As its costs continue to rise, the City of Powell is preparing to raise its fees for both electric and garbage service.

At a Monday meeting, the Powell City Council gave initial approval to rate changes that would hike the average resident’s utility bill by about $6.15 a month.

“We never want to sit here and ask you to, obviously, raise rates,” City Administrator Zack Thorington told the council members, “but the truth of the matter is, we have to.”

Electric rates

The planned increases to the city’s electric rates — the first changes in a decade — are designed to pass on the higher prices being charged by the city’s wholesale power provider, the Wyoming Municipal Power Agency (WMPA). 

City Councilman Zane Logan, who serves on WMPA’s board of directors, said the agency itself is seeing increased costs. For one thing, Logan indicated that cheaper hydroelectric power is dwindling amid dry conditions in the West.

The situation in both the Colorado River Storage Project and the Loveland Area Projects is “not good,” Logan said, with water levels at “an all-time low.” And less water means less power is being generated.

“It’s physics,” Logan said. “That’s all there is.”

WMPA’s upcoming increase is expected to raise the city’s costs by about $300,000 a year, and Powell’s proposed rate hike is designed to generate that same amount.

Assuming the proposal passes two more readings before the city council, residential customers’ energy charge will rise by 4.4% — from 11.45 cents to 11.95 cents per kilowatt-hour. Based on the average residential use of 700 kilowatt-hours a month, that will raise the monthly bill by about $3.50, the city says.

Commercial customers will see a roughly 4% increase, to 12.92 cents per kilowatt-hour. The larger, more power-intensive customers that are being charged on a separate demand schedule will see their energy charge increase by 7% and their per-kilowatt demand charge by 4.6%.

Powell’s electric rates have remained steady since 2016. Although WMPA raised wholesale rates in 2024, the city chose to absorb that increase with existing revenue.

“We’ve done pretty good for 10 years,” Thorington said at a May 4 budget session.

He mentioned that Powell’s electric fund is “pretty healthy” at the moment, with $4.8 million in reserves. However, some pricey upgrades are planned for the grid on the south side of town, Thorington said, and the city is still paying off a state loan that helped fund the reconstruction of its substation.

“We have to look at our capital, what’s coming up for [the] future,” he said, “because we always have to rebuild, make sure we’re giving the customer a good product.”

It’s unclear if these new rates will last for another decade. WMPA could impose another, smaller increase next year, but “it kind of depends on the Colorado River,” Logan said.

Garbage rates

As for the proposed increases to the city’s garbage rates, they’re intended to address both increased tipping fees at the Park County Landfill and other rising costs for the city’s Sanitation Department.

“The cost of operations is just going up, like everything else,” Sanitation Superintendent Allen Griffin said at Monday’s meeting, “whether it’s a cylinder for a truck or tires or whatever, it’s all getting more expensive …”

Unlike the city’s other utilities, the sanitation department’s reserves are dipping below the levels recommended by the city’s independent auditor. The $810,000 worth of cash on hand is not enough to cover six months of operations. Additionally, the city expects to spend as much as $375,000 on a new garbage truck this year and the city will need to replace a pricey trailer at its transfer station in the near future.

“We always need to save with rates enough to pay the bills and upgrade our … infrastructure,” Thorington said at the budget session.

Residential trash rates are set to rise from $36 a month to $38.65, for a $2.65-a-month or 7.4% increase.

Commercial customers will pay 3%-12% more, depending on their level of service. Small commercial customers will see their rates rise from $38.83 a month to $40.

Overall, the city expects the revised rates to bring in an additional $100,000 a year.

It needed about $32,000 to cover a higher tipping fee at the Park County Landfill. Citing their own cost increases, the county recently raised its contracted rate for household trash from $65 to $71.22 a ton. (For smaller customers that aren’t on a contract, like private residents, the price is set to rise from $70 to $80 a ton.)

In a February presentation, Park County landfill staff said the increases are necessary and their rates remain competitive — particularly as other regional landfills have “substantially” increased their prices. Even with the increases, the county said its rates have risen by 18.7% since 2010, while national inflation has risen by over 40%.

The City of Powell previously hauled its trash to the Billings landfill, which is currently charging $63.70 a ton. However, calculations by city staff indicate it’s unlikely that switching back would save any money once the cost of hauling the longer distance is factored in.

At a March 2 council meeting, Thorington also cautioned that Billings has “constantly” increased its rates, while Park County committed to the $71.22 rate for the next four years. Logan said then that it made sense to stick with Park County since the cost was so similar to Billings.

The city expects to deliver around 5,150 tons of so-called municipal solid waste to the Cody landfill in the coming fiscal year.

The council last raised its garbage rates in 2022, when residential rates increased from $31.10 a month to the current $36. Even with the new hike, staff said the city’s rates would remain cheaper than a private hauler’s while offering twice-a-week service instead of once-a-week.

At Monday’s meeting, Powell Mayor John Wetzel said he wanted to “make sure we’re hitting the sweet spot” by “putting in enough of an increase to cover what we need for, say, the next five years, sort of, and not back here next year [with another increase].”

Griffin said he believed the increases would almost certainly cover the department’s needs through the new contract with the landfill — though Thorington was quick to add, “there’s no guarantees.”