Power and rate increases coming to Logan City residents

Logan Light & Power director Mark Montgomery talks to KVNU For the People host Jason Williams.

LOGAN — Logan mayor Holly Daines was not available, so it was Logan Light and Power director Mark Montgomery who appeared on KVNU’s monthly Speak to the Mayor program on Wednesday during For the People.

He said there are some future rate adjustments coming down the line in the near future.

“What we do every 3 to 5 years, and I think because the market’s so crazy, we might start doing this annually, but we’re going to do a cost of service analysis. Basically, what that does is it takes all of our revenues…and then it looks at all of our costs. And it’s just to determine if our revenues are covering our costs, and I can tell you last year they did not. I had to pull $1.5  million dollars out of reserves to cover our power costs,” he explained.

Montgomery said he’s been with Logan City for 10 years and they have not had a rate increase, which is pretty impressive. But he said power costs for them to purchase power on the open market have skyrocketed like everything else.

He said back in 2008, power costs went from $20 to $50 per megawatt hour to thousands of dollars very quickly and the city had no ability to pass that cost on, so they went through what’s reported to be $18 million of their reserve money in about 3 months, which was pretty much the full amount.

“In order to keep that from happening again, way back when, Logan City passed this electrical surcharge. Basically, what that means is, if in a month Logan City’s budgeted amount for power doesn’t cover what the billed amount is, they will take those dollars and spread those over the kilowatt hours used the next month amongst all customers, all rate payers. So, we haven’t enacted that for several years. In fact, since I’ve been here we haven’t done it.”

But Montgomery said they are going to do it this year. The impacts for a smaller home will probably be an increase of a $1.10 a month in their power bill, but he admitted the ones that will feel it more are the large industrial customers.

“The university, and the hospital and Gossners and Schreibers, they’re going to see that a little more. We’ve met with all of our large scale industrial customers and kind of let them know this was coming. They were actually pretty understanding because everybody is seeing pressure on costs for everything in every part of their budget.”

During the hour, Montgomery also shared that a major reason for power outages in the city is squirrels, so they put what’s known as a squirrel guard across the lines to protect the energized parts of the transformer to keep that from happening.

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5 Comments

  • Gene Jenkins August 18, 2022 at 8:27 pm Reply

    What is happening in Logan is atrocious! I have family in Utah and Salt Lake counties and they
    can’t believe what Logan City charges for power and other services. When does this excessive spending stop and those who lead this city make it affordable to those of us who reside here. At the next election we, the people, need to make changes.

  • Mark Boxx August 18, 2022 at 11:57 pm Reply

    Remember getting a notice in your bill a few months ago saying that the City has a surplus of money from the previous year? By law, they can spend it however the mayor and council wants to. One of the things they bought years ago was a new clubhouse at Logan River. Why? Because they could. No one dared stop them and no one is stopping them now. Additionally, to claim that rates for a ‘smaller’ house would only be about $1.10/ month does not tell the whole story. It used to be called an ‘electric bill’ each month. Now, monthly billing includes a whole host of services which may or may not be over-billed. Here’s a thought: take this years excess funds and pay back the over-billing for the last decade or so. Or else, they’ll build or create some other money pit. One that is exclusive to those who can afford it. Shame on you Logan City.

  • Excoalminer August 19, 2022 at 2:58 am Reply

    Gene, I haven’t studied the cost of Logan vs other municipalities however the Atrocious part of all of this is the shutting down of coal fired power plants and subsidizing the green power that that is not available 24/7/365 days a year! Believe it or not this is the biggest cost to us all over the United States! I also want to point out that the coal mine I was employed at until this atrocity started to happen was supposed to have shut down the last two units June 2022 and guess what! they had to keep one of them online until the end of September so there would not be black outs in the high demand of the summer heat. California is once again accepting carbon produced electricity because of the potential for rolling black outs! it is only going to get worse with the cost of utilities and if cache is higher then other places we have a choice to move, or vote these silly local & federal Green A** politicians out of office.

  • Pee wee August 19, 2022 at 12:20 pm Reply

    Didn’t Logan pull out of the nuclear power plant being built in Idaho. Give Holly a few more years and she will make San Francisco look good.

  • Reavers August 19, 2022 at 1:50 pm Reply

    Daines inc. need to go. She and our city council are not moral people and it shows. Residence of Logan are affraid to stand up to them. Thebpeople cant get just one representitive in office that would expose the corruotion and secrecy.

    Almost every devevloper that has built here does not live in the city so they dont have to pay in. Yet the renters they attrack are the the commodity the mayor looks forward to exploiting through taxation to do make self serving descisions.

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