing I just want to do uh publicly is I I want to thank you.

Uh, and the reason why is in the previous session, I threw down a gauntlet, and I wasn't polite about it.

I specifically told utilities you gotta go to the people.

Don't have them try to come to you.

You gotta go and give a message, and you gotta educate them.

Um you're doing that.

And this is you're absolutely correct.

This is not an easy topic.

It's very complex, is rooted in a lot of engineering talk, um, which has been happening for the last two and a half, three hours now.

Um with that being said, I I just want to personally thank you because I know I I kind of I I threw it out there, and I wanted you all to accept the challenge of going out and trying to meet the people to where they were and to make sure that we did our best, uh, not just as a utilities board, but you all as an entity to actually speak to them and understand their concerns.

And I know we're getting ready to hear those concerns, and um, trust me, I'm waiting on baby, but I'm excited to hear some of these concerns, but I I just want to personally thank you for standing up to the challenge.

I I have a hard time uh fully accepting those things because you know, two last Tuesday night.

I will say, you know, if I I wish with everything that I have that I could have stopped and talked to everyone that was at that meeting one-on-one after.

Um, and I would still welcome anybody to call, reach out to me, and I will do my my honest best to be able to respond to each and every one of your questions as best I can.

I know that this is a hard topic.

I know that it's not easy things that I'm saying, and you may disagree with uh a great deal of what I have out here, but I do want um our customers, all of our customers to know that I want to listen to them and um hear everything that we can and look for ways that we can bring the best solutions back for all of our customers.

So thank you, Councilman.

Thank you, Tristan Scott.

So we're getting ready for about two and a half um plus hours of public comment.

I'm sorry.

That's okay.

We're getting ready to do about two and a half hours of public comment.

So I was gonna ask my colleagues, do you want to just muscle through, or do you want to take five minutes?

Right.

I don't know if all right, we're gonna get this started again.

Um, and right before we go into public comment, we do have to do a city auditor comments as part of this hearing.

So I'm gonna turn it over to the city auditor.

Natalie Lovell, City Auditor, and Sean Alessio, who um conducted this audit is not here, so I'm filling in for him for the update.

Um the Office of the City Auditor uh has a mandate uttered under the city charter to audit rate cases for accuracy, transparency, and compliance.

We are not recommending or opposing any of the proposed changes.

The office verifies that utilities, cost of service studies, rate models, and rate case filings are mathematically correct, the methodology is consistent, and that it is supported by documentation.

So I will read for you what our conclusion is in the audit that we produced that we provided to this board.

We concluded that overall modifications included in the 2026 rate case filing reports and the supporting schedules for proposed rates and fees for the electric service were prepared accurately and consistently.

Methodology changes were appropriately disclosed in the utilities filing reports.

Changes were consistent with rate design guidance approved by utilities board, and based on the five-year electric cost of service study approved by city council effective January 1, 2025.

Having concluded that, we're going to move on to public comments.

Um we're starting with um per se per city code 12.1.108, the Colorado Solar and Storage Association, CASA, Solar United Neighbors, Sun, and certain Cora Springs ratepayers submitted a request for presentation of witness.

The witness will be allowed 15 minutes to present collectively.

I will now read the names of the all five witnesses, which is Casey Becker, Ellen Howard, Kitzer, Will Gill, Tanner Cox, and Scott Carter.

We will now hear from that organization.

And please step up, make sure the green light is on.

State your name for the record, and you have 15 minutes.

Sure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President, President Pro Tem and members of the council.

My name is Tanner Cox.

I am a Colorado Springs utilities rate payer.

For what it's worth, I'm a renter.

I do not own solar.

I am a resident in the first district.

And I am also the Colorado Program Director for Solar United Neighbors.

Sun is a vendor-neutral nonprofit that helps folks across the country access solar energy.

And we have joined today with the Colorado Solar and Storage Association, Solar Energy Industries Association, and Mr.

Scott Carter to present to you as joint solar parties.

Today is my daughter's birthday, her first birthday, and I'm here instead.

So I am not going to take four hours.

If you can give me four minutes, I am going to be to the point and move through this.

My goal is to help us all as I smack the mic, take a collective step back and evaluate what it is we're discussing and who exactly will be impacted by the decisions we make today.

Three questions that I'd like to discuss are what is net metering, what is a cost shift, and who is solar for.

To begin, net metering is a crediting system.

It is not a payment method.

This crediting system recognizes the energy solar customers deliver to their neighbors.

Every electron that is sent back to the grid is used close to you.

This saves the utility extra money on new generation and transmission costs.

Even more that homegrown power is going where it counts.

Maybe you're not home, but your next door neighbor with life-saving medical equipment is.

Or maybe that excess energy is going down the street to your kids' school to keep the power on during a fire drill.

Through net metering, everyone in this room who is a solar generator receives fair credit for the service they provide to the grid.

As a concept, um, the cost shift argument does a couple of things.

First of all, it looks at one slice of the pie.

It looks at the cost and does not evaluate the benefits.

Additionally, it equates lost revenue with new costs.

These are two separate things that are important to distinguish.

Utilities are allowed to design reasonable rates to account for projected costs, but making less money is not the same thing as acquiring new costs.

In our case, solar customers in CSU territory represent around a 1% decrease in sales, but do not represent a 1% increase in new costs.

While we do not agree that solar customers cause any cost shifting in CSU territory, it's important to recognize that we don't actually design rates based on every discrepancy and cost across customers.

It would create an unfair and unmanageable rate structure if that's what we decided to do.

For example, we don't charge people who live 30 miles from Nixon more than we charge people who live 10 miles away, even though the cost of serving those customers is different.

On a smaller scale, utilities lose revenue for every kilowatt hour that is not purchased from someone who installs LED light bulbs.

But nobody's sitting here talking about designing a new rate structure for customers with LED light bulbs.

Finally, I'd like to talk about who solar is for.

There's a misconception that solar is only for our wealthiest community members, and I have the benefit of helping homeowners across Colorado go solar.

And this year alone, my team and I have supported 950 Coloradans through this process.

I'm always amazed to see who's installing solar.

It's not just doctors, lawyers, professors, and the like.

It's farmers, it's teachers, it's pastors, it's plumbers.

I've met folks who use that extra money to upgrade to an induction stove.

And I've met other people who just want to visit their grandkids with their savings.

Solar is for everyone, and introducing the solar only rate will be most harmful to the people in our community who are just doing their best to get by.

We need to demystify solar.

Solar is not a threat to nor the salvation of our future.

Solar is a part of our history.

With every advancement, homegrown energy production has offered a way to pull folks out of poverty and improve the lives of countless others.

We have an opportunity to be proud of that history and carry on a long tradition of using energy to care for our family and neighbors.

There are paths forward.

We can look at time of use for solar customers.

We can look at incentivizing storage.

We can look at virtual power plants.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for letting me present today.

My name is Casey Becker, and I'm the CEO of the Colorado Solar and Storage Association.

We are a trade association that represents about 250 companies in Colorado from the very smallest solar companies to the very largest in the nation.

Our mission is to expand solar and storage markets and to generate jobs and prosperity for the people of Colorado.

First, CSU's net metering policy does not comply with state law.

State law makes it very clear that solar customers cannot be discriminated against and that they are entitled to one-to-one net metering.

Your utility has said yes, but local control in the state constitution.

And the reason that doesn't work here is there are lots of times that the state can say certain things are a matter of statewide concern.

You all have a lot of authority with your building codes to have what you want, but the state does set step in and say there must be minimum building codes.

You have a lot of authority when it comes to your traffic violations, but the state can require minimum uh compliance with certain traffic laws.

So that is what has happened here.

What the CSU, what you the utility is proposing violates state law.

That in itself should have you all go back to the drawing board.

Second, CSU's claims of a solar subsidy are overblown and don't account for the system benefits or other race rate cost shifts.

Residential solar represents an investment that residents make in their utility in exchange for being able to generate their own power and to get a slow, steady, and reliable payback for the power that they generate for the utility.

Every rooftop system is an avoided cost for bulk power system upgrades that the utility doesn't need to make.

CSU only considered the payout it makes to a solar user, not the benefit that it gets.

And the utility makes decisions all the time, as as Tanner stated, to shift costs.

And this is one time where you are choosing, we're gonna pick what we don't believe there to be a rate shift, a cost shift, but we're gonna address this one cost shift.

We're gonna address it in a discriminatory way, and we're going to address it in a way that um nullifies huge investments that your residents have been making for years.

The proposed demand charges are bad public policy.

As hard as it is to, as hard as Colorado Springs utility tries not to have power outages, it will.

But if you want to have a better process, invite more and more solutions and more options to you all to address the problem that Colorado Springs utility says it's trying to address.

So while we don't agree that there's a problem that needs fixing here, what you all could do is ask your utility to come back with several rate designs that would address this so-called five and a half million dollar gap.

But that's not what happened.

We can talk specifically about options that would leave your solar members completely whole while still addressing the problem that they that Colorado Springs utility has identified.

For instance, Excel says net metering customers only get compensated at the rate that they're contributing to.

So what these guys are saying is you're getting compensated for high peak charges, but you're only contributing at that low peak level.

They could create a time of use rate that applies to solar customers, but that's not what they did.

There are so many options available to you all to address this issue if you actually believe it's an issue that isn't this one, that isn't discriminatory and isn't a clear violation of state law.

I would strongly suggest that you pursue those options and actually engage in a conversation with the solar industry.

Thank you, Casey.

My name is Ellen Howard Kutzer.

I'm general counsel for COSA.

Happy to be here today.

So I'll get talk a little bit more about the specifics.

So as you heard from utilities, the energy-wise net metering rate is a five-part solar only rate for customers in the residential and small, medium, and large commercial classes.

It's comprised of five different components.

I didn't hear utilities touch on this, so I will briefly.

An access and facilities charge, that is a fixed charge.

Another access and facilities charge based on a customer's overall use in kilowatt hours, the demand charge that's based on the highest average monthly demand during the peak period of 5 p.m.

to 9 p.m., and two energy charges that are based on a customer's overall use.

Importantly, this rate is solar only, meaning that this same structure does not apply to non-solar customers in the same rate class.

Under these energy-wise net metering rates, a greater portion of the average solar customer's bill will be based on fixed or demand charges, about 61% under our calculations.

These charges cannot be offset by generation and net metering, which is a dramatic change from the status quo.

The impact of this new rate design is that solar customers abilities are expected to go up anywhere between two times and 10 times their current bill amounts based on Colorado Springs analysis.

So as Ms.

Becker alluded to, a solar only rate is explicitly prohibited under existing law and is illegal because it is discriminatory.

Colorado's net metering statutes for municipal utilities prohibit discriminating against customers who adopt solar.

Utilities cannot establish rates that treat solar customers differently from the remaining rate class.

That's exactly what's been happening, what is proposed here.

Net metering laws also require customers to be compensated against their retail electricity consumption for any excess energy that they export.

This compensation must be at a one-to-one ratio and must cover both energy and delivery charges.

The energy-wise net metering rates do not provide for this compensation structure.

In addition, and contrary to CSU's arguments, the home release provisions of the Colorado Constitution do not exempt CSU from complying with these net metering laws because net metering is an issue of statewide concern.

In 2008, the Colorado legislature made clear that net metering is a statewide policy that applies equally, no matter where a customer lives in the state.

CSU is required to comply with the laws on the books.

The energy-wise net metering rates are not consistent with these requirements.

CSU's claim of a solar subsidy is flawed.

CSU's alleged shift, and as Mr.

Cox pointed out, the mathematics do not add up.

The cost shift calculations fail to consider the benefits of solar, included the avoided costs of transmitting generation from faraway sources to CSU's customers.

The mathematics that CSU has put forward do not account for that benefit.

CSU's claims about the magnitude of the cost shift are also overblown.

Even under their flawed mathematics, less than 1% of system sales are attributable to the so-called solar cost shift.

That's meaningful because in CSU's own cost of service study, there is a $9 million cost shift from the large industrial customer rate class to residential customers.

That cost shift is almost two times larger than the purported cost shift for solar.

And as Mr.

Cox pointed out, solar customers don't increase costs.

They are decreasing expected sales.

This is a last revenue calculation that has been comported to be a cost shift.

I urge council to consider that as they consider the proposal as a whole.

Energy-wise net metering rates contain this unworkable and punitive demand charge that is incredibly problematic.

And it's very, very difficult for residential customers in particular to control the amount of electricity that they're using at any one time.

Unlike a commercial customer who may be a full-time employee to manage energy use, an average household isn't watching how many electronics they're using at any one time.

And while CSU's opening presentation stated that a 1.5 Thank you.

Thank you, your 15 minutes strap.

Councilman Hindum.

Yes, actually, uh, Madam President, um, there's a lot of information that's presented here that's extremely different from what we've been presented and had quite a bit of time to digest.

Um this either either we need to pull net metering out of the rate case and take the next year to fully understand this and have this conversation with the industry, or we need to take the time it takes right now to fully understand what's being presented to us.

How long do you have?

Uh I understood we had 20 minutes and we can fit it in that time.

So I apologize for the misunderstanding.

15 was what was given.

Can you give her five minutes on the clock and no more?

Thank you.

I'll be I'll be quick.

Uh CSU's opening presentation stated that a 1.5 kilowatt demand charge is typical, but that it's actually quite low for your average customer.

A five kilowatt demand charge is more typical and consistent with the national median and would yield a $65 a month demand charge rather than the $16 that CSU put forward.

Um I would say that CSU's own consultants have identified problems.

I'm sorry, the slides aren't working, have identified problems with the rate class, thank you.

Umly study 28 customers were studied.

Um pointed out problems with the two-part demand charge being hard to understand for customers.

As I stated earlier, uh average customers will see a 200 to 400% increase in their bills, solar customers.

Worst case scenario, an EV customer solar, 1,000% increase in rates.

Compare that to the 6% rate increase that this council had considered last year.

That's a very significant difference in an order of magnitude.

I'm gonna stop there and let Mr.

Carter share his experience.

Thank you.

Hi there, my name's Scott Carter.

I'm a solar owner here.

Um basically when I saw that initial bill where they said it was going to go up by 50 um 50 dollars, I knew something just must be wrong because it would actually be more economical for me to remove my solar panels, become a standard rate payer at that point.

It seems impossible that that would be the case.

Um so I dug into it a little deeper and I found two flaws in their method.

One is they use demand charges, which are typically only used for large industry, um, and not used on homeowners, typically.

The other thing is they were focusing on just one cost shift.

There was never a talk in all that four hours that we heard.

There was nothing to ever talking about the cost shifts going the other direction.

Um obviously, if I if it was more economically feasible for me to become a standard customer, there must be a cost shift going in the other direction that they're not counting for.

Um, just plain math.

I don't know where it is.

Um, they're the experts, but maybe they need to be looking at um other other technologies, other ways of doing things.

You know, this was just my little piece of it, but I think just seeing that it's more economical for me to change, showed that there's something wrong.

Even with their new rate case, it did make it a little bit easier for me.

I actually had to dig back through all my old bills.

Sorry, I had to dig back through all my old bills to figure out would it still be better for me to not be a solar customer.

Um it's about break even at this point, but there is no way I would ever become a solar customer right now with this particular rate.

There's zero financial, it will never pay back.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Madam President, to briefly conclude, we'd like uh three actions from council today.

We'd like you to specifically consider our written comments as a part of the record in the rate case, those have been submitted.

Uh we ask you to reject the illegal energy-wise net metering rates for solar customers.

And if CSU wants to bring back another rate proposals, please make sure that goes through a thorough public process, that it conforms with uh raw rate policies, including Colorado law, and is in the best interest of all of CSU's customers.

Thank you so much for your time today.

Councilman Hingem.

Yeah, I just would like to formally request of staff um that you address some of the points that were made in this presentation when you come back after your break.

I I need to understand there were some very different perspectives that were offered, and as we'll be making decisions about whether or not to keep this in the rate case, I would uh appreciate understanding uh what you can speak to in this in this hearing.

Thank you.

We will now go um into public comment, and I would ask everybody to please put your phone on silent because um it is nerve-wracking for people up here, and it's very disturbing for us as well.

So if you could please put your phone on silent or turn it off for this portion, I would greatly appreciate it.

And we're gonna start with Rona Kolp.

Can you make sure that the green light is on?

Yep, and then state your name for the record.

Thank you.

I still can't hear you.

Is there a green light?

There's the green.

There you go.

Yo, thank you, Lynette.

Appreciate that.

All right.

Um, I like um the gentleman over here, I want to thank Tristan for bringing this up.

This is the first time I saw it.

This transparency to show us this cost um figure was absolutely key and critical.

So let me go in.

Come on, please, please.

Nope.

That one.

All right.

So this is me.

I go to the Colorado Springs utilities um usage dashboard, and I show bronco orange uh starting at five o'clock what I'm contributing, and the bronco blue what I'm actually using.

And um, and so if you look at that window, you see the calculations down here are a 10x difference.

So the current rate structure does not include uh the net positive during that five to nine period of what I'm supplying to the grid.

And since electricity is fungible, fungible, fungible, um, that between five and six forty-five I'm giving to my neighbor, he's using it, he's getting charged 30 some cents a kilowatt hour, and I'm getting charged 30 some cents a kilowatt hour for supplying energy during that window.

So you're making my, as somebody already said, you're making my solar panels essentially the world's most expensive um uh uh hail damage protection system, which is not really nice.

So, enough complaining.

I'd like to propose a solution.

If you modify uh the tariff rates to say if it if I'm supplying net energy in that five to nine period, just put a zero there and only charge me the blue maximum, whatever you want to do for those 15-minute segments where I'm actually using your electricity.

Pretty simple change, helps me protect my investment, and hopefully it helps um other solar panel users as well.

But the real net win here is for the utilities, and I think you guys have touched on that.

Go to the next slide.

Thank you.

Your two minutes are over.

We need to stay on two-minute tasks to get through all of you this afternoon.

We will now move on to Liz Clement.

And again, if you can make sure the green light is on, state your name for the record.

Yes, it is.

My name is two minutes.

Thank you.

I'm a net metering customer.

I'm urging you to not approve this today.

This was before I heard all of the other arguments for that.

I would like for you to limit our increase to six and a half percent because I feel like that's fair and equitable.

It's obvious to me there has not been a lot of research when it changed.

This presentation they showed today is is there were three slides from the original presentation.

So there's it's been less than transparent, has already been mentioned.

And I just want to talk about the budget for a minute.

And at 27, it's 1.1 trillion or billion dollar budget, 1.12.

We're five and a half million.

If this hundred dollar bill represents the budget, this could also be used to represent a residential customer's electric bill.

Our five and a half million dollars is this nickel.

Okay.

Why are we having so much time on this nickel when we've got two thousand to look at over here?

A lot of the other stuff has been covered.

Uh the budget, the alleged subsidy.

Um, I don't think all of the benefits have been calculated.

I've had questions I've submitted over three weeks ago that have not been answered on this.

There was no information provided by CSU about the state norms.

I did find that Colorado state law allows for a two percent of the rate to go towards renewable energy projects.

So I think the half percent that is currently allegedly being subsidized is within that level of reach reason.

Unless you have other information that we haven't been presented, the fact that they've changed it and it's over a 200% rate increase, you would never do this on any other customer.

If we're that far behind, then have a five-year plan.

Don't just fix it in a year.

This has been a six-year problem.

I don't understand the urgency of why it has to be fixed today or in 27.

I think you should wait.

Um, I'm very disappointed the batteries weren't considered.

We weren't considered part of the solution instead of adversaries, that's how it feels.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Gene Taylor, and we have been net metering customers since 2018.

If your solar demand charge passes, it now seems to be being punished for adopting solar.

The math used to justify this demand charge just does not add up.

Where does it reflect the cost of installing energy producing infrastructure for our city?

If 9,000 solar customers spent $20,000 each to add solar panels, which is a low estimate of the cost, that is $180 million worth of infrastructure that both reduces energy demand and feeds into the grid.

I have never received any money for producing excess energy.

Like most net metering customers, our excess production is rolled over into credits, which all get used up in late winter and early spring, not the time of year that air conditioning is making demands on the system.

The CSU website also states that solar customers who do not roll over their credits get paid two cents per kilowatt hour for their excess production, not 12 cents a kilowatt hour.

In the same in the email from October the 1st, CSU claims that utility scale solar uh installations generated about three cents a kilowatt hour.

They're sending mixed messages when the website says one thing and the email says the other.

We did not install solar to get rich, but to reduce our fossil fuel footprint, which has the benefit of a clean environment and cleaner air for our whole city.

The sun shines an average of 300 days in Colorado Springs.

The combination of solar plus battery banks could give both individual homeowners and the city resilience and energy independence for years to come.

I recently contacted my solar company about adding batteries to my system, and their response was this with all the anti-solar policies in Colorado Springs, we had to make the difficult decision to stop operating in the area.

Your proposed demand charge is already impacting the local solar industry and will depress the future installation of solar in Colorado Springs, which I believe is a very short-sighted policy.

Thank you for listening.

Devin Rand.

Hello, thank you.

My name is Devin Rand.

I've been a Colorado Springs resident uh since 2019.

We have been uh solar customers just recently this year.

Um, upon learning about the 50, um, the $50 subsidy, basically, that or not subsidy, but the charge that CSU wanted to implement.

We are a little upset about that, knowing that we had just installed solar in order to reduce our costs.

We weren't trying to eliminate it completely, but we want it to be more financially economical for our family, and that's what we felt was the best option for us after a substantial investment into it.

This seemed unreasonable, and it seemed like a shock.

And then we saw, oh, basically a week later they reduced it to 25, which means they did find something in their initial math that was wrong that they could come back and reduce it more.

So another point I wanted to address was in their uh proposed net metering rate design, it says customer satisfaction.

Well, as a customer of Colorado Springs Utilities, I am not satisfied with this proposal.

And as a former health care administrator, customer satisfaction is very important to health care because you want customers to come to your clinic to know that they can trust you.

Unfortunately, here in Colorado Springs, we have one utility system that we can choose from.

We don't have the option of going somewhere else.

And that is a big, and I think that is something that they just kind of overlook, where it's like if they're not satisfied, oh well, they got to come to us anyway.

And important, and my final comment would be to do uh the um responses are not fully discriminatory or not uh unduly discriminatory.

This is discriminating against solar customers customers uh purely because it only affects us.

It does not affect people that don't have solar, and I think that is very unfair.

It is discriminatory to us from the investments that we as solar customers have made for our own houses.

And I do also want to reiterate the fact that the additional usage that we produce don't go to us, they don't get saved.

They are transported to other customers.

So again, we are producing energy for other customers in Colorado Springs.

Thank you very much.

Kate Brady.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Catherine Brady, and I live on Fox Road in Cascade, Colorado.

Although I do not live in the city and therefore do not vote for council, I am a CSU customer for water and electricity.

Two years ago, we moved up to Cascade to winterize a cabin my parent grandparents built in the 1930s.

We chose to go all electric with our upgrades because we wanted to minimize our contribution to global climate change.

This spring, we chose to install solar panels and battery backup for the same reason.

We went live with net metering on August 8th.

On August 21st, we received emailed notice about the proposed new fee structure.

I'm here to express two concerns, one personal and one global.

Personally, my family invested our own money to build infrastructure that is and will continue to produce clean renewable energy for CSU at no cost to CSU.

We did this to help our community utility speed the transition to the energy of the future.

We didn't expect to be rewarded for doing that, but we certainly didn't anticipate being singled out for doing the right thing.

More broadly, as a c as a customer of CSU and a resident of this region, I'm very concerned that this suggests that our community utility company no longer prioritizes the transition to clean energy.

Your website says that you are committed to building a sustainable energy future, but I'm not sure how disincentivizing future net metering customers through the proposed changes to the fee structure accomplishes that.

Thank you for your time.

Carolyn Dickerson, hello, my name is Carolyn Dickerson.

And I am one of the 9K constituents who have invested up front to contribute clean energy to our grid, trusting Colorado Springs Utilities as a fair and stable partner.

This trust is similar to the trust that Colorado Springs Utilities has placed in underline, where Colorado Springs Utilities is investing heavily upfront, expecting a long-term payback from a fair and trusted partner.

Where Colorado Springs utilities provide services in kind or at cost to allow a smaller municipality to access bulk pricing.

How would Colorado Springs utilities respond if their fair and trusted partner underline found a way to sharply and suddenly decrease or eliminate Colorado Springs Utilities long-term investment?

How would the people in the ARPA respond if Colorado Springs Utilities found a study showing hidden costs and started charging full professional rates and storage fees?

As illustrated by Colorado Springs slides earlier today, Colorado Springs Utilities has been working on this known rate issue for years, all the while its own constituents are blindsided by the upcoming rate change.

I would ask that the board reject the current proposal and direct Colorado Springs Utilities to engage its own constituents to develop a fair understood and trusted partnership.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Derek La.

Good afternoon, Council members.

My name's Derek Law.

I'm a 21 and a half year air and space force veteran, like many of you on the board.

Um I also um made made a choice to just for my family to stay here and retire and make Colorado Springs our home.

I serve as the chair of the Southeastern chapter of Colorado Renewable Energy Society.

And uh like thousands of others, I invested in rooftop solar because I believe in doing my part uh to build a cleaner, more resilient city.

Uh but what CSU is proposing now feels deeply unfair and unlawful.

Many of us made life-changing financial decisions under CSU's original terms, which they've which also includes includes a $15 a month connection fee already, uh, and an exclusion from the time of use option.

Uh and now they're trying to retroactively rewrite those rules.

CSU still refuses to show the math uh behind those new charges, um and that lacks the transparency that violates the spirit of code 12.1.108E, which requires that uh electric um rates be just reasonable and sufficient, not unduly discriminatory.

Uh and Colorado statutes 40.9.5, one 118 and 40-2-124, protecting this uh distributed generation customers.

If solar customers are carved into a separate class and build worse than identical non-solar customers, that's discrimination, plain and simple.

CSU also uh encouraged us to switch to heat pumps, electric appliances to cut our fossil fuel generation, which we did in good faith, and now we're being penalized.

The proposal just doesn't re punish responsibility, it also ignores the real solutions.

Uh, there's a National Renewable Energy Laboratory report that found that 38 of 44 states, uh, the cost shift to non-stolar customers is less than a dollar a month.

So, a question for CSU.

Can you show your calculations for that cost shift?

Can you publish them?

Uh CSU truly wants to fix this, they'd expand the grid level storage, which they said they're doing, but we don't know what those batteries can provide.

Thank you.

Nancy Stillwagen, good afternoon.

My name is Nancy Stillway, and I'm an Air Force retired veteran.

I live at 1626 East Platte Avenue, just south of the main entrance to the Olympic Training Center, and I've lived there for over 25 years.

I'm speaking today against the proposed rate increase.

A few years ago, I made a major investment to support our city's clean energy goals.

And my solar power system, which includes panels and inverters, cost me over $25,000, which I am still paying off.

A serious commitment to sustainability, and to helping build a more resilient local grid.

My system is part of Colorado Springs utilities infrastructure.

When my panels generate more power than I use, that energy flows back into the grid, supporting my neighbors and reducing demand on the utilities resources.

We also also often hear claims about the cult solar cost shift, but uh a number of people have already addressed the fallacy of that.

Raising rates now punishes those who already have invested in our community's energy future.

It discourages that very behavior, conservation, and local generation that we should be encouraging, not to mention it's gonna hurt our solar power industry.

I urge the board to reject this increase to base decisions on evidence rather than outdated myths, and to recognize that homeowners with solar are partners in progress, not burdens.

Thank you for your time.

Brian Safion Madam President, members of council, my name is Brian Safin, and I live in the Rock Riman neighborhood of Colorado Springs.

I'm asking you to vote no on the net metering rate proposal from Colorado Springs utilities because of math, equity, and transparency.

My solar panel system represents an investment of tens of thousands of dollars in my home's value, clean energy for our local community, and in the local business that performed the installation.

Utility says that it appreciates and values the investment that I've made.

However, this proposal completely ignores my investment and the loan payments that I continue to make every month for decades to come.

That math is missing.

Given the relative mix of customers, a $25 increase in my bill would benefit my non-net metering neighbors by only one dollar a month, not even enough to buy a cup of coffee.

This proposal will disproportionately harm net metering customers while providing relatively little benefit to non-net metering customers.

It's not equitable.

The public's outraged response is evidence of the lack of dialogue and the late notice communication.

Unanswered questions and the still absent time of day detail in my website's usage dashboard makes it impossible to see my data for a realistic view of how this proposal might affect me.

The lack of transparency with the public is simply unsatisfactory to support approval at this time.

Finally, a friend of mine who is also a solar net metering customer couldn't be here today.

She's an enlisted service member in the Air Force and a single mother of two elementary school age children, one of whom has special needs.

To dispel a myth, I assure you that net metering customers do in fact have diverse financial situations.

In closing, please support your constituents who made a substantial investment in their homes, our local community, and the economy.

Vote no on this net metering proposal because of math, equity, and transparency.

Thank you.

Patty Frudenberg.

Good afternoon, and thank you, Fall for your service.

It's not an easy job.

My name is Patty Freudenberg.

My husband and I are both senior citizens, and when we made a decision about a year and a half ago to add solar panels to our roof, it was not an easy decision.

It was a huge investment.

And it's we're not going to live long enough to see the whole benefit.

But our commitment to the community we all love to clean air, to public health, to our kids and our grandkids' future, drove that choice.

Our rooftop solar panels, all of ours, lower the cost for everybody by reducing the need for additional expensive infrastructure or new transmission lines or new power plants.

Net metering ensures that we are all fairly credited for the energy that we provide to the grid, a grid which we're all helping strengthen.

We've been delighted with our solar system.

We worked with a wonderful local team, and through them, we help support important local jobs.

The CSU claim about shifting costs does not represent the whole picture.

It only reflects one tiny aspect, and it doesn't consider any of the value that solar provides.

It is not fair to punish us based on the consideration of only a portion of the data, ignoring the savings.

Folks like us who have made our investment had a commitment from CSU that we would be fairly compensated for the energy we send back to the grid for our neighbors.

We deserve to be recognized, not punished, so that we can continue contributing to a resilient future for the community that is equitable, affordable, and clean.

And since I have 20 seconds left and we're on the topic of utilities, I had the opportunity to use the ladies' room, and I was astonished.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Appreciate your uh your time today.

Um after 30 years serving the Air Force, my family and I chose to make Colorado Springs our home, much like uh I couldn't say it better than Councilman Gold for all those great reasons you stated.

Um we're extremely excited for years and years to put uh solar on our on our forever home.

Um about one week, exactly one week before we learned about the net metering changes.

We signed a contract for solar panels.

Um, little bit of buyer's remorse right now to say the least.

It's probably not a decision I would have quite honestly made had uh I known this information.

So had prepared remarks, but uh I'm gonna go off script and take a page out of Councilman Rainey's uh book here.

Um councilman Hensham, I second your motion to table this to give time to better analyze the situation.

This was a problem a decade or more in the making.

Solving it um in in weeks or a month or even in 27 is is a rash decision.

I came with a lot of questions.

Um I'm leaving with many, many more questions.

Uh the solar industry representatives here kind of frankly blew things up in my mind.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, and I I implore all of you to please do your due diligence, ask the questions, get the right information.

If you Google net metering industry standard, you'll find that there is no industry standard for net metering.

It is a state-by-state type of system.

So we are essentially subjecting ourselves to being test subjects for a net metering proposal that really has not been rolled out in any scale uh in this country.

So with that, again, please please do your due diligence, uh, ask the tough questions uh and and get some answers that uh your constituents deserve.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Frank Fox.

Good afternoon.

Um we assessed our the rate of return on our solar investment based on information CSU provided us.

We determined that spending 30 grand was a good worthwhile purchase.

We did that for several reasons.

One, the rising cost of energy.

We wanted to control our cost in our retirement.

Two, installing solar was supposed to add value to my home.

Three, CSU, federal and state governments promoted the idea of it.

In fact, CSU offered rebates to bait you into it.

CSU is now claiming they subsidize solar customers and need another increase.

With CSU's proposal, the medium solar customers expected to see an increase of approximately $25 per month.

Some may pay more, some may pay a little less.

That's a minimum increase of a hundred and twenty-five percent.

Let that sink in.

CSU is requesting a rate increase in 2025 for the same reasons they asked for the rate increase in 2024.

So why?

Is it for mismanagement, bad planning?

We need to delve into that.

I do not believe CSU's claims are valid.

CSU was compensated for these same issues in 2024.

They stated that the increase would result in a total revenue of 370 million dollars.

That's an 8% increase over what they were doing.

CSU's claim that solar investors are being subsidized does not make sense.

We're subsidizing the grid.

We invested in capacity for them, and we're sending energy back to them.

These changes to solar customers not only punish us, it relegates our investments as useless.

We can't recover the investment, and we're losing value on our homes.

This feels like a classic bait and switch, and it violates our agreed accompaniment.

Thank you on terms.

And guess what?

It's happening in class action suits against many municipalities.

Next up we have Jeff Walks.

Hello, my name is Jeff Walkers.

Um, I've been a resident here in Colorado Springs for the past four years.

Uh for the 22 years before that, I spent my life in Kyrgyzstan uh doing community development work.

So I've spent my career trying to help communities implement changes that would be good for everyone.

And my great frustration in this process uh is not only the lack of transparency, it's that it feels like a real bad faith deal.

You know, many of us in this room were early adopters.

Some people, I feel bad for you, you know, just a week or a month into taking out a loan for your solar system.

And the agreement was we're willing to take a risk.

We'll take a risk, we'll pay a higher premium, we'll be early adopters, and maybe it'll pay off for us.

And if it doesn't, it's still the right thing to do for society.

What I feel like CSU is now suggesting is that for those of us who have taken a risk and are seeing lower costs for our energy.

That was the deal.

We took a risk.

Our cost may be lower.

And so if there's a greater demand for income for energy, then that should be shared evenly, not as a penalty.

It's a bad faith argument to say for those of us who took a risk who are early adopters, that now that it's working out in our favor, that we should be penalized for that.

This is deincentivizing positive behavior.

This is the opposite thing.

So one of the words that's been thrown around a lot in this hearing has been reasonable.

My request to you all is as fellow human beings, as citizens of the city, make a reasonable decision.

This is not a reasonable proposal by CSU.

It is deincentivizing the very behavior that you want to see more of.

People willing to take risks to take the forward steps to do things that are better for society, better for everybody.

Don't deincentivize that.

That's the very kind of behavior that makes people really frustrated with processes like this.

We took a risk, we put up big premiums for our solar systems, and we're doing things that are good for all of Colorado.

Please don't put in place penalties that that harm us now for doing the very things that you want others to do, and we'll deincentivize others from taking steps that will protect our environment and be good for our city.

Please don't do that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dr.

Wes Montoya.

Hello, my name is Dr.

Wes Montoya.

Uh, my wife and I invested in the solar years ago, not just to save money, but to do our part in a cleaner, more sustainable future for our community.

CSU has proposed changes would actually charge us for producing our own electricity now.

Power we generate, often without even using it.

The way this proposal has been explained to the public has been confusing, inconsistent, and frankly misleading.

First, CSU sent out a memo saying solar system users would be charged an extra $600 more per year.

A few weeks later, they dropped it to $300.

In their presentation today, they showed another $600.

And then on another slide it said $300.

That shift and that inconsistency shows that we don't really know what the data is.

Instead of relying on local research, CSU seems to be using questionable data.

And that data comes from California, because they did say they were using an opside thing.

And that data has been challenged very widely.

Our community deserves decisions based on facts, not assumptions and local evidence, not borrowed narratives.

CSU says non-solar companies or customers rather are subsidizing solar customers, customers, but that's like saying homeowners who insulate their houses are making natural gas more expensive for those who don't.

And that logic just doesn't make sense.

Yep, solar uh owners pay less in electricity because we invested tens of thousands of dollars.

We are promised the one-to-one credit.

That was a deal, but the rules seems to be changing now.

The proposed changes are going to double, triple for costs for solar use.

Um continues to also increase uh access fees.

Thank you.

Which are really just taxes.

And I hope that uh you guys make the right decision today.

Thank you.

Next up we have Wendy Crofford.

Oh, glasses.

Hi, my name is Wendy Crawford.

Um, CSU, as you've heard, uh financially incentivized its customers to make the investment in solar in two different ways through the rebate checks and largely through the net muting agreement.

I personally own two solar homes, one after the other, not at the same time, but um I believed in it that much.

Adding solar to our homes was a large investment with an average cost of today about $35,000 is the average cost in Colorado.

This made financial sense due to the net metering agreement designed by CSU.

We held up our part of the deal.

We made the investment in solar.

To change the rules now is unjust and possibly illegal.

I'm asking that the city council vote to honor the existing net metering agreements in the spirit this document was intended, originally intended.

No convoluted demand charges based on high peak averages, blah blah blah.

Only 4% of CSU's customers have solar.

This number came from the CFO.

Less than about 9,000 solar customers, 260,000 total energy customers.

It's actually 3.8%.

While solar homes are overproducing energy during the day, we're helping to power our neighbors' homes.

CSU profits by charging our neighbors for the electricity that my house is producing right now, powering Tammy's home next to me.

The shared energy is credited on paper back to me, the homeowner.

One kilowatt in for one kilowatt out at the same rate.

That's what the net metering agreement promised, and what and largely why we made and my customers also made this investment in solar.

CSU's attempt to create a backdoor way to alter the net metering agreements.

Solar homeowners expected that the city would continue to grow, the cost of electricity continue to rise, and that the sun would set every evening.

When they offered us the net meeting agreements.

The existing agreements should continue to be honored.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up we have Matt Schneiper.

My name is Matthew Schnipper.

Five years ago, I made a significant financial investment to install rooftop solar panels under the program, which CSU designed to encourage adaptation.

In other words, you called me.

In 10 to 12 or 15 years or so, I would have generated enough energy to recoup my cost and bask in a shiny green future.

Because I have solar panels, I further invested in electric vehicle and a charging home charger.

If you pass this rate case, you're destroying that ROI, you're breaking faith, and you're sure to shut our doors for an entire local industry.

There'll be no reason to install solar when there's no ROI, and possibly worse, a higher bill to pay than if you had no panels up at all.

The public was given barely two weeks to respond before ex parte rules cut off dialogue with you.

This is not a transparent or a fair process for a change of this magnitude, especially since solar customers are not just rate payers, but we are partners.

We signed agreements and you're changing the rules mid-game.

Unlike non-solar customers, we generate energy all day, 120% of the energy we use, which means we more than account for what we use at night.

And the day I can do laundry and charge in EV, I can change that behavior.

But I can't cook by dinner at 9 a.m.

on my induction stove.

There are certain things I cannot do.

So basing our bills on the single worst 15-minute period of energy use is it just makes no sense when applied to us.

You have a peak demand problem, I get that, but don't penalize customers who generate energy for everyone.

This change risks damaging CSU's reputation for reliability as well.

We've seen what happens when solar people feel unwelcome.

Sunshair left the city a decade ago after council reversed course on its solar garden program that sent a clear message to the renewable energy sector in the business community.

This rate case doubles down on that mistake.

I urge you to reject this proposal and consider alternatives that meet the needs of the whole community.

That includes the 9200 solar customers that you courted and made promises to.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Marsha Wick.

Marsha Wick.

Ramona Zoke.

Soak.

Apologize if I said that incorrectly.

Thank you for letting me speak.

Um, I just want to say the first thing is my husband's name is Daryl Dreyer.

He was supposed to speak.

He could not stay.

He's um a disabled veteran, um, retired from the Air Force, and so he had to leave.

So um with that, my name is Ramona Zocchi.

Um I am a solar customer, and as also a military wife, it's very difficult to quantify what they're talking about.

It's not lost on me that Colorado Springs Utilities is talking about their rates um are increasing and they have costs and all this other stuff.

Um businesses across the United States have increased costs, and uh those things have to be recouped to be able to stay in business.

I get it.

And and I also get it that Colorado Springs Utilities um is and I'm very thankful for that we have Colorado Springs Utilities, that it's a public utility and that we have reliable um where we don't have blackouts.

Uh but I'm I I strongly disagree with how they've presented this, that solar customers should bear the cost.

I I would say that I strongly am relying on your guys' leadership here to make good decisions on how this comes across that Colorado Springs Utilities has to show better.

Um, I would ask them for their PL statement and tell them and go line by line of what their costs are and where they could cut costs for them and not pass it on to all the other customers, and especially not because we're being punished.

And I see I I agree with all the solar customers here that they I couldn't have said it any better.

But I I strongly suggest that you guys table this and not allow this to go forward until you guys have better information and are not confused to the nth degree.

Thank you.

Rachel Doyle.

Rachel Doyle.

Amy Willard.

Hello, my name is Amy Willard.

Uh, we heavily invested in solar to be environmentally responsible and control our energy costs during retirement.

I urge you to honor existing net metering agreements by grandfathering them.

This is less than four percent of your customer base.

You can do whatever you want with the future customers, but at least honor these agreements.

Originally, net metering was a wash translation transaction that increased the capacity of CSU.

This changed when CSU started buying open market electricity at higher costs despite existing agreements to provide that electricity at the lower daytime rate.

If you want grandfather existing agreements, please charge all customers the same for the same service.

Solar customers should not be disproportionately bearing the costs of buying open market electricity.

Implementing the same rate structure for using grid kilowatts for all customers would be fair, easy to explain to the public, simple and cheaper to implement.

Adjust the credit for the kilowatt hours that we send to the grid based on the time of the day rates if needed.

The proposed rate structure for solar customers is punitive and will result in a significant drop in new solar installations.

The average 15-minute demand calculation is complicated and discriminatory.

Staggering electricity use in the evening greatly inconveniences only solar customers.

It's also difficult to explain.

Charge all customers the same for the same service, i.e., using kilowatt from the grid.

Make adjustments to the credit that we're getting if you need to.

This at least partially protects solar customers from rate increases.

It also benefits CSU and everyone by encouraging private solar investments to help meet state renewable mandates and delay the need for new power plants.

Thank you.

Thank you.

David Havlick.

David Havilick.

David Havlik, um, thank you for this opportunity for public comment, and I want to thank my fellow residents for staying throughout this process and for um providing really thoughtful comments as well.

Um some level, I don't think this is that complicated.

I think we heard at the beginning of the morning that for this proposal to be approved, it needed to be just and reasonable.

And I think if it's not just and reasonable, then you have to reject it.

Um we've seen a lot of numbers, we've seen some graphs.

I think it maybe helps to distill us down to an analogy.

If if we were asked to enter into a relationship, and we were told we're gonna base this relationship on the 15 worst minutes of behavior for the entire month.

And I think that's just and reasonable.

I think most of us say, no way, absolutely not.

And if the person said, you're right, you're right, let's base this on the 15 worst minutes of each day over a month averaged out.

Would that be just and reasonable?

I think most of us would say, absolutely not.

That's really what we're facing here.

It's a completely unjust, unreasonable proposal for how this net metering fee would be would be um developed.

Uh Councilman Hangeny asked us to provide some questions for for staff, and I have a few.

One is to address the this constant narrative about the cost shift.

Um, there's been multiple studies rejecting that and and debunking that.

So I'd like to have um staff explain why they still think there's this cost shift the way they've presented it.

Another question is is if you've considered the um fee structure that Fort Collins uses as a municipal owned utility for their net metering.

Um the third is is why we're proposing to enter into these 10-year sweetheart deals with data centers rather than shifting this cost burden onto them.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Charles Peterson.

Uh, my name is Charles Peterson.

A few years ago, my wife and I refinanced our house and pulled out sixteen thousand dollars to install solar panels on the roof as a result of being incentivized by you folks or those who came before you and encouraged to do so and told it was a good idea.

Uh as a result, we managed to keep our Colorado Springs utilities bill manageable and under control because you offered net metering.

And now we see the proposal that is before you today.

We are now being told that somehow that $16,000 investment is harmful to everyone without solar panels.

We're now being told that the kilowatts we pump into the system don't seem to have any real value because they don't come in during the right time of the day.

We're now being told that our bill needs to go up.

And now I'm being told that you knew about this five or ten years ago before you incentivized me to do this.

You find yourself dealing with a complex situation.

You probably need a course correction.

You know, you're going in the wrong direction.

You're five or ten blocks past the place you should have turned.

Five or ten years after the place you should have turned.

But you're trying to do it with a high speed U-turn in the middle of the highway.

That's the kind of thing drunk teenagers do.

My wife and I live in entirely on social security.

This is gonna hurt.

And I feel like I'm being played for a sucker, and I don't like to be one.

Please vote no and turn this entire proposal down.

Please don't do this to us.

And I also really want to point out that.

Councilman Bailey, it's all in your lap.

Thank you.

Whether you like it or not.

Thank you.

Tom Grainy.

We have Tom Greene.

Darrell Cooper.

Karen Ying.

Thank you, Council members, for your service.

And my name is Karen.

I decided to install solar to do our part to decrease carbon footprint, even though the savings for a household of two wouldn't really be a money saver.

But we had the panels installed just about a year ago.

I'm averaging about $30 to $40 savings a month.

It would take me about 22 years to 23 years just to recover the cost.

Some say put the battery in.

Well, that's about $10,000 more.

Some say cut the PQs.

My PQs, uh it's about a lamp and two computers.

Um the next door app, there were hundreds of people that were just saying no to this.

I took a survey, about um 30 people answered a questionnaire.

About 20% of that uh the 30 people uh are in my shoes.

They are paying the gaining about a savings of $50 or less and having to pay off $10,000 or more.

Um, I don't think that's fair.

Um, and you could see that most of the people installed um their systems from 2021.

So a lot of us have not paid off or even recover the cost.

Um, this is a bait and switch.

Um, I had asked the the installers um, is it better to put it on the west side?

They say, no, no, no, put it on the east side.

I took a walk around my neighborhood.

Most of the people have it on the east side instead of the west side of the roof.

Um, there's also um the peak rates.

I actually call CSU.

Hey, it's in this net metering one to one, right?

They said yes.

So thank you.

Mike Moerk.

Sorry if I said that incorrectly.

Thank you.

Uh, my name is Mike Merck.

Uh, I've been in net metering customer since 2020.

Um the uh net metering law has already been explained pretty well, so I'm gonna skip that, but I will point out that the laws are the result of a 2004 voter initiative.

Uh it was Amendment 37.

Uh so 2004, CSU has had over 20 years to adapt to this law, uh, such as maybe building more battery storage.

Um so that they can use that uh solar energy from the 5 to 9 p.m.

uh time frame.

They talked about having industrial scale solar, they can invest in industrial scale batteries.

Um not sure why they're not doing more of that.

But they do want to circumvent the voter approved law by charging fees to solar customers.

Uh but as we also heard in the previous presentation, the law states that net metering service shall be provided at non-discriminatory rates.

And by the way, I looked at the law, it's 40-2-124.

It does not say unduly discriminatory, it says non-discriminatory.

So when you want to charge fees for only solar customers and you don't charge to other customers, that is discriminatory.

So uh it is certainly against the spirit of the law, and it probably is against the law.

CSU is trying to circumvent this voter-approved law.

It's unfair, it's probably illegal, and city council should reject it.

Thank you.

And sorry, I just had something really quick.

If you are going to vote for it, please tell CSU to buy my unit and put it on their pocket.

Thank you.

Next up is Jeanette Caproun.

I'll try to keep this short.

My name is Jeanette Caproon.

I live in District 4, and I've been a solar customer for five years.

I've thoroughly read the emails concerning the proposed changes.

I also attended the open house, which was an experience.

I feel that there are too many unantered unanswered questions, and that the latest version of the proposal is unfair to solar customers.

I understand about on peak hours.

I understand that we are putting our excess electricity back in the system during lower usage hours.

I get that.

So why not charge us the same as other customers during on peak hours and save our solar credits for lower usage times when we're not producing?

How hard is that?

It's a it's a computer entry.

Also, I really find the proposed demand charges to be punitive.

I couldn't find anywhere on CSU.org where demand charges are applied to residential customers, just businesses and solar customers.

This does not seem fair or equitable.

I had a big thing here about what agreement actually means since we signed a nut metering agreement, and it's a contract duly executed and legally binding, according to Merriam Webster.

I do not agree or accept the proposed changes.

I hope you'll reconsider them.

And since I have 30 seconds and questions are going to go on the record, I heard repeatedly at the open house that CSU is not for profit.

And I also saw on the slide that surplus is going to the city to the tune of almost 9 million dollars.

We make up the shortfall of 5.5 million because we're solar customers.

I don't understand that at all.

Thank you.

Steve Redale.

Good afternoon, Council.

My name is Stephen Radel.

I live in Council District 6, and I have been a net metering participant since 2021.

And mine is one of the systems that creates a surplus.

Not all do, which when Colorado Springs Utilities tells you about, we did a survey of a population.

There are at least two populations in net metering, and you ought to look closely to that methodology that was used to generate this number.

CSU is trying to speed run rewriting their rules.

These fees are going to punish the 9,000 households because of this alleged economic subsidy problem.

But let's be honest here.

I think the real problem is CSU's mismanagement of this issue.

Letting it drag on for seven or eight years while people like me are blindsided when we enroll.

That doesn't seem like a fair approach.

And there's a lack of planning that's involved with this too.

Modernizing the electrical grid is not a new problem.

This has been something that's been going on for two decades in the United States.

Where's the incremental investment in storage as incremental investment in solar generation has been incentivized?

Rather than building that storage, CSU wants to put the blame on us while they are they are getting ready to squander the electricity that we are generating for them at very low cost every day.

We're not freeloaders.

I think that is the heart of the outrage to this.

We are investors and we are local power producers.

No, no one in this in this room or on this council should tolerate a utility that wants to change the rules so drastically midstream.

We've already heard it.

That's a bait and switch, folks.

The council is the only body that stands in between us and this uh this unfair proposal.

I urge you to stand with the residents.

We will work with you to find a solution if there is genuinely a problem, but we haven't been engaged in that way.

Uh, please reject this proposal.

And please remind CSU and their leaders that public trust is worth more than a line item on one year's balance sheet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Kathy Wernley.

Hi there, my name's Kathy Wernley.

I I'm not the technical expert, that's my husband.

I'm gonna speak to you today on the personal and the practical.

Uh we're retired.

We bought our solar panels almost three years ago to stabilize our electric bills so we could live on a fixed budget.

We've done everything we can to cut back.

We don't have an electric car.

All of our appliances are energy efficient.

We wash clothes and use our dishwasher once a week.

And we've changed out all our light bulbs to LEDs.

All we have left to do is sit in the dark from five to nine every day.

And I don't think that's a good plan.

We generate more power than we need.

In fact, we were we have not used an ounce of public power since we got our power, our panels.

We were offline, we had our panels off the roof to replace our roof hail.

And uh we were off for almost a month, and we didn't use any of CSU's power.

It was our power.

We generate enough power that they take it and they sell it to their customers at a high rate.

Uh we don't get paid for that, and even if we did, it'd be pennies on the dollar.

Instead, we choose to bank our coverage to be used whenever our panels aren't collecting.

We loan that coverage to CSU, and then they want to charge us more for that.

It's not ethical, it's not just, it's not reasonable, it's not fair.

If you want to use our power, you should be paying us a fair rate and not increasing our fees.

Don't penalize the customers who are actually trying to help solve the problems.

We are not the problem.

We are the solution.

Um, point of reference.

XL in Denver, which has three and a half million customers, have no net metering fee.

None.

Zero.

And they pay back um their full retail rate credit.

You receive full recreate retail rate credit for the same at the same rate you pay for electricity.

Okay.

What is CSU doing to us here?

Yeah.

If three and a half million customers can live with that in XL in Denver, I think they need to rethink their plan.

Bob Winley.

I'm going to use all my time getting up there.

We haven't started the clock here.

All right, here we go.

Uh Bob Wernley, uh, ten years in uh uh Colorado Springs, uh, three years as a solar customer.

And um I'm hoping you all don't believe in Yogi Berra.

You know, he says when you get to the fork of the road, take it.

Don't move.

Don't take any fork right now.

What we need to be doing at this point is put a hold on it, at least grandfather in the 9,000 in the counts that we currently have.

We all make commitments.

We spend tens of thousands of dollars.

We pay monthly payments, we do a lot of things to have the solar panels on our roof.

And we ought to be held harmless for any crazy shenanigans that's going on with the with this rate deal that they're trying to put through.

It's not really understood.

It's been a long slog and it's really not gone anywhere.

And let those other people that come on later give them the rate that's calculated properly at that time.

Every eight and a half years, somebody in Colorado Springs moves on average, moves out, and the account changes and let their rates reset at that time.

At least it would be stable for a while.

And people would sign a piece of paper, it would be worthwhile, you know, worth of papers signed.

And I think that would be a better way to go than have this happen every time.

Thank you.

Chris Duval.

Thank you for having us today.

My name is Chris Duval.

My wife and I installed rooftop solar three years ago because we wanted to save money, become more energy independent, and contribute to Colorado's clean energy goals.

Since then, we've also replaced our old appliances with an induction stove, a heat pump water heater, a heat pump clothes dryer, and we purchased an electric vehicle.

Even after powering all of that, we've still built up more than 2,000 kilowatt hours of net metering credits.

That means we have given back more electricity to the grid than we've used.

We're proud of that.

It feels like we're doing our part for the community and the planet.

But the proposed changes to net metering will undo much of that progress.

They erode the trust that families like mine placed in Clark Springs utilities when we made these investments.

The rules are being changed in the middle of the game, and that simply isn't fair.

When we installed our system, we made a long-term financial decision based on the policies and rate structure that CSU advertised.

If those rules change now, if credits are devalued and new demand fees are added, it will take years longer to recover our investment.

That's not just disappointing.

It feels like a violation of the agreement we believe we have.

These changes will also hurt local solar companies, their employees, and their suppliers.

Feel people will take the risk of installing solar if the terms can be rewritten later.

That means fewer local jobs and slower progress toward cleaner energy.

I've been thinking a lot about how far we've come as a state.

When I was a young child in Crested Butte, one of my chores was to feed coal into the furnace hopper twice a day.

In the winter, an inversion would trap the smoke and fill the valley with dirty air.

Later, when I was in high school in Denver, I remember standing downtown and seeing the brown clouds spread across the skyline.

Thanks to technology and good public policy, our air today is much cleaner.

But it still has a long way to go.

My wife suffers from respiratory illness, and she feels the effects of air pollution personally.

Rooftop solar is one of the simplest, cleanest, and most democratic tools we have to keep improving the air we breathe.

Please don't take a step backward.

Don't punish those who invested early and in good faith.

Support policies that make rooftop solar part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Thank you.

Landon Hartman.

Thank you all for hearing me today.

I'm going to be talking about something that's a little bit different from what you all have heard so far, but I think that it's still um valuable and will be worthwhile.

So what I'd like to talk about is the value of local control and why we do not trust large government agencies.

We don't trust large government because the governments do not listen to their people.

We let small, we let small like groups of technocrats control the way that we determine our policies.

We trust in like local control, like we have with CSU, because CSU provides us with the opportunity to listen to what the people are saying.

What we have here, and what we have seen today is that dozens of people came to this hearing and had to sit for three hours without their voices being heard.

Many people are not going to be able to give like comment on this important issue.

There were dozens of other college students who will not be here today because CSU took so much time in their like laying out of these facts.

And you need to give people more of an opportunity to provide feedback on this important issue.

I think that it's very important that we are consistent with our ideology and sense of morality here.

Show us why we should trust our local government.

Listen to the people.

And further, I'd also like to talk about the way that we began this hearing today with an invocation.

Um I don't think it's very Christian to punish thy neighbor.

I think it's important to forgive, and I think it's important to protect people, even if they have different opinions from you do.

Like many of these people don't necessarily have similar political ideologies, but that does not mean it is okay to single them out and give them particular punishment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Del Munson.

Council members, I recognize that you also serve as the governing board for the Colorado Springs utilities.

That places you in a unique position both as leaders of this city and as guardians of the public trust.

I'm here today because that trust and the good faith of the citizens is being tested.

About six years ago, CSU encouraged customers like me to invest in solar energy, promising that we could generate electricity, sell our access to the grid, and help build a cleaner city.

It was presented as a long-term partnership.

A win-win for families in the community.

I made that investment in good faith, trusting the assurances that CSU gave me.

Now this proposed rate increase rewrites that agreement.

It undermines not only my trust, but the trust of every resident who believed their word.

CSU is penalizing the very people who acted responsibly, invested heavily and aligned with its sustainability.

To reverse course now is more than disappointing.

It feels like a betrayal of the partnership we were asked to join.

I wonder whether CSU has considered the impact on senior citizens.

It's easy to raise rates when you have a secure paycheck, but it's harder to look older people in the eye and tell us that we were foolish for believing in you.

I paid $18,000 for my solar system, expecting about a 10-year payback based on CSU's own guidance.

With the proposed solar demand charge, that payback stretches to about 17 years.

At the age of my wife and I, we will never see a return on our investment.

This plan turns responsible citizens and early adopters into financial casualties.

If this proposal passes, Colorado Springs will lose more than solar customers, it will lose faith.

US residents to invest in clean energy, we did.

We kept our word, but you didn't.

Thank you.

Counselors, thank you for opening up this very important subject with solar customers of Colorado Springs to discuss the proposed plan, CSU, that may be violating the spirit of the contract that we signed when our polar solar systems went online.

Mine July 2018.

My understanding it was it and I expressed to many people.

My system produces power daily.

I use the power that it makes.

If I if um probably the standard, and that would be at a 7.5 times percent uh peak hours and 3.7 times the price on non-peak hours.

I'm not worried about the summer months.

My system produces enough power for that household.

But if I had to buy power during the summer months, that's at 15 times the rate.

And let me let me just finish with 84 years ago.

This country went to war to stop fascism.

My law we lost my great uncle in the Arden Forest.

This morning you voted to support to honor a person who spewed nothing but fascism, and I find that a insult to the life of everyone lost in World War II.

We have W Reed.

Robert Chapp.

Kevin Eber.

Kevin Eber, sorry.

Hi.

Uh I live in Manitou Springs.

Uh my name's Kevin Eber.

I worked almost 30 years at the National Renewable Energy Lab.

So I know what I'm talking about.

My biggest concern here is the decision time frame.

You should table this, you should not make this decision so soon.