Us for the Public Utilities and Sustainability Committee hearing.

As usual, we're going to be breaking this hearing up into three different parts.

First, we'll have a presentation on updates to the city's climate action plan.

Then we'll hear our presentation on the city's community choice aggregation program, and we'll end our hearing with a presentation on proposed utility rates and fees for 2026.

Before I get started, I do want to acknowledge Councilmember Beatty for being here.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Please let me know if you have any opening remarks due to scheduling.

We're going to have some council members like dropping in and leaving.

So I don't want folks to be confused, just trying to fit everyone in.

With that being started, I want to give a little background for those who are unfamiliar with our city's climate action plan.

Since 2020, the City of Columbus has been pursuing climate goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 and being carbon neutral by 2050.

The first rendition of the climate action plan came to fruition in 2021 to further environmental justice and serve as a roadmap to meet climate resilience goals.

This update is about renewing our commitment to achieving our community's climate goals in spite of the challenges and issues at the federal and state level.

Here to present on the 2025 update is Brooke White, climate planning planning programmer with Sustainable Columbus.

Brooke, thank you for being here and thank you for the work that you're doing.

Floor is yours.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that introduction.

And I'm excited to walk you through a presentation about the update process.

So as you mentioned, thank you very much.

We've been implementing the Columbus Climate Action Plan since 2021.

And we're now in the process of updating this plan in 2025.

So we very much see this as an opportunity to renew our commitments to our joint climate action goals.

And they are to reduce greenhouse gases by 45% by 2030 and to reduce them by 100% by 2050.

So this is kind of a long view timeline of the life of the climate action plan.

We very much see this as a living document that we are keeping relevant for our communities by updating it every five years and revising it every 10 years.

So we're going through the update process now in 2025.

And then we're already looking forward to 2030 when we will we will be doing the full revision of the plan.

And again, this creates a roadmap to achieve our climate goals of 45% reduction by 2030 and 100% reduction of greenhouse gases from the city of Columbus by 2050.

To give you a bit of a view into the process that we've been going through, this is a timeline of the update process for 2025.

So we kicked off the year by convening expert and leadership in order to inform the update of this plan.

So each climate action within the plan itself is associated with lead and supporting agencies to support the implementation of the action.

So we held a meeting with each of those lead and supporting agencies for each action one-on-one, as well as convening what we call the Climate Commitments Working Group.

This was a working group comprised of one member from each of the city departments to help give feedback on each of the elements of the plan update.

That continued through May, and then this summer we launched our public engagement that focused a lot on going out and giving presentations to neighborhood area commissions, educating, hearing their concerns, answering their questions, as well as giving access, letting folks know about a climate action survey that we put out.

So we also put this out through social media, and we were looking to hear from the public about how their lives are already being impact impacted by the effects of climate change in their everyday lives, as well as how they think we should prioritize our work amongst the climate actions that we have within the plan.

We started drafting this updated plan in September.

We're still in the drafting process, and we're looking forward to producing a finalized plan by February of 2026.

So this gives you a little bit of a flavor of what's in the plan.

So we have the sections of the plan here as well as the strategies that underpin those sections.

This plan both covers the community as a whole as well as covering our municipal operations.

So we're walking in the walk, not just talking the talk, but we're also working hand in hand with community and with partners to implement this across the city.

So the plan includes actions that both help our communities prepare for the impacts of climate change, things like hotter temperatures, flooding, droughts, as well as actions that help us reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from within the city.

So being part of the solution to reduce the impacts of climate change globally.

So as I mentioned, we are refreshing the plan.

We're not changing the structure of the plan at this time to give us greater continuity in our work, but we are updating it to reflect the current landscape landscape across our city, the current opportunities.

We are not backing down in our ambition.

We are assessing the challenges and we're assessing where we can lean in for most impact though.

So throughout our plan, I'll kind of go through some of the ways that we're updating the plan, what we're including in the document.

This is challenging to see.

We wanted to make sure that we're sharing the progress and the successes that we've seen across the city and other organizations and within the city itself.

And so the reason this is hard to see is because there's been a lot of success.

There's been a lot of movement.

I think one of the really big ways that we've seen success is building a culture of sustainability within city operations, as well as really being a leader leading the way for other organizations and for residents within the city.

So things like building a pipeline to careers in renewable energy, green jobs through the Empower program, building financial solutions through the Columbus Region Green Fund, and really thinking a lot about the two major sources of greenhouse gases from the city, which are transportation and energy use in buildings.

So really leaning hard with the Clean Energy Columbus program that we'll hear about in a bit.

That's been really heavy hitting in terms of reducing our mission our emissions and looking strongly at commercial buildings, how we can help them assess their use of energy and reduce it through the benchmarking programming and building performance standards that are coming in the future.

In terms of transportation, the combo of zone in with Link Us and the Bike Plus Plan are really going to help us target a very challenging source of greenhouse gas emissions in terms of transportation.

We're also highlighting the benefits that we're bringing to communities.

Oftentimes climate action is kind of a co-benefit of supporting the quality of lives of our residents.

So two really great examples of this are the program to create the first net zero neighborhood in American addition.

So we have the innovation team working to consider how you know we're moving this forward, very much co-creating it with residents, as well as the low to moderate income solar pilot project, where we have the opportunity to put solar arrays on 17 households.

I think these are really important in terms of reducing energy burden, which can affect housing stability, a key goal for the city overall.

So where do we lean in?

We understand there are challenges, but we also have opportunities.

Three areas where we're looking to lean in and focus on in this update are residential energy efficiency.

So each of these areas has already has momentum.

So we're building on pre-existing programs, but leaning in harder.

Energy efficiency makes huge sense in terms of climate action, the technology is available, it's you know well within financial reach of supporting this work, and it also underpins the goals and priorities of the city strategic plan.

So including housing stability from region residential energy efficiency, making sure that folks can pay their energy bills and stay in their homes.

We're also thinking about leaning in on commercial energy efficiency.

So this really helps to align the effort of businesses with the effort that we're focusing on for residential and municipal energy efficiency, and it expands on the Columbus Region Green Fund as well as our work in benchmarking and building performance standards that I mentioned before.

The urban tree canopy is really very key and important.

This is one of the items that residents highlighted within the survey itself.

It helps keep us cool.

We have a 14-degree difference in heat on really hot summer days between different neighborhoods across the city.

So this helps keep people cool.

And in the updated plan, we're making sure to also acknowledge the benefits that trees play in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

They draw it down and store it within the trees themselves.

So making sure we give a full focus on the benefit of those and building on the urban forestry master plan that we already have.

Finally, I wanted to mention that we're we're not operating in a vacuum.

We actually have a regional climate action plan that is being developed right now.

I'm helping to support that.

So we received federal funding in 2023 to create the Central Ohio Climate Action Plan.

And this covers 10 counties within the central Ohio region.

It's the full Columbus Metropolitan Statistical Area.

And so this is created through a partnership with the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission, Power a Clean Future Ohio, Impact Community Action, and the Ohio State University.

So really a powerful partnership to create this plan.

And we recognize the strength in aligning our City of Columbus plan with this regional plan.

And so the two different plans have different interim goals.

The Central Ohio Climate Action Plan has an interim target out in 2035 because it's being created right now, and that's a 50% reduction, though we share a joint target in 2050 of 100% reduction.

And so we're building in an aligning in this new updated plan to include that 50% greenhouse gas reduction target in the Columbus Climate Action Plan as well, and making sure that we're stepping up and serving as you know at the forefront of sustainability as we are for all other central Ohio communities.

Thank you.

Definitely keep your eye out for news about the final plan coming out in February of 2026.

Well, Brooke, I appreciate you kind of walking us through that and showing us the process.

I have a couple questions.

I know you are not, we have not finalized it, right?

So some of the answers we might not have available.

But I did want to kind of just dive in a little bit to what you presented.

Also want to acknowledge Council President Hardam for being here.

Thank you for joining us for today's hearing.

You talked a little bit about the feedback that you've already seen in the engagement process.

One being around trees.

I'm the Lorax of Council, so obviously care about trees.

I want to ask a little bit more about that, but was there additional feedback in that engagement process that kind of rose to the top that kind of highlighted specific things residents were looking for?

Yeah, so I think one thing that was exciting was the ability to ask about how people are feeling the effects of climate change within their lives.

And we really heard a lot from folks about heat in the summers, as well as warmer winters, not seeing as much snow cover, seeing much milder winters and some of the problems that come with pests like mosquitoes from that, um, as well as poor air quality.

I think folks really you know took paid attention when we had some of the wildfires up in Canada and we received some of the smoke down here, so other kind of indirect impacts of climate change.

Um so people are definitely feeling the effects, and in terms of the priorities they wanted us to take on tree canopy, energy efficiency and homes and businesses, and recycling programs, at good access to the recycling programs were among the top.

Well, I love that.

That rings true to what my office has been working on this year and what we look to do in 26.

So it's really exciting to kind of have that alignment.

Um I want to go back to trees though, and I understand the hope and intention of maintaining our tree canopy going forward.

Um, I know the mayor just put out his budget today.

I'm curious if you know if there are planned financial investments for this expansion.

Um, I don't know that we have particular budget allocation information in front of us.

I did see that also right as I was walking in and kind of anticipated that we would have more specific questions, but we we don't know specifically um what the budget allocation is.

But I do know that that's housed primarily with um the Department of Records and Parks.

So it would be a budget item for them, um and we would be partnering with them on resources and basically how to best utilize that that tree canopy plan.

And I and I hear that and understand it.

I I think from my perspective, understanding that the role that trees play, right, in reducing stormwater runoff, protecting our communities, it would seem like it would be a line item across many budgets in my mind.

Um, not something we need to dive deeper into today, because we will have a budget discussion around the operating budget going forward.

Um, but do want to acknowledge that, right?

We cannot say that we want to expand our tree canopy yet not fund the ability to actually do that.

So have to call that out.

Um, one other piece I wanted to give you just a chance to kind of speak to what are some of the barriers that we're seeing to achieving our clean energy goals and why are our goals not going to be more ambitious that folks would like to see.

So there are a lot of barriers in working in climate action with, which both makes it kind of thrilling but also you know challenging work.

Um, I think some of the some of the big challenges are that the plan doesn't just cover municipal operations, and I think it is very important that we focus in there and make sure that we're walking the walk, investing as we need to, um, both in terms of time and funding.

Um, but the plan is community-wide, and so we have to think uh in clever ways a little time about how do we incentivize and help residents.

How do we really build the infrastructure for them to be able to make good sustainable choices to improve everybody's quality of life?

So that's one of the big challenges.

Um, another is that there are a lot of things that are outside of our control.

Um, the relative uh you know cleanness of electricity that we're pulling down from the grid.

Um, you know, we can have some impact on that, but a lot of that is coming from the federal and the state levels as well as you know, just changes within the state and federal administration.

We have periods where we have tons of funding coming down, and we're really working to scramble and access that as much as possible for the city, and then we have periods when funding um is not as available, and the changing uh sort of policy landscape also makes it challenging in terms of uh market development in terms of things like EVs, you know, being able to access the technologies that we need to.

Thank you for that.

And I think we're we'll have a deeper dive into the energy market in Ohio in just a second.

Um, but wanted to make sure we kind of talk through and name those barriers to the challenges that we're dealing with as it relates to the climate action plan.

Um, stop there, see if any questions from my colleagues.

Yes.

Go ahead, council member.

I saw a reference to uh food waste.

Where does composting fall within this particular plan?

Your plans.

Where does it fall within the plan?

Correct.

Um so we do have a specific section of the plan that deals with waste.

Um it's another you know, major um source of greenhouse gas emissions within the city, and we have individual actions to address recycling as well as food waste, as well as trying to build a circular economy, so we're reusing um as much material as possible.

So we do have an action that directly uh addresses food waste, and it's kind of twofold, both thinking about how are we making sure that food is not going to the landfill when it can be um you know repurposed, redistributed within the city, make sure that folks are being fed.

But there are, I think, one million pounds of organic waste that goes to the landfill every day in Columbus, which is a statistic statistic that continues to blow in my mind.

So thinking about how are we making sure that food is not being wasted, but then also yeah, how do we um improve composting?

And so there are some incentive programs to help people start doing backyard composting.

Um but the you know, thinking about um kind of broader composting services uh from the city is um another challenge that could be taken on down the road.

It's not yet being taken on.

Yeah.

And I'll just say, just knowing, I know this is a priority for Councilmember Dorns as he's looking on legislative changes to make composting easier going forward.

So more to come on that one.

But love love the thinking.

Uh also want to acknowledge Council Member Bangston for joining us.

Thank you for being here.

Um I don't know if you have any questions because you missed the presentation, but all right, we're we're gonna move on.

All right.

Uh, climate resilience is important to the health and long-term prosperity of our community.

So thank you for uh providing us that update on the climate action plan and for the work you're doing every day, Brooke.

We really do appreciate it.

Um, as always, though, and I I think we actually have a public speaker, right?

On the climate action plan.

I just realized that.

Shelley, are you here?

Perfect.

All right.

Uh we did have one uh speaker sign up to testify on the plan.

Shelley Douglas, executive director of Green Columbus, if you could join us up here.

Oh man, yeah, maybe something clear.

Can you hear me okay?

Okay.

All right, hello, council members.

Thank you so much for um allowing me to speak today.

I first just want to say I'm Shelly, I'm with Green Columbus.

I'm our executive director, but I'm also um the chair of the Central Ohio Watershed Council.

Um I am on the Columbus Tree Subcommission, and I also sit on a lot of the Climate Action Plan working groups, so that's kind of my um qualification to be here today.

But um, as Councilmember Weich mentioned, you know, Green Columbus supports the climate action plan fully, we support the urban forestry master plan fully, but we're concerned that the implementation side of these plans is um falling behind a little bit due to lack of funding to these programs.

Um, and so you know, as we know, the climate action plan states that we need to increase our urban tree canopy in order to adapt.

Um, and the action item is listed as Columbus Wreck and Parks as the lead.

However, uh staff within Wreck and Parks are reporting yet another decrease in funding next year.

And due to injuries, health concerns, and extenuating circumstances, their planting team is operating at limited capacity when they should be expanding, outperforming, and increasing effectiveness with each planting season that passes.

And so, in order to reach this 40% goal by 2050, we need to double the amount of trees we have in Columbus.

So given that it takes you know anywhere from 10 to 40 years for a tree to mature, we are running out of time to get these trees in the ground.

And so we are urging not only city council, but you know, every department that is able to budget for tree planting.

Um to value trees and canopy is equally important as the other social risks which are affecting our city.

Um certainly all residents affected by food insecurity, unemployment, homelessness, poverty will be the first and most heavily affected by the adverse effects of the changing climate.

Um and to quote Mayor Ginther, our most vulnerable residents are already being affected by the changing climate.

So not only am I asking you to increase Wreck and Park's budget for street tree planting, I'm asking you to prioritize funding to mobilize groups like Green Columbus, because we need to plant our schools, libraries, recreation centers, government buildings, YMCAs, everything that's not street trees, which is currently what Wreck and Parks is working on.

And so with over 90,000 street tree planting spots to be assessed by 2050, Wreck and Parks has a full plate.

Um not to mention, you know, they need more funding to do what they have on their plate.

And so that's not parks, that's not rec centers, you know, government buildings, that's just street trees.

Um, which means you know, pregnant people waiting for health care at the Barrett Community Center are are left to burn on the blacktop.

Um, children no longer want to play sports because there's no relief from the heat at their local park or school.

Residents are working two jobs and still can't afford to run their AC.

Um, and the bus stops are are pretty unbearable to be at in the middle of the summer if you can even get to it.

And so, as Columbus voters have recently approved nearly two billion dollars in bond packages, now is the time to invest in our urban tree canopy.

Um, it's one of the only resources we can fund now that will provide limitless benefits to Columbus residents for generations to come, even after all of us in this room are gone.

And Green Columbus is here, we're ready to do the work.

Um, we need the city to recognize the urgency of funding these projects.

Um, I'll leave you with with one last quote.

The threat is clear, the stakes are high, and our obligation to our children in their future compels us to act now.

Um, and that is also from Mayor Ginther on the front page of the climate action plan.

And so we are just here to um let Columbus residents know that even though we have an excellent plan in place, that does not mean the work is done.

Like we there's a lot of on the ground work to be done, um, and it's gonna require a lot of money to get it done, and we need time for these trees to grow, right?

So that's why we want this funding and we want it to be in tandem with the other um development and growth that we have going on here because all of our issues could be made worse if we don't have um equitable tree canopy.

So thank you very much for for hearing me.

Yeah, I think you for being here and obviously thank you for your advocacy.

I love the work that you all are doing out there every single day to try to provide that relief that we're looking for.

But to your point, we need to do so much more.

Um, and so we appreciate having you in that fight as we continue to um try to address climate by doing the minimum of planting trees.

So thank you.

Let me stop, see if my colleagues have any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Um before we move on to the next section, always want to give a chance for those who did not have an opportunity to sign up if you are interested in speaking on the climate action plan update.

I will invite you to join us up here at the podium now.

And if you will just uh state your name for oh, and he is not coming up here.

All right, so we're gonna move on.

Now we'll move into our community choice aggregation program portion of the hearing.

Uh to put it plainly, the Columbus Aggregation Program has two primary goals achieve 100% in state renewable energy generation for the residents of Columbus while saving them money on their energy bills.

These two goals are critical in reaching the goals you just heard about in our climate action plan and reducing our contributions to climate change while improving the quality of life of our residents.

That's why I had requested an update from Trey Bell to kind of outline the state of the energy market, recent changes in the regulatory climate, and other implications for clean energy projects.

So I'm excited today we have Aaron Sherman Schneider.

I knew I was going to butcher it, but I was close.

Thank you for being here and thank you for your work.

But appreciate you being here to provide an overview for us.

Thank you so much for that.

If you can't hear me, please do let me know.

Can or cannot?

Cannot.

Yes?

Oh, there you go.

Well, thank you, uh, Chair Weich for the introduction.

Much appreciated.

Very close.

It's Aaron Schmerz Schneider, so close.

I'm managing director with Treyvelle Energy.

Uh, we are the city's aggregation consultant for the Clean Energy Aggregation Program.

Thank you very much for having me this afternoon.

Um, unfortunately, our president Zahir Drew sends his regrets.

He was unable to attend today just due to ongoing FAA travel delays.

Um, as requested, here to provide a brief update regarding the energy markets and the status of the clean energy aggregation program.

Not sure where I'm supposed to point this.

Um, there you go.

Great.

Um, so some key takeaways to focus on.

Um, first, that the clean energy aggregation program is both saving participants money and is 100% renewable.

I think that's fantastic.

Um, those are the two goals, those goals are being met currently.

Some of this will touch on what uh Miss White had just spoken about.

But you know, the program cumulative savings are just shy of 60 million dollars for all participants.

Currently, about 200,000 participants in this program.

Um, about 10% of that is made up by small businesses.

The rest are residents throughout uh the city.

So we're seeing here that utility supply prices have nearly doubled since the program launch, um, but we're still able to provide significant savings to participants.

Um, an average household is going to save about 120 dollars a year that goes back into the home's pockets and back into the local economy.

Um this program is really anchored by three Ohio-based clean energy assets.

We have uh a solar array in Pickaway County, that's about 180 megawatts.

Um, we have a 39 megawatt solar array in Clinton County, and then wind farm that uh is going to be coming from Huron and Erie counties.

This program has afforded 800,000 to be invested into workforce development and half a million reinvested into solar co-op that helps build clean energy jobs and supports uh local solar community capacity.

The takeaway here is that the program is protecting wallets while staying 100% clean with local investment.

Next up, and this is quite an eye chart, so I'm really just gonna read through a lot of this and kind of explain what all this means.

Um, contributing factors to a rising pricing environment.

As we've seen over the past several years, the cost of many things has gone up.

Energy is not been immune from that.

Um, a very large driver is that natural power prices are very heavily correlated with the cost of wholesale power.

Um, within our current regional generation mix, so that means the mix of what type of power plants produce the power in our grid.

Forty-five percent of that is natural gas.

So, with that being a significant amount, that sets the price of power about 70% of the time.

We've seen natural gas prices raise about 30% over the five-year average.

Another contributor here is just the generation mix in general and a lot of power plant retirements that we've seen.

So, since 2011, we've seen 12% of base load capacity become retired.

Most of that was dispatchable generation, so that's typically going to be natural gas, coal, nuclear.

With those retirements, we've only seen a replacement of about 4%, and that has come from intermittent resources that are solar and wind.

Now, intermittent isn't necessarily bad thing.

It just means it's not always sunny and it's not always windy, and we still need power during the times when the sun is not out or the wind isn't blowing as significantly.

So that has created really this supply-demand mismatch of not having enough base load generation to support the amount of uh electric load requirements today and what we are projecting to see into the future.

Um, I don't think anyone is a stranger to what we're hearing in the news right now in terms of AI and data center growth, manufacturing, electrification, all of those between now and the end of the decade is looking like a forecasted load increase of 25 to 30 percent.

So again, this really just highlights that mismatch of the generation available today versus the load that we're expecting to come online into the future.

Next, we wanted to talk about power purchase agreement prices for clean energy.

Um we have seen you know this this very heightened amount level off a little bit, but you could see that it's significantly higher than back in 2021, which is closer to when the program started.

Um at that point in time, we saw prices for PPAs about 40 dollars a megawatt hour.

Um, now we're seeing it about 8150.

Um, so the just the increased cost of of clean energy in general, you know, is kind of talking about the same thing with this elevated pricing environment.

It's a lot above of the same, you know, prices are up from many contributing factors.

Another point I wanted to talk to is actually the um commodity price at South and capacity.

So on the left hand side, you're looking at the wholesale cost of power, and this shows you over the past six years where that has been trading at specific to Ohio.

Um, that large spike you see in 22, that's when Russia invaded Ukraine, and what I had just talked about with natural gas prices driving the price of power prices.

This is when we saw natural gas skyrocket after that invasion.

It drove power prices up in return.

But you could see there is still a pretty big delta between near term, so that 12-month power price and the 60-month long-term prices.

We have seen those two price points come much closer together, which is really reflecting again that you know, the five-year outlook is that prices will continue to remain elevated, and we expect to see this for the next several years to come.

On the other end of it, we have PJM capacity price.

PJM is our grid operator, and capacity is a cost that exists to incentivize power producers to make enough power so we don't have rolling, you know, brownouts and blackouts.

You can see that number jumped very, very high.

Uh it was at $29 a megawatt day up to $270.

And then the most recent auction we saw cleared at uh close to $375.

We'll have another auction that occurs in December.

We would expect that price to remain at that same $375 price point.

Then finally, I wanted to go into some legislative changes that are impacting the market, um, both federally and locally.

So, on the federal level, we have the one big beautiful bill act, which phased out a lot of these tax incentives that were available for large-scale solar and wind production.

Those incentives are still available, but you have to start the project by the middle of next year and complete the project by 2027 to qualify for those.

Without those tax incentives, projects are just much more expensive.

So, what that means is they either don't get built or the cost of that is going to increase for people who are the off takers of that power.

On the local level, however, House Bill 15, Ohio House Bill 15, is helping to fast track some brownfield projects through a five-year property tax exemption and grants that are up to 10 million.

Um, it also enables behind the meter projects to be able to support multiple sites at once.

Behind the meter just means you have power production on your site and you don't have to take it from the grid.

A little bit dated, but I still think worth talking about is House Bill 52 back from 2021.

This provided that countywide veto authority on large-scale solar and wind projects.

So again, this just kind of improves the uh uh the difficulty of approval, increases the difficulty of approval, and then just creates more uncertainty for developers.

So I think again, the takeaway here is that Ohio policy is helping with select sites and select development, but there's still some changes and challenges on the federal level that are impacting the overall renewable growth that we're seeing.

Um, what does this mean for Columbus residents?

You know, our program is still 100% renewable, it's still competitive and affordable prices, and though that's the goal of the program in place.

Um, we are constantly evaluating the addition of new in-state projects into the program, but obviously that has to be price competitive, right?

So, if that is not the case, if it doesn't meet those qualifications of yes, adding to in-state renewable while also being price competitive, then we move on and look at different projects.

Um we're also currently working on our 26-27 commercial plan, which would price set for the next program year, which would start on June 1 of 2026.

So I know that was a lot to go over.

I'm happy to answer any questions, but thank you again for having me in the opportunity to go over what's going on in the market today.

Well, appreciate you trying to give us energy 101 in like a 10 minute span.

Sure, you got it.

It is always helpful though.

The more we can kind of put this in front of our residents and my colleagues and myself to make sure we can kind of continue to educate ourselves on what is happening in the space.

One question I did want to ask, and you mentioned this in your your presentation that it takes about seven years to get a project off the ground.

Uh can you outline the reason for why that has increased in recent years?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So back in 2020, it was about a four-year process.

Now it's a seven-year process.

Some of that is just how long it takes to build a power plant, right?

So that can be you know anywhere from 12 to 24 months, really.

If you know you're cranking it out and everyone's working all the time, and labor is not an issue, and materials aren't an issue.

But those things are issues.

So those are contributing factors.

We're also looking at an approval queue.

So to get a project built, it has to go in front of the grid operator.

You have to say, yes, here's our plan, here's our financing, we're ready to go.

Can you please approve the project?

That cue is backlogged significantly.

Now it's shortened up a little bit.

There's been some fast track efforts to get more projects through, but you know, build time permitting approval process now has led to this longer window.

Um there's pressure from the federal government to expedite that approval process more.

So I think we'll see that, you know, in the coming year here.

But as of right now, unfortunately, that timeline is just a bit longer than it used to be.

Yeah.

Uh which is disappointing.

I think there's always this push to try to find relief where you can, but the reality is you can't build the capacity immediately when you need it.

You have to anticipate it and prepare for it, which will ring true in our next presentation, which is why I wanted to tee that up.

Um there any barriers or uh I'm sorry, are there any barriers to getting new projects off the ground that are within our local control that we could be working to remove?

Yeah, so local siting.

I mean, that's a kind of a big thing to help move projects along.

Um, you know, hosting meetings where if there's community concerns, NIMBY concerns that come up that those meetings are available to talk through with residents because understandably this is you know a complex environment, and a lot of questions just come from lack of understanding and that frustration that follows with that.

So being able to provide that type of platform where people can ask questions and have a better understanding will help having less pushback and various siding boards, I'm sure would be you know much more amenable to proving things if they have the residential support.

Yeah, and I appreciate that.

That actually came up in recent conversations that we've had with our community council meetings where you know I had a resident come up and say, I know I'm a part of this program, I don't understand any of this language.

In addition, English is my second language, right?

Where can we get more things translated in multiple languages because we know we are a very diverse city?

Um, so that folks understand what they're signing up for and what these programs are doing to kind of benefit them.

Um it was nice to still say, hey, we're still cheaper than the other rate, um, which is always a really good selling point as folks are trying to figure out what to do uh next.

Um you kind of answered a lot of my other questions, so I'm gonna stop there to see if my colleagues have any questions, Councilmember Bangston.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um yeah, and to that point, I think it is always good to see that we are meeting the overall goal of uh saving uh our our residents, right?

That is when we went to the voters said that they would save money compared to being out there in the open market.

Can you talk to where are we to that goal?

Uh what we told uh folks where we wanted to be at, are we meeting that target goal of savings?

And then two, now where are we projected to get to that ambitious goal of 100% uh generation of clean energy?

Sure.

Yeah, so in terms of savings, yes, we are meeting that goal.

Um we have you know the first year of the program was a little bit above, but every year since then has been meeting that goal of savings.

In terms of progress to 100% clean, we're currently 100% clean.

30 percent of the program is supported by local in-state projects.

The rest of it is being filled through national renewable energy certificates.

So we are working towards that switch up, right?

Where we have less of the renewable certificates that are filling filling the 100% and more of the local in-state that are filling that 100%.

I believe the overall in-state goal was 60%, and currently we're at half of that, right?

So we're at 30 percent.

The in-state goal is 60 percent.

Gotcha.

Thank you for that clarification.

So it's really more we have the certificates that we're acquiring or offsetting that green energy somewhere else.

Explain to me then the slide where it says that 45% of our base load is still natural gas.

Is that considered clean?

That that's just the generation mix for the entirety of the grid, right?

So that's not specific to grid program.

That's right.

Yep, it's a 13-state grid that Ohio is a part of.

And that base load is 45% natural gas.

Okay.

Thank you for that clarification.

Sure.

Yes.

Anything else?

All right.

Well, Aaron, appreciate you being here and obviously kind of walking us through that.

I do want to pause and see if there's anyone in the audience, and hopefully no one stands up when I ask this time if you would like to uh come up and speak on the city's uh uh community choice program.

All right.

Seeing no one, we are gonna move on.

Thank you again for being here, and thank you for kind of walking us through that.

Uh so now we will move into the rate proposal proposal portion of the hearing.

Um, I know this is a difficult conversation that none of us want to have because residents are going to feel any creep any increase, small or large.

Um, I have to tell you, as chair of public utilities, this is not my favorite month of the year, any year.

Um, but sadly, we have to have this conversation.

So, why are we here?

Like many of the challenges our residents are facing, uh, the root cause is our population growth.

Our region is projected to grow to three million by 2030.

We have seen what happens when we lag on investments for infrastructure projects.

Let's think sidewalks, let's think um transportation, housing.

Um, we cannot risk delay in water infrastructure.

We also need to maintain repair projects for our aging, uh, existing infrastructure that cannot wait because of legal requirements and health implications to our community.

Uh the proposal you're about to hear is based on the department's cost of service analysis, an affordability study, and a review of upcoming debt payments.

After simulating different scenarios and having many hard conversations over the last few weeks, uh the department has brought forth this proposal.

Uh first, we're gonna hear from the chair of the utility advisory board, Jason Coma, who will read a letter from the board, and then we will hear from uh Deputy Director Lee, who will kind of walk us through um the proposed rates and fees.

Chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

It's nice to say that as well, right back to you, sir.

And thank you, members of council and President Harden for the opportunity to speak today and see all of you.

I'm I'm Jason Coma.

I'm the chair of the utility advisory board.

Uh, and on behalf of the board, I'm here to follow up on our proceedings throughout the year.

So the Utility Advisory Board uh together with representatives of the Department of Public Utilities met about five different times throughout 2025 to review utility operations, capital improvement needs, affordability programs for water, sewer, stormwater, and power services.

And following the board's public meeting on October 29th, uh, the Utility Advisory Board or UAB voted unanimously to recommend the 2026 rate adjustments outlined as follows.

Uh these rate adjustments would be effective uh January 1st, 2026.

Uh water, 18% increase, sanitary sewer, 8% increase, stormwater, 2% increase.

All combined, these adjustments uh will increase the average inside city residential bill by about $10.50 a month.

Uh that's $31 per quarter or about 126 dollars a year uh for a household uh using 20 CCF per quarter.

Uh uh for those of you not familiar with the translation of CCF, that's about uh 165 gallons per day, or really a typical family of four, household of four.

Uh for outside city customers, the average increase is twelve dollars and fifty cents per month.

That translates into about 150 dollars per year.

Uh low income participants in our discount programs will see a smaller impact, about eight dollars and fifty cents per month or one hundred and three dollars per year.

You know, as noted in the intro, Mr.

Chair, the these right recommendations are driven you know primarily by long-term infrastructure uh investments that are really essential to maintaining reliable service and supporting the region's rapid growth.

Uh chief among these is the home road water plant and transmission line project.

That's a $2 billion investment uh funded through state revolving loans with construction beginning in 2026 and with estimated uh an estimated completion date of 2033.

You know, that project is really, as you know, is critical to adequate drinking water capacity for the region, you know, that's expected to reach 3 million residents uh you know here in 25 more years by by 2050.

You know, additional drivers include debt service for the fourth water plant and other capital projects within the $8.6 billion 2026 to 2031 plan.

Uh new uniform commercial water rate structure and suing large users uh pay their fair share uh for system capacity, updated capacity fees for water and sewer connections.

This would be the first update since 2006 to really more accurately reflect the cost of system expansion.

Sewer fixed charges by meter size and updated extra strength charges based on industry standards and power rate adjustments that continue the multi-year investments in smart lighting and system modernization.

You know, without these adjustments, future races future uh rate increases would need to be even higher, you know, given the loan repayment obligations to maintain the city's strong credit ratings.

That's something the board focused on quite a bit throughout our our deliberations and meetings.

You know, recognizing the impact on households, and this is you know really uh I think a great place to focus on.

The board strongly supports expanding the low-income and senior discount program.

Those recommended changes uh include raising the discount from 25 percent to 30 percent in 2026, and having a goal to have that at 40 percent by 2028, and then you know, enhancing uh additional partnerships and outreach.

Uh, we need to get more folks signed up for the discounts that they have available uh that can help uh support uh especially uh as the needs grow.

You know, the board is also uh encouraged uh by the department looking at different options uh beyond discounts that help residents maintain affordability.

Some of those things are our monthly billing, uh budget billing, uh, expanded leak adjustments uh and extended payment plans, just to name a couple.

Uh these efforts, uh, as you would probably know, align with city council's you know priorities to to balance affordability uh and and you know the need for sustainable utility operations.

You know, overall, uh the utility advisory board believes these recommendations are fair, equitable, and financially responsible, uh, and ones that we don't bring to this body lightly, but also provide the revenues necessary to operate, maintain, and improve the critical utility infrastructure while preserving uh affordability for the most vulnerable customers.

And we thank council uh for its partnership uh and and growth uh uh for sustainability for our community, and I'd be happy to answer questions or turn it over to Mr.

Lee or whatever the chair would like, sir.

I'm a little rusty, so I apologize.

No worries.

My stuff's all written for me, so I just follow the script.

Uh no, thank you, Chair.

Thank you for kind of walking us through uh the recommendation from the UAB.

Um I know John's gonna go deeper into the actual details, so we'll give him a chance.

I don't know if any of my colleagues had any initial questions.

If not, we can go on to the actual presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair White.

Uh good afternoon, President Hardin, Chair Whites, and members of council.

Um today, Columbus Water Empower is happy to present the 2026 proposed rates for water sewer, stormwater, and power.

Our focus and commitment continues, delivering safe, reliable, affordable services while preparing for major regional growth and long-term infrastructure needs.

Our first priority is ensuring sufficient revenue to operate our systems and pay debt service on critical capital investments.

Second, we must continue building and maintaining the infrastructure required to support one of the fastest growing uh regions in the Midwest.

Third, every rate we propose is rooted in cost of service principles, ensuring fairness across customer classes.

And finally, we recognize that we recognize affordability challenges.

These rates maintain our commitment to residential bill relief and expanding our customer assistance programs.

So for 2026, um, for a typical residential customer using 20 CCFs per quarter, uh, the increase is about $10.50 per month or roughly 126 per year.

Low income program participants, they see a smaller increase of about $8.50, reflecting our affordability strategy, and suburban customers who pay around 30% more than Columbus, they see a slightly higher increase.

Overall, the average household bill increases 11.7%, keeping Columbus among the lowest cost utilities in the region.

So here I wanted to show our operating budget and our capital budget.

Our 2026 operating budget maintains day-to-day system reliability.

It covers treatment costs, field and office staffing, chemicals, system maintenance, and many other items to maintain our service levels.

Also, the 2026 to 2031 capital improvement plan totals 8.6 billion, reflecting the enormous infrastructure needs required to support regional growth and aging assets.

The largest components are water and sewer due to the new plant construction, tunnels, and replacement work.

The home road water plan at approximately 2.3 billion is the centerpiece project ensuring long-term water supply resilience.

Two new upground reservoirs will ensure adequate raw water storage as population and industry expand.

We have our lead service line replacement program and Blueprint Columbus.

They remain major public health and regulatory initiatives.

We have multiple tunnel projects, including our Three Creeks Relief Tunnel, our lower lower Olin Tanji Tunnel 2, which address wet weather capacity and EPA requirements.

Across all divisions, we're building for resiliency, redundancy, and growth.

This slide just really kind of shows what we have as far as water infrastructure, just a couple snapshots of some of our water storage tanks, just some infrastructure out in the field.

We have lagoons that we have to maintain as part of our water treatment process, and we're currently engaged in a replacement of our meters through our AMI project.

Sewer infrastructure, just a quick snapshots just to kind of give you some perspective of our our total sorry about that.

Of what we have going on in our sewer system.

You can see there that tunnel boring machine, the head of that tunnel as it came through the wall there.

You can see we've got a cogeneration engine there in the upper right that we're getting ready to turn on.

It's going to turn biogas into energy.

All those color-coded areas down there that are southerly wastewater treatment plant are going to be built for expansion and capacity.

Our blueprint Columbus program in the bottom right there is just some of the green infrastructure we're installing.

On the home road water plant, our modeling shows that we could reach or exceed 247 million gallons of treatment capacity by 2030.

I'll go into some detail about that, but first I wanted to kind of show you what that looks like, what's going on there right now on that site.

First, you can see the schematic of what the new plant's going to look like in the upper left.

Right below that is just a visual of what's happening.

We have a site prep contract right now where they're actively moving earth in anticipation of the upcoming contract for construction.

And then you can see what is going to look like.

The plant up there in that map is going to be built along the reservoir with the lines, the distribution lines or transmission lines coming down to serve our system.

So that whole plant plus those lines is the 2.3 billion.

So again, this graph kind of shows that our modeling shows that Columbus could reach or exceed our 247 million gallons per day treatment capacity by 2030 without adding the home road water plant.

So again, this is driven by rapid population growth, industrial expansion, and increased regional services.

The timeline for the home road water plant and the needed rate increases to start servicing the adett aligns with when the new capacity is needed.

Uh, to kind of see what what it looks like, what it would look like if we did not have certain water services here.

And what that study found that uh two weeks without water would result in a total regional economic loss of roughly 5.8 billion.

It also found that potable water and wastewater services are critical for the economy and future economic development.

Continuing permanent economic activities from management maintenance and operating water and wastewater services support 1.3 billion in gross annual economic output across the region.

So I just wanted to point that out.

Here on this slide, you can see here we've got a comparison of our population growth to water production.

As you can see there as population is increasing, so does our water production.

So next, I wanted to kind of compare how we how we are with some of our regional partners in relate and regarding bill increases.

So even with these proposed increases, you can see that Columbus maintains the lowest residential bill compared to our regional peers.

You can see that on the left side.

Commercial bills on the right remain very low relative to similar utilities, supporting economic and growth in the region as well.

This slide here, when you compare it to local utilities around Columbus, Columbus customers continue to pay significantly less, even with these proposed rate increases.

You can see there that we have Columbus Current, and then we have Columbus proposed Columbus proposed right below it.

So we have some other changes as well that we're proposing in the ordinances that we have before council.

We're aligning several charges with updated cost of service findings.

These include extra strength, sewer charges, a fixed sewer charge by meter size, and updated capacity and tap fees.

These capacity and tap fees have not been updated as Chair Coma said since 2006.

A new commercial uniform rate.

This is going to ensure high volume users appropriately pay for the system capacity they rely on.

We also have a new cogeneration power rate that supports reliability, reliable electricity for our treatment plants.

And finally, wet weather fees are updated to more accurate reflect the cost of managing peak wastewater and stormwater flows.

So let's talk a little bit about the uniform commercial rate.

So moving to a uniform commercial rate, what this is going to do, it's going to reduce bills for our smaller usage businesses, but it increases the charges for very large users who drive system capacity demands.

John, can I just yeah what's an example of a high capacity user?

A high capacity user that we're talking about could be a user that's consuming 140,000 CCFs per month.

So we're talking millions of gallons a day in demand.

Do you have a sense of the type of business or organization?

You could look at uh in that group, you could look at um a data center, you could look at uh a brewery, you could look at another, you know, major bottling companies, you could look at um some pharmaceutical types of companies use a lot of water.

Um so we don't have very many in that bracket.

So with this change, what you're going to see is 99% of commercial companies are actually going to see a bill decrease.

So almost less than 1% are going to exceed this large bill increase to this uniform rate.

So the Columbus's new uniform rate still leaves large users paying less than major peers, uh peer utilities.

Uh, this structure improves fairness and better aligns cost with system demand.

So in this case, uh, here's an example of a high user that's consuming 140,000 CCFs a month.

You can see there our existing rate structure in the first green bar, and then with the uniform rate, how much of their bill is going to increase, and then you can compare that to other high users across the country.

So what this is kind of showing is that even with the increase, we're still remaining competitive from industries that are really looking uh to come here, but uh but they're gonna have to pay for the additional capacity when they do.

Um I also wanted to point out that even though we're moving towards a uniform rate in 2026, that's our proposal.

We are planning to transition from the uniform rate to an inclining block rate.

So you can see there that uniform is obviously one rate.

We're recommending in 2027 that we go up even higher.

So that uniform rate is going to increase.

You can see there that we are proposing, we're proposing sorry.

Three dollars and eighty-two cents as a uniform rate, and then for that same consumption, it's gonna go up to four dollars and thirty-six cents in the upcoming years.

So implementing inclining block immediately could create rate shock for our commercial customers, especially industrial customers.

So we feel one year transition is appropriate.

And again, there's not not every commercial company has those peaks that certain other industries do.

Inclining block also encourages efficient water use and sends a clear price signal for high volume consumption.

Uh capacity fee up.

John, real quick before you move on.

Can you speak to the original setup?

Like what would what was ultimately the goal, the objective, but having a setup that reduced the the bill for folks with more water they consume.

Chair Wedge, so you can see there uh at the bottom table, what we have right now is what's considered a declining block.

So the less you consume, the more you pay.

The more you consume, the less you pay.

So that was a type of a block structure that has been around for decades.

There's really three types of major block structures declining block, uniform, and inclining.

And so the rationale behind that was to really kind of uh spur development in a region.

You get customers that are high water users, they come in and you know they don't they're paying less for capacity.

So there's not too many other utilities that are really in that in that rate structure.

There's there's a couple, but overall, about 58 percent nationwide are in the uniform uniform rate structure or in or inclining block.

Thank you.

So on capacity fees, uh, we've not updated our capacity fees since 2006, despite significant increases in construction costs and infrastructure demands.

Updated fees ensure new development pays its fair share of system capacity.

Our profo our proposed fees remain competitive regionally even after adjustment.

You can see here that uh on the left side, the water capacity fees, even as proposed, are still lower than other um area uh cities and villages.

Likewise, we're about middle of the road there on the sewer capacity fees, even after the increases.

Next, um our sewer fixed charge by meter size.

So you can see there at the top table what we do now for our fixed charge, which really covers meter reading services, billing services, things of that nature.

We've been applying a flat rate for all customers, which are usually in the standard strength.

This is on the sewer side.

So what we're proposing is we kind of break that out, and so um customers that have a larger water meter size are paying more because they're bringing in more water, they're having more sewer discharge, ultimately costing the utility more.

So again, this is cost of service based, um, and we're presenting that recommendation before council.

Next, I'll shift over to power rate increases.

So for power, we are continuing our along our multi-year increase plan, five years for residential and three years for commercial.

Uh the power division must modernize its infrastructure and strengthen system reliability.

These increases generate about 16 million in new annual revenue necessary to meet capital and operating needs.

This is just a quick snapshot of some of the things going on at the uh division of power.

Um our service area, not too many people know about our service area for power.

You can see there highlighted in the greens, it's a utility that's been around over a hundred years here in the city.

Um we we're responsible for street lights for the whole city, not just for the division of power service area.

So I just wanted to point that out.

Um for the division of power, um, we have significant upgrades that are needed, things like substation upgrades, uh distribution equipment, uh, LED street lighting, and system resiliency.

Historical capital spending is illustrated here is not kept pace with system needs, making these increases essential to maintain reliability and safety.

So, what we're showing here is that over the years we've only been investing on average about two and a half million in the division of power on their capital side.

After a study of their fixed assets and their depreciation, we realized that we need to put them at least 15 million.

Um so we recently received some bond dollars for the division of power, and we're hoping to continue to receive additional dollars, and these revenues will help support that debt service for those capital projects.

Next, I wanted to move in and I'll kind of finalize uh the presentation with a discussion on our low-income programs.

So we continue to expand our low-income programs.

We're requesting the discount, as mentioned, um, to be increased from 25 percent to 30 percent for low-income households.

We still have our service fee waiver for seniors, that's going to continue, and we'll continue to have our discount available for multi-unit landlords.

You can see here in this next slide, kind of the uptrend in our program starting in 2022 based on our efforts uh to increase participation.

So far in 2025, we've seen participation grow uh 4 percent since the end of 2024.

Uh I'm also happy to report that last year when council approved the creation of our power low income program, um, we've already received 1,041 power participants already enrolled.

We've already received 1,041 power participants already enrolled.

So this slide shows some of the data that we're looking at.

So we uh worked with a consultant to really dive into where families are located that would be eligible for our low income program.

And so it was pretty astounding to find that of the 7,000 that we already have enrolled, that even before we increase the federal poverty level to 200%, we had the ability to capture 70,000 residents that could be eligible.

As we increase the federal poverty level to 200% from 150, that increased it another 35,000.

So in total, in Franklin County, we've got over 105,000 that we could reach through our low income program based on this data.

So what are our goals with this program?

Our goals are to double participation.

We're committed to uh reaching that goal of 2026 to double it.

That would that would mean we would have 17,000 signups.

So we're also going to increase the discount in 2027 to 35%, and again make another recommendation to increase it to 40 in 2028, providing meaningful relief.

We're also launching new branding, multilingual applications, improved materials, and strengthened partnerships with community groups.

We now have a dedicated staff with new tools, and I'll go through some of the things that we've changed.

We've got a new application as you can see here, kind of a refreshed look, easier to read.

We lay out the household size with our maximum income.

We've got a QR code there.

So we're actively working on streamlining this for release in 2026 with uh complete refresh.

We're also developing some new bill stuffers.

We we have many customers that still receive paper bills.

We can insert this in their in their bill.

All they have to do obviously is click on that QR code and it's formatted for the cell phone so they can quickly apply to the program if they're eligible.

We're also looking at and creating door hangers.

That's the front and back of a door hanger where if we're out in the field in coordination with some of our field staff, hang these on doors just for awareness.

Likewise, new postcards where we can mail those out to customers.

This is a handout for community events that we prepared.

So whenever we're out in the public, again, we can have this up for various events.

It's very easy to read, you know, short, then again, the QR code, so customers can get a quick snapshot of this and hopefully leave with some good information and hopefully uh an application submitted.

Uh, right here, what we have is our I've just wanted to call this out as far as our current relief program that we just uh developed.

This is um for the federal shutdown relief during federal shutdowns.

We deployed um emergency customer relief tools to support residents affected by missed paychecks.

So we're pausing turnoffs related to non-payment and we're waiving late fees.

Um this reflects our commitment to compassion and flexibility during unexpected hardships.

So, again, as mentioned, some of the other policy considerations we're looking at.

Obviously, we're slowly transitioning to monthly billing.

That's going to really help and improve affordability by reducing bill spikes.

Leak adjustments, leak adjustment frequency.

We're going to look at increasing that from every three years to once per year.

We're proposing a 12-month repayment option for large unexpected bills and offering budget billing for predictable monthly payments.

Water service restoration, we're looking at requiring a 50% payment rather than a full balance, making reconnection far more attainable.

This is just for customers so they can see if they go into our customer portal where customers can sign and get access to our discount programs on those links on the right.

They can access our utility updates where they can see what's happening at the utility, some of our our local news, and they can also sign up through these links for the water and power uh payment plans.

Um, we have something new that we started this year, what's called the Columbus Care Program.

So, through this link, um, customers who want to make a one-time or recurring donation to help families in need can do this through this program.

All you have to do is when you pay your bill, you can round up.

Um, and what we will do is we will put that in a fund as the balance increases our goal is to provide credits, credits to low income customers or a customer that may have a situation where they have a high bill, they might not be low income, but it's basically an assistance uh program.

Um we're doing that because the ARPA dollars that we had for the last few years are sunsetting.

So this year we were still able and we are able now to apply the credit that we had um allocated for bills.

So we're really excited about this program.

And I'll wrap up here with this this final slide here, just some other assistance items that we have at the department as we're out in the field installing and uh improving lead lines, uh removing those lead lines.

Um we have an assistance program there where you can get $10,000 in assistance.

This is a long-term 99-year loan where you don't have to pay it back until uh transfer of title.

Likewise, we've got the similar program on the sewer side.

If you have a septic tank and you want to abandon that septic tank, um we've got a program where you can use ten thousand dollars again, it's a loan like the lead service line.

We also have um some utility uh utility warranty program where you can sign up for in the event that you have a line break on your property, pay a little bit, and then you can get that repaired through uh a contractor.

So with that uh council president Harden, Chair Weich and members of council, I'll conclude my presentation uh and answer any questions.

Well, John, thank you for walking us through the proposal and for all the conversation of the last month or two as we kind of get to this date.

Um, one of the first questions I have to ask, right?

What if we just don't increase the rates?

What does that look like?

If we don't increase the rates uh for 2026, we're probably gonna be coming back to council in 2027 with a higher increase.

Um and the reason being is that you know we're committed to moving forward with the fourth water plant and all these other capital investments.

And just due to the timeline that it takes to construct that plan, it's not going to be operational until 2033 or 2034.

Um we're actually going to be fully operating it.

And so we look at that and as illustrated in the the chart that I showed where you know we're we're very cognizant of the growing population and their water demands, and so we feel that you know this is a very critical project.

And so if we did delay them, we would come back with rate increases likely to 25 to 35 percent compared to what we've got presented before you, which is 18, and we plan to hopefully cascade those downward um over the next few years.

I appreciate that.

Um I think there's also been some confusion around the bond package and rate increases, right?

I can you just explain how those two things kind of play to what we're looking at here and um is there a way in which the city, the residents are saving money by going in one direction or the other for paying for this type of infrastructure.

Uh Chair Witch, that's a great question.

Um, and under understandable that there might be some confusion, but we will use that money eventually.

We will use the 500 million in bond authority, but we've got such a great partnership with Ohio Water Development Authority for our construction projects, our design, construction, and inspection projects.

And so we always seek the lowest cost of borrowing for our customers.

And so traditionally, that lower cost of borrowing has been with the loan program through Ohio Water Development Authority.

Um typically we use the bonds for projects that really don't qualify for the loan program.

Those could be facilities projects, uh storage tank improvements, other things that just don't impact water quality.

And so it will take a bit of time to draw down that $500 million in bond authority.

So every time we issue bonds, we draw that down.

If we issue a hundred million in bonds, we'll have $400 million left in that bond authority.

So it'll take a few years, but but we will use it.

I appreciate uh just kind of clearing that up for folks.

I know that's a question that has been out there.

I have just one more question, and then I'm gonna open up.

I'm sure my colleagues have questions as well.

Um data centers, right?

That is the topic at hand.

That is what folks are most concerned about.

Um is the need to expand our water infrastructure being driven by the need to service data centers.

I would say no.

I would say it's it's our system as a whole.

Uh we've got a very diverse system.

Um when you look at when you look at our consumers and our consumption, um, we have got a most of it's residential consumption.

So you when you break things down, commercial is a big part, um, but this industrial section sector of our overall class, it's not it's not by any means um near just general commercial or even residential.

So I would say it's not driving these rate increases, it's really the anticipated growth, residential growth really, um, you know, up to you know, in the next 25 years, and what we're planning for based on projections that we could be a population of three million by 2050.

So with data centers, one of the things is they've got peaks, they have peak demands, and so um we are looking at those peak demands because sometimes those peak demands increase or are estimated to increase above our rated capacity for our plants.

So that's really the one thing about data centers.

They don't really have a level consumption.

It's there's a lot of immediate demands for a few months.

Appreciate that.

Let me open it up.

Well, thank you, Chair, and thank you to the department, to the director, to uh the advisory board for uh working to provide council this um proposal today.

Uh and even thank you to Councilmember Weiss for shepherding uh this process thus far.

Uh I think that what you are wrestling with, and certainly what this council is wrestling with is not just the need to build and prepare for the future, but for the current day reality of what cost a resident can bear uh in this current environment.

And you used a good phrase uh in talking about the um commercial uh rates and potential increases, called it like an adjustment shock.

So I guess my my general question and lines of questioning are are around how do we as a city balance our future needs that I we can all agree on with the adjustment shock of the current financial situation that our residents are dealing with, be that um higher cost for food, we just went through a SNAP benefits situation, we saw what uh property taxes went through uh did to our community over the last.

How do we balance that uh need for future investment with the potential shock that could come to uh our ratepayers, our customers?

President Harden, that's a great question.

Um, and something that we look at as far as our modeling, really it's we've often said that customer affordability is is is paramount.

Um so as Chair Weitch had mentioned, many, many scenarios were run.

Um, we're looking again what is that monthly bill impact.

Again, it's ten dollars, we understand that, and that is something that is that is meaningful.

Um, and you know, if as these rate increases continue over the years, it's gonna get even more meaningful.

Um some folks don't have anything to you know give.

There's no there's no give in their budget.

And so um that's what we are in a situation where we're always looking for tools and techniques and what other utilities are doing to help those customers.

And so I think again, when we look at our assistance programs, you know, we have some options there.

We've seen some that even raise the 200 percent poverty level to 250 percent.

So you're gonna again, you're gonna get a wider income level.

Um I think a family of nine can go up over 125,000.

Um there's more opportunity to go there.

Again, what we've got presented is a plan to increase those discounts even more.

I've seen other utilities, they've got a 50 percent discount.

So I think if we can really make strides to get folks signed up and really meet that that mark, if we could get to 100,000 or even 70,000, that would be very uh very successful for the program.

Um I think I think customers also could we actually afford to even get to the 100,000.

If if we know now that there's a hundred thousand folks in our community that are eligible for rate reduction.

How what why is our why is our goal not 100,000?

Why is it 17,000?

You know what I mean?

Like if we could afford, if if we are saying that we observe that these increases are going to mean something for residents who are struggling, our grandparents, then what will then why are we okay with the delta being 70,000, 80,000 folks still out there that could afford but aren't.

Agree.

And that's a that's a great question.

Um, why is our goal at 17?

Why is it not at 70 or 100?

Um I just do not think that we can attain that in one year.

I think it's going to take multiple years.

Um from what we found.

I mean, we've been we've had these programs in place for a long time, like decades.

And we're these numbers are just too low.

And so it takes a lot of research and understanding of why.

What what is the problem?

Why aren't people are they not aware of it?

Is it our marketing efforts?

Um, you know, are most of these folks in multi-units, which we have struggled with as far as getting multi-units to sign up.

So we're really we haven't identified, you know, the key to success with this pro with this program.

Um, I think we want to we want to be realistic with our goals.

And if we as these changes come on um and our efforts are are fruitful, uh perhaps we can increase our goal for 2027 to double that.

And Council President Harden, if I may, uh, you know, that has been a point that the advisory board brings up routinely and has really um encouraged, if not challenged the department to take many of the strides that they have.

Uh you know, our our uh so I'll take myself as an example.

We've got a cross-section of folks who are on the advisory board, uh, commercial industrial, uh, people representing the the legal aid community, the area on aging community.

I think some of you may know uh my somewhat newer role.

You know, I run the statewide network of free clinics in the state of Ohio.

And so as an aside, thank you to council support of those in the City of Columbus.

But these are folks that fit that gap.

They're hardworking people who are our neighbors who an impact is gonna hurt and it and it's tough.

We have challenged the department to come up with new ways to increase and meet that gap.

Many of the uh newer tools that Mr.

Lee had shown today are things that have come forward to try and get us to a point where you know we can go from uh not just 70,000 to but but to to beyond, right?

And and and so it's something that trust me, for the time that I've been on the board, it is every single meeting.

How can we make sure that affordability is front and center and those who are most vulnerable don't get left behind when they're getting left behind in so many other places?

For sure.

And so it's the advisory board is on the other.

And I think that is important to parse out the difference between a low-income homeowner who is paying a single bill versus a low-income renter, and the inability to separate those two types of bills.

And just on this point in general, um, it's an expectation of council, but it's also an opportunity to partner with council.

Um that goal of of and we we should start every meeting.

Every time that we have an opportunity, we should be working and telling funding folks, community groups, local nonprofits, that there are folks out there who are struggling to pay bills that don't have that that that could have rate reductions.

And it's just it it's not a it's it will be unacceptable to raise rates on folks without tripling down on the efforts to make sure that folks who don't even need to pay that much pay that.

My my last question just is going back to um I don't want to just pick on data centers, so I'll go back to your term high rate users.

Um we talked about this.

You had a slide up there that talked to show that we have been in an imbalance of how we have not imbalance, it was a decision that we as a community made that we used lower rates to incentivize business and business development and folks able to make money, which is good.

Those are jobs that came to Columbus.

But we we can't we have to acknowledge that we have more of them now and that the incentives have worked in terms of creating more.

Um and then we show that we're going to go from a declining to a uniform first, and then we'll talk about inclining.

So the more you use.

Maybe this isn't one where we don't want to need to still be at the bottom of the pack in terms of how communities charge for commercial water usage.

President Harden, that's a great question.

And understood.

Um why don't we just go right to inclining block?

Um why are we why are we why are we having you know stalling one year at uniform?

Again, this is we've had this declining block in for decades, and I think it's you know, just you know realization that this is going to impact businesses.

Uh again, you know, we've got a lot of businesses that are not data centers that are very high users.

And I think that they're going to be like, I'm not a data center, and why is my bill going up like this?

And so I think that there's um you know, there's reasons, there's justification for it.

You know, these are industry standard types of rate models, um, and they're all cost of service based.

But you know, we want to also remember those customers that have been here for decades as well, that have been in this community, have been contributing to this community.

These data centers have been in here, you know, the last I don't know how many years, but recently and yes, they are using um a lot, but their bills are on par with those other major uh commercial customers as well.

So um really it's it's kind of a transition period.

I mean, we're we're we're looking again at going to inclining block in 2027, but you know, we don't want to get in a situation where you talk about customers and some of these products that these local large commercial companies are producing, you know, they could end up passing on those costs to those high water rates into their product prices.

So consumers would end up paying there through additional price increases.

So again, this is this is new territory for us.

We're kind of just taking it slow, see how things go.

But before you know it, we're gonna be in 2027.

We're gonna look at some of the data that we get.

We're gonna analyze, you know, do we actually have commercial delinquencies?

Um we don't really have very many commercial delinquencies, but we'll see what the bill impact is to this change to this uniform rate.

We'll see how they respond.

We don't know how the data centers are going to respond.

We don't know how some of those other large users are going to respond as well.

Well, I just want to again start off how I I uh or end how I started it off in thanking you for the hard work.

I know these are not easy decisions that you are being proposed to this council.

I hope that you are hearing and understanding the struggle that I am having, and I'm assuming this council will have with asking more from folks who are desperate right now.

This is what we get stopped in the grocery store about as elected officials, is it being too expensive to live right in in our city right now?

And so I think the opening that we have again that I'm seeing is this opportunity to work with whoever will to close that gap in terms of folks who can't afford, and we know that they can't afford, and yet um are not taking advantage of that.

And um uh not that it's low-hanging fruit, and not that you haven't tried, but that it has to be more than a challenge if if that is going to be an expectation for us at council.

And also we'll have have to have other big conversations about what what we need and how and how we balance that with what folks can afford at what time, and be transparent about it as well.

Uh and so grateful for everybody again, grateful to the director, to the director's office, to the advisory board, to councilmember Weiss and his team uh for your leadership.

And I my apologies I have to run as a single dad uh pickup for child daycare is at 5 30.

So I'm gonna run.

Thank you.

No worries, councilmember.

I I have my kids stashed in my office.

I'm sure it's a mess by the time we get out of here.

Um councilmember Baity, just want to check in, see if you had any questions uh specifically related to the rate increase proposal.

All right.

Um, thank you.

I know the department is grappling with the same questions as council, as the council president mentioned.

Uh, how do we meet the water needs of our increase in population while balancing the rising cost to provide service and the ability for residents to actually make ends meet?

There are no easy answers, but I appreciate the working relationship my team has with Columbus Water and Power, so we can work together to find ways to help provide relief to our constituents who truly need it.

We can live without a lot of things, we cannot live without water.

Um, we have one person who has signed up so far to provide um public testimony.

I want to invite up Quasi Lowe.

And if anyone else who is here who didn't get a chance to sign up would like to speak, if you can check in with Jocelyn in the back, if you can wave, uh she can get you signed up.

Floor is yours, sir.

Thank you.

Um, my name is Ryan Holmes, um, affectionately known in the community as Quasi Lowe.

A lot of people didn't know that, so you know this is uh formal, so wanted to make sure I was truly accounted for.

Uh also wanted to just take a moment to show some appreciation for the, even though the numbers are shrinking, uh, the opportunity to get to speak in front of four black men uh represented uh as the city, the body of city council.

Um again, my name is Quasi Lowe.

I'm deputy director of Columbus Stand Up, a local grassroots organization advocating for working class families in city uh central Ohio.

This week we launched a campaign called Lights Out on AAP, uh calling attention to a crease to increased electricity costs in central Ohio.

I know we're talking about water increases right now, but one of the things that we've been aware of is the general increase in utilities across the board.

We're grassroots organization, definitely want to ultimately be able to create uh address utility increases across the board.

Right now we have the capacity to address AP, so we're addressing AP, but thought this was an opportunity to kind of speak to that in general.

Um since we've launched on Monday, we've collected a thousand over a thousand petitions.

Uh though today's topic, I've already kind of mentioned that.

Um we encourage city council to keep this affordability crisis in mind before approving any additional rate hikes.

Um we encourage city council to use this authority wisely when contracting with big tech companies on data centers, which uses a tremendous amount of water and electricity to operate.

I appreciate uh you being here and appreciate the work you all are doing out in the community.

One thing that would be helpful, right?

And we've talked about this um throughout this hearing as it relates to the rates.

We need people who need assistance to sign up for this program.

And so I would love the opportunity to kind of connect you with our team that is working on utility assistance to see if there are ways in which we can reach deeper into the community to connect with folks.

So I don't know if you all are interested in doing that type of work, but we need we need support.

Absolutely.

I mean, the community needs that type of thing right now, especially, so that's a great opportunity.

I would love to do my part to make sure that the community is aware of this thing.

So we'd love to connect and talk to you about it.

Appreciate it.

I believe uh Nina Brooks is in the audience.

She is leading our efforts on utility assistance.

I want to make sure you all connect.

So appreciate you being here.

Thank you for your advocacy and for the work that you all are doing in the community.

Absolutely, thank you.

Worries.

Perfect.

If you'll come up and introduce yourself, any organization you represent.

Good evening.

Good evening, Councilman White.

Uh, my name is Douglas Lumpkin.

And I wanted to get some additional information and understand a little bit about the bond package again and how it relates to the overall increase on the surface, obviously, as we hear about infrastructure and future.

And making that argument, one of the things I did not hear in the presentation, maybe it was there.

I came in late, was in that extrapulation as we talked a lot about population increase, but I did not hear a lot about the extrapolation of the fees and the revenue that would be generated as part of that.

I'm assuming service director has put that in his modeling, but haven't heard that, and also to President Harden's point, a little bit about hey, we talked a lot about doing this because of the future needs.

You talked a lot about that being further out.

But the residents now, you're asking them to carry that expense.

On the bond package, he mentioned, yes, we're going to use some of that.

I think it is difficult for residents to understand how we could have a bond package, talk about infrastructure within that bond package, say it's going to be used, and then over here a week after the bond package passes, come and say, hey, we have some infrastructure cost over here that can't be handled by the bond package, even though just as we've talked about, some of those plants, some of these upgrades are a number of years out before they'll be completed.

So I wanted to hear a little more because the plan, as I heard it, basically said, hey, we're gonna do some things with the bond package, but that's out there a little ways, but these rate increases need to be now.

I also understood a little bit about the conversation about the financing.

I'm making an assumption that as we go through the financing, that the programs that we're using are cheaper rates than the bonds.

That would be a general question that I would have as well.

And so outside of the timing of this, which I think at the very least is poorer one week after residents just voted for a billion dollar bond package.

And then even if you're on point in every way in this environment for that to occur a week after.

Anyway, so thank you for giving me a few minutes.

I don't know if you want me to follow up with.

I just want to understand that connection between infrastructure that we're paying for for fees and supposedly infrastructure associated with the water that's being covered by the bond package.

I wanted to understand a little more about that relationship.

Happy to follow up separately and not take counsel's time, but wanted to mention that.

Thank you for listening.

This is your living room, sir.

We you're not we're not taking up our time.

We're here to represent you and to hear from you.

Um November is that time in which we discuss rates every year.

It is not a fun time of the year for me as chair of public utilities, but I understand your concern there.

Um but you had a couple questions in there, and I want to let the um deputy director kind of speak to that.

So, one, deputy director, why can't we just wait until we need that added capacity to process I'm not even suggesting wait.

You're basically asking residents now for whatever reason, and I get where we fall with other communities, but you're basically asking residents now, hey, your fees need to go up because of these reasons, and for our future forecasting.

Yeah.

All right.

And all I'm saying was in that presentation within that future forecasting, though I know it's there, I'm assuming, there is modeling that shows, hey, we're gonna add this kind of residents, and even under these billing practices, we're gonna have this kind of revenue.

All right.

Now I didn't quite hear that in the proposal, but I'm assuming that exists.

On the side about assistance for other families, I think the point that you're making about working with nonprofit groups and those who are already working with low income is a very strong point.

The only thing I would add to that is I might get with Bo because he's running the heat program.

Not sure if you can do it, but would probably recommend something like categorical eligibility that basically says if you're over here on the heat program that was 165% of poverty, and you guys are now at 200.

Why didn't he have the form?

And when he's doing folks for heat, he's got bills, he's got family composition.

Some of those kinds of things that I am sure is on your form.

Might want to work through that, as well as the Urban League and their job program because they do a similar kind of thing.

No, definitely hear you there.

We work a lot with impact already on a lot of variety of programs.

We don't have to engage any and everyone who's kind of working with constituents on a regular basis.

But it but it is, in my view, taking that next step in that sense, the way I said that was if I'm in 165 and you've got all my data and I'm okay with it.

Yeah, don't make me do extra hoos.

Yeah, I mean, that is for future discussion in terms of how do we get uh waivers.

So for folks to automatically enroll in this program, to your point, why am I giving you the same information I've already gave someone else if I'm approved uh for SNAP or heap or any of these other programs, I should automatically be approved for the utility assistance program.

You're at 200.

Yeah.

Trust me, there is a lot more work to be done there.

I do want to call out the bond question again because I want to make sure that we're clear uh about why we're going in this direction and not utilizing bond capacity that we have built up to just pay for the fourth water plant.

Sure.

Uh councilmember Weich, um and sir, um that's a good question.

It's it's it's it's a tough and kind of complicated answer, I guess you could say, and um I appreciate you kind of thinking about it and kind of diving into the details.

Um, but again, it gets back to um really how are we saving residents money?

So if you kind of look at it like we could use all the 500 million um and we could add that 500 million to 1.5 billion to fund the water plant, or we could take the 500 million and use it for other projects.

The idea is that by using the loan program, our interest rates, so our principal and interest payments on that debt on that on that contract is lower if we use the loan program.

Danny, if you went through the bond, right?

So you're looking at probably an interest rate differential of between 5% and 2% would be the differential.

You might get a 5% interest rate on the bonds, whereas you get almost a 3% interest rate on the loans.

So if we structured, say the water plant where we were used all the 500 million from the bond package and then 1.5 billion in the loans, we might have to increase rates even more, maybe to 20 percent to cover that added interest cost.

Um, so I don't know if that makes sense.

It sounds like it might um so again that's one of our our major um efforts whenever we are doing our rate modeling is to push everything in the lowest cost from a debt, yeah, from a debt standpoint.

Councilman White, thank you, Mr.

Lincoln.

Thank you for being here for your advocacy.

Um before I close up the hearing.

Oh, sorry, we've already asked there isn't anyone else who's interested in signing up.

Um, I will say if folks want to review, and my apologies, we did get one written testimony from Mr.

Joe Motil, who is sadly at a funeral, so I just want to let him know that our thoughts and prayers are with him.

Um, but his question was around um capacity, right?

We have not uh had any restrictions around drought time, like why do we need additional capacity if we're working within?

And I think you touched on it a little bit in the presentation, um, but I want to make sure we can call that out and answer his question around why we're building capacity now when we currently aren't hitting our max, if that makes sense.

And I can reiterate our just read verbatim what he wrote if that's easier.

Sure.

Uh council member weight, that's a that's a good question.

Um so here recently with the drought that we've been in, um, we've not had to have any restrictions.

So we've been feeding from our doubt reservoir, um, and there's been no disruption in customers demand.

And so, you know, we plan for that, we plan for those drought conditions.

We do not know what the future is going to be like.

It seems like things are getting a lot drier.

We've been in um you know, continued drought conditions for the last few years.

Um, if those continue, there's going to be continued pressure on our system on our water supply system.

So we're actually even looking at building additional reservoirs.

That's part of the whole future look at our capacity.

So with these reservoirs, we've got that water in a reservoir that we can pump out to our plants and provide to our service population.

Again, we don't know what the future looks like.

I appreciate that.

His other question was really around the bond package again.

We've had that dialogue quite a few times, so I think we're good there.

But appreciate you answering this question and appreciate him continuing to advocate for the community.

Thank you to the chair, the UAV, the UAV members for the work that they do on a regular basis working with our department to make sure that we can have some folks advocating for residents, right?

As we have these discussions about rates and what they look like in the future.

Obviously, to my colleagues who are able to join in attendance, I'm sure there'll be more questions for you, John.

You've done an amazing job of answering them, but I'm sure there'll be more as we get a little closer to this being on the agenda, being on first and second reading.

So thank you everyone for being here tonight.

That is uh the end of our uh committee hearing this evening.