City Council - Regular Meeting

Coming for the main meeting.

Somebody had a playoff game that didn't have a ride. Well, hello, everybody. I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order.

Clark, will you call the roll? Corliss. Here. Halliburton.

Here.

Morales. Nash. Stud. Here. Willits. Here. Four present, two absent. We've got one item on our work session before we break for dinner, and that is Steve Burgos.

Jim, if you all might remember, last year we launched an effort to create more streamlined access to utility affordability programs. And at one point, Excuse me. And I actually invited in the leaders of all the different utilities that Boiseans pay for. So Think Water, that's Veolia, Power, Idaho Power, Republic for garbage, composting, recycling services. And then, of course, the city of Boise has our geothermal system. And so I asked them and worked with Steve and the public works department to work together to create some streamlined processes. I'm really excited about the fact that everybody in that meeting said yes, of course, and got to work. And Steve's here to share an update.

Thank you, Mayor. Madam Mayor, Councilmembers, thanks for having me back. I was here a couple weeks ago, and we talked about water renewal services and some of the challenges that we were having there. And at that time, I talked about how utility affordability was becoming a bigger issue and an area of prioritization for us. And so this is a follow-up to that presentation, knowing some of the rate increases that the utilities across the valley that serve Boise and Zyto Power, Intermountain Gas, what's coming, as the mayor alluded to, she asked us to get together and talk about potential solutions moving forward. So this is an update on some of the work. So today we're going to cover an introduction to utility affordability and some of the recently drafted outcomes of the utility affordability report. We're going to review definitions of things like what is utility affordability, overview of our existing programs, discussion of key findings in the report, and then some of the recommended action items that we're already working on. So what is utility affordability? It really is a determination of how quote-unquote affordable utility bills are for users. And there are many, many different methodologies out there. Two, four examples that I have listed here. Common federal standards consider the cost of water and wastewater utility bills, and are they less than 2% of median household income? I believe median household income in Boise is around $80,000. And I have a graphic that kind of depicts where we are on that particular metric. Another metric that we haven't necessarily used in the past is it's referred to as hours at minimum wage. That refers to the average monthly bill for a home in terms of number of hours someone earning prevailing local minimum wage would need to work to pay for it. And there are probably three or four other different ways that we look at affordability. We're trying to land with the utility working group on where we want to define our affordability metrics so that we can then baseline and then move forward with consideration of how that baseline metric is changing and then therefore how our programs need to change over time.

So why focus on utility affordability?

So all the utilities that we have here that were considered in our analysis include the drinking water system, wastewater system, solid waste, electric and natural gas. All of those systems are facing increasing system needs and costs. And overall, therefore, utility burden in Boise is increasing faster than the rate of inflation. And I just have over on the right a graphic of a 2025 average monthly bill, residential bill for the various utilities and what that adds up to on a monthly basis. And you can see total is about $283 a month for the five major utilities that provides vital services to the citizens. So as the mayor mentioned earlier, how do we evolve to meet some of the growing needs around utility affordability? So the mayor asked that we convene all of the major utilities listed on the previous slide and ask for their assistance, ask for them to come and meet with us to talk about what are some of the options moving forward related to utilities. So we are working with those utilities. We're also partnering with LADA. Leda often delivers the many assistance programs and Boise they do that for all the major utilities just to explore options and then we've drafted the preliminary report we're already working on some of the action items in the report that i'll share with you here in a second. So the report itself is still in the draft form. We're still trying to make a final report. We have a couple of outstanding items, but we'll get that done hopefully the next month or so. It provides an introduction to affordability. It reviews existing programs, both local and has some national examples that I'll share with council. Overview of the constraints and challenges and then some of the recommended actions that I mentioned we're already working on. So this is a lot on this slide. I just want to walk you through what you're looking at because I think this captures pretty well some of the challenges around what is affordability, how you define it, and who's experiencing utility affordability burden. So what you're looking at on the far left y-axis is the percent of median household income paid to water renewal services. So that's that blue line that you see there on the graphic. On the right side is the household within that income bucket. So you see on the bottom x-axis, there's less than 10,000, 10,000 to 15,000, 15,000 to 25,000. Those are the income buckets and the number of Boiseans that sit in those particular income buckets. And then the red dashed line is that metric that's used at the federal level, and that's the 2% of median household income for that particular community for water and wastewater. So I mentioned about $80,000 is about our median household income. So you can see, can I use this?

Yeah, does that show up?

Okay, great. Right here, about $80,000. So you can see this red dashed line, 2%, and where water and real services were much less than the 2% threshold. So by that federal definition, Boise would be affordable by that federal definition. But the key here is when we start to look at the lower income buckets, you can see the percent paid of that particular household income is going up such that when we get to the low income buckets, and this is logical, we can be upwards of 6% of that low income bucket, what our utility bill is. So what we're focused on is on the lower end here, on the low income, where we're above the 2% threshold. So when we think about $25,000, maybe $30,000 and below currently is where folks would be above that 2% threshold. Note, this is just for water renewal services. This doesn't include the previous utilities I was talking about. So this is just the utility burden for water renewal services. So when we start talking about our affordability programs, we're really focused in on this lower half where we have low income residents that that are maybe struggling to pay water renewal bills, water bills, electrical bills, et cetera. So a lot of our work is focused on those lower income buckets. Any questions on this graphic? I know it's a lot of information, but just wanted to highlight how this is laying out for us. And then as part of the work, we've been talking with some of the folks trying to address homelessness in our community. Several years ago, the mayor challenged the directors to really be focusing on her strategic priorities. And at first blush, you might say, well, how does public works have any role to play in housing or homelessness? But when we started asking the question, you start to realize that actually we do have a role to play here. And so, for example, when we talked to catch and we talked to Janice and the example of catch utility bills in arrears is a driver in lightening the time of homelessness. So for housing assistance, utilities must be turned on. In other words, to move in, you have to be able to turn on utilities. In many cases, if somebody is in arrears, they cannot turn on the utilities. So therefore, extending homelessness for that family or for that person. You can see this second to bottom bullet there. 164 days is the average number of days from assessment to lease up. That is longer than we had seen in the past. And when we talk to catch, that lengthening is due in large part to unpaid utility bills. So a direct linkage between the work that we do in public works and housing and homelessness, again, that you wouldn't make those connections necessarily, but based on some of the challenges we got from leadership, it's like, no, I want you to really think through this. In addition, Jana shared some information where they provide assistance, where they'll have emergency loans to folks to make those repayments if they're in arrears. And interestingly enough, I was really surprised by the rate of repayments. So once somebody can get into housing and get established, that repayment rate is over 98% for loans between $100 and $1,500. So the point being that if somebody can get just a little bit of assistance to get into housing to address their utility bills, they can get on their feet and they can start to get that housing that they need and the assistance that they need. So an example of how public works... can impact these other strategic initiatives across the city. And so these were good kind of wake-up calls for us that we do need to be engaged in utility bills and folks that are in arrears or having trouble affording utilities.

Madam Mayor? Yes. Steve, I want to make sure that I understand the 164 and the 60 days. Can you go over that? Is that 60 is the average and now it's 164?

Correct. Madam Mayor, Council Member Willits. Yeah, the average used to be about 60 days from that assessment to lease up to getting somebody into supportive housing. Now that length has increased to about 164 days. And based on what Katz has shared, and some of this information is a little bit dated. We haven't had updates in a couple of years. But that's suggesting to us that the utility bills are a major part of folks not getting into that permanent supportive housing. So then just a quick overview of our existing programs. LADA has been a great partner over the years. They serve as a central access point for most of our assistance programs, not just for the city of Boise, but also for Idaho Power, Intermountain Gas, and Veolia. All of the utilities, when we met with them, have some form of assistance program. Whether it's bill discounts, hardship programs, I'll share some of the stuff that we do at the City of Boise. Utilities have payment plans, levelized billing. There's even situations where if somebody is in crisis, let's say it's wintertime and somebody can't pay a power bill, Idaho Power has ways to deal with that issue and provide temporary assistance. There are also federal and state programs. Example here is the Low Income Housing Emergency Assistance Program. efficiency assistance program, not emergency efficiency. That can provide some support, but it's pretty limited on the funding side. And we used to have a water program that was similar to LIHEAP. It was LIHWAP. That has not been funded at the federal level since 2024. So for the city of Boise, we have existing programs. The first one is our emergency assistance program. That's $100 credit. You can do that once per year. That's funded through money that customers choose to round up on their bills. And that's... administered by LA. We also have the hardship discount. That's a low income rate reduction that can be a 30% reduction on your monthly bill for that year. You must reapply annually and it's only for households that meet pretty low income category. And that's something that will revisit, I think, in the future. We also have our energy and water efficiency for vulnerable communities. That's also administered by LA to And I have stats for all three of these here in a second. I'll show you. And then some other options that we have for folks are payment plans for past due accounts. One of the things our collections folks have been focused on is really helping folks avoid getting too far into arrears. We're trying to catch it earlier and then offering them a payment plan that seems reasonable. What can you do? Let's work with you. We don't want you to go any further into arrears. And then we can also do the water leak bill adjustment request. If somebody has a water leak, we can work with the LA to get that addressed.

Madam Mayor, I have a quick question, Steve, before we move on. Is that information of all the programming available in, I imagine it's available online, but is it, I guess, just like one webpage that they have to go to? Or do they have to work with each of these different team members to find the resources? Yeah.

Madam Mayor, Council President said it's one of the biggest challenges we're facing is that it's very disparate, the programs, how to find them, who has money available, who qualifies. All of the programs have separate applications. So one of the things that we're working with, and you'll see some of our action items, is to try to figure out, can we just have one application available? that somebody can submit to LA to since they're a clearinghouse. And that way it'll qualify them for all the programs because it is a big challenge because it's just really, it's really very siloed.

Yeah, I appreciate that, Steve. I think that's a great effort. I could imagine that when you're burdened, more burden can be great barriers. I even think of like the tax rebate, the property tax rebate program that we have. I think it would be so cool if there was like a one-stop program page for resources available, even if it clicked through to other agencies or things like that. But maybe these programs and others that are available across the city could be found in one area. But yeah, I really appreciate that effort, Sue. Thank you.

Yeah, Madam Mayor, just to follow up, Councilmember, that's something that looking at the success of the Circuit Breaker Program and the outreach, we're going to try to kind of draft on that because that has been wildly successful. And how do we then replicate that for these as well? So And just some stats on participation for the different programs. So the assistance fund, that's $100 a year. These are the statistics over time. And you can see the participation rates have been increasing over time and the dollars of assistance going out. Still low numbers. We'd like to see these numbers higher, but at least we're headed in the right direction. And similar for the hardship discounts, you can see the number of accounts that have qualified and the amount of funding that's been provided. So we can do better on these numbers, and I think going back to the comment Councilmember said, thank you just like, how do we get better at drafting on say that the circuit breaker program to get information out. And then, for the la weatherization program, this is a lot of information i'll just boil it down to you all, the Council has been very generous to fund the weatherization program over the years. And they are leading to very direct savings, anywhere from $300 to $1,000 per household savings. So over a 20-year life cycle, that could be up to $20,000 for a low-income family as a result of the weatherization program. We've been able to help. You can see the households listed there. And what's really cool about the funding that you are providing is that we're able to leverage that with other funding that Idaho Power provides and other state funding. So they have money that if somebody else can contribute, we then can pool that money together. We can then take advantage of their offerings to increase the funding for the overall program. We still have a long wait list on the weatherization program. I don't want to paint a picture that this is we're kind of all done with it. It's not the case. But we're doing a great job the staff is doing a great job of leveraging the funding and we're getting money out and it's having a real impact on low income residents. And then we look at a national perspective other cities that we've talked to i'll have more specifics on San Antonio but Philadelphia San Antonio Detroit they have implemented. specific programs for their utilities. There are some state law limitations that we may want to work through or consider potential changes to. But for example, in Philadelphia, they have income-based rate structures. So it's based on what you can afford. So if we went back to our low income buckets and if we cap it at 2%, they would pay a much lower rate. That's what's happening in a city like Philadelphia. And then long-term bill reductions, just acknowledging in the low-income buckets, just let's make it long-term. That's not an annual application they have to submit. They're doing long-term bill reductions. And then in Detroit, they're doing debt forgiveness and plumbing assistance. So they're actually offering, not unlike a home energy efficiency audit that Idaho Power provides, Detroit is offering kind of a water efficiency evaluation where they can offer plumbing services either free or at reduced cost. And one of the things that we're learning as we've gotten into more and more research in the affordability programs is most of the successful programs treat affordability as a core cost of the utility service. So in Texas, there's legislation that allows for in certain size cities to include affordability as part of their cost of service. In other words, they're openly acknowledging that part of the cost of providing service is to fund very actively those low income assistance programs for low income. That's something that we could talk about in the future. But as we look at this, this is not just kind of a charity program or it is very much an intentional part of the utility service. And they're seeing affordability as no different than power requirements, no different from personnel costs. It's part of doing business. It's also good for the utility, right? We don't have as many people in arrears. That's good for our financial situation as well. So just an example, San Antonio Water System, I think, is probably the national leader on affordability. Several years ago, excuse me, they started affordability programs that really were focused on making differences in their community. You can see their top three in low income percentage. They identified about 60,000 families that could use assistance on their utility bills. And they currently have 31, almost 32,000 families being served. It started with seed money from corporate donations. And part of what SAWS did was they went out to those companies and said, some of these folks are your employees. And so we're asking you, will you help us with seed money that when we can reinvest and take the interest and use that to fund the long-term programs? One of the things we also learned from SAWS is they are very active in the community. And it's something that we need to up our game on. They have about 180 different outreach events a year just educating the community. Did you know we have these different programs? You probably qualify. How do you qualify? Here's how to sign up. Here's how you apply. They have a partnership network. They have contact strategies. They have resource fairs. So we've had several calls with San Antonio just trying to pick their brains on what's working for them. And also, what are the things they wouldn't repeat if there's something that didn't work? So some of the key draft report preliminary findings, there are many, but these are kind of the highlights. One is funding limits and lack of program awareness. Going back to your comments earlier, Council Member said, prevent eligible rate payers from participating. We've got to get that addressed. A more coordinated and simplified system would improve access and outcomes. This goes back to the, if LA does a clearinghouse, could we just have one application? And would all of the utilities agree that that's the best process moving forward? Affordability programs improve payment compliance and utility financial stability. I mentioned that previously. We don't have as many people in arrears, so therefore our revenue is more predictable. And then we have reached out to the Public Utilities Commission. I've had meetings, Kathy, Chris Meyer, and I've met with all three commissioners. And we've had really good conversations with the commission. They are hearing this more and more that affordability concerns are top of mind, not for just low income, but also folks on fixed income. And so they're interested in hearing more learning more about what programs, we might want to suggest both as a city of Boise, even though we aren't regulated by the PC. They want to hear more about what we're interested in doing, but also how we're partnering with those other utilities and how the Commission can support what those utilities are proposing. So just some of the action items that we're currently working, I mentioned the PC we're actively engaged with the Commissioners and giving them information on affordability programs. We are working with the DEQ. I mentioned this previously at the presentation two weeks ago. We're looking at some novel regulatory approaches with the DEQ. One's called quote unquote integrated planning. And it's a part of the Clean Water Act that was added about six or seven years ago to give utilities flexibility on how they spend money over time. So such that if we're starting to get unaffordable, we might have some flexibility on compliance timelines. Not that we're saying we won't comply. It's just can we have some flexibility on how we meet those compliance timelines to address affordability concerns. We're working on that multi-utility governance structure to coordinate programs. This is still a little bit of a work in progress. We're trying to wrap up the report. And then after that, we've been in close coordination with the other utilities, but we haven't set this up formally yet. And then the targeted outreach campaign, we've been talking with CE about how to replicate that circuit breaker success. We've also worked on setting that utility burden benchmark. That's gonna be important to kind of set that baseline for what we're all taught. So we're all talking the same language. And we have another report. We have a consultant that's working on that particular issue, both for Boise, but also trying to figure out national benchmarks to help guide the policy. And so we're actively working with that. Some of those sustainable funding options we're considering, would we have a small fee across utility bills, other public-private partnerships? There'll be more to come on that. And then expanding the customer donation programs and external funding sources. So we do have a bill roundup program, but do we want to expand it, be much more open about advertising support for that roundup program? So in summary, utility affordability is a growing system-wide issue. It's impacting economic stability. I mentioned it's impacting housing and public health. Boise has strong partnerships and program foundations. We are very closely aligned with LAIDA. We're getting better alignment with our utility partners. So that's something, a strong foundation that we can build off of. But I think moving forward, scale funding and coordination is going to be needed to meet current and future demands. We're already working a lot of those issues. So this is really just an update. And I think we'll be, if it's okay with mayor and council, I think over time, we'd like to come back and give you updates on how the programs are evolving and Because it's going to become more of an issue in the coming years, not just for water and oil services, but for electricity, for natural gas, for water. The combination is going to become more of a burden for our citizens.

So with that, I'll stand for any questions. Steve, thanks for the conversation. It seems really important, I think, at this moment in time to really be looking at how escalating costs across the board are affecting a lot of different people in our community. And I appreciate the work that you and your team have already put into this. A couple questions. One, you talked about the weatherization project, how it's been successful, but also that there's a wait list. And I'm curious if the wait list is due to a lack of funds, a lack of administration capacity. What's the reason for the wait list?

Madam Mayor, Council Member Halliburton, thank you for the question. One of the biggest drivers is just skilled labor. not having enough contractors to go out and actually do the work. I've talked to Steve Hubbell about that because he's been helping administer the funding. That's been one of the biggest challenges, just we have contractors get the work done.

Yep. That one is, I think, particularly interesting to me because you can kind of see the increased benefits over time. One, the cost that they're saving, the improvement in the value in their house, the living conditions probably that they're in, their wellness, a variety of different things that probably you actually can't calculate. Your house is real drafty, you got your heat turned low, you're probably getting sick a little bit more often. and a variety of other things that probably aren't always tangible there. So really interesting and interesting with like the Detroit model when it comes to plumbing, the other types of things that might actually fit kind of within an existing model. But knowing, of course, like the barriers that are preventing it from being fully successful, I think are important. So appreciate that. For some of the utilities kind of in your earlier slide, I would imagine that captures folks who are who own their home, but for folks who are renters, some of these utilities, I imagine, are probably baked into their rent a little bit as well. I'm wondering if you have any sort of knowledge, statistics, anecdotal, if we're seeing those elevated utility costs directly being passed into the price of rent.

Madam Mayor and Council Member, I don't have any specific information about It is certainly an issue that other cities are seeing and it's really difficult to get your arms around. It's something that we wanted to talk to other cities about because we generally our multifamily housing is a challenge when we get into utility bills and who's paying what and how do we know what's being passed on to the to the actual renter. So it is a challenge. I don't have a ton of information on that.

Yeah, that's an interesting one to me too, just because when we look at the different affordability scales on there, I would imagine as we get further towards those bottom brackets that we have a higher rate of renters in those brackets as well. And then I guess just the final question, it's really interesting to always see what other cities and states are doing across the country And also sometimes there's things that limit our capacity to do those things. Are there state laws that we know of that are making it challenging for us to look at things like variable rates or other things that are there? Or do we not necessarily see that at this point?

Madam Mayor, Council Member, there's certainly at the PUC level some limitations on what can be included in a cost of service study. So the affordability program is typically not something that... the PUC has allowed to be included in to the extent that you would need a pretty big program to cover that low end of the income buckets. So I think that's a limitation, but I think our conversations with the commissioners have been very constructive and they're seeing a need to really rethink how these affordability programs are being thought of as like a baseline cost in a utility program. As far as state statute, I'm not aware of specific limitations, but I do need to go back. I have a request into legal to talk a little bit more about what do we see as kind of what's prohibited versus what's really not addressed and where is there some flexibility?

Yeah. Again, really, really appreciate it and appreciate you having those conversations with different groups. Sometimes the pain has to be bad enough for enough people to reach out for the problem to sometimes get solved. And so hopefully as more and more people are actually feeling this, there's some solutions through collaboration and partnership with some different areas. Again, really interested in sort of the weatherization kind of model that I think maybe has some compounding benefits as far as investments go. So was really happy to see that that was going as well as it is. And I think just a really important conversation when we're addressing investments with housing and affordability. I think all those are really important. And then also like when one of our goals is to make sure that people can stay in the existing affordable housing that they have. These seem like investments that are directly tied, you know, towards keeping people in those spots. So I appreciate the work on this.

Madam Mayor, thank you, Council Member. And that's a really good point. We're not even talking about some of the climate benefits of the efficiency for a weatherization program or reduction in emissions based on lower energy use. So, yeah, there's a bunch of kind of additional benefits that come with the investments.

Steve, thank you so much for the presentation. Mayor, thank you so much for kicking this off with the utility of bringing the utilities together. I think it's, yeah, the time is definitely right for it and a great conversation. And it looks like you guys have talking about some very good programs and how to make them efficient. I like the idea of working with the LA as a clearing group. I remember hearing in another I don't know if it's a city summit, but they talked about how one city did one application and it just funneled to all the other ones. Because if you're late, if you're probably on a circuit breaker, you're late on your power, you're probably late on all the other ones. So I appreciate and really support going down that efficiency road to make it easier on the end users as well across the programs. And how do we get this out through the circuit breaker? I think it's a really great idea as well. One thing I didn't hear is, But I have heard from constituents is about the cost of having to do deposit on some utilities being a burden for them to be able to start that utility. Yeah, so I don't know if that's, I imagine that's something you guys are already part of your discussion.

Yeah, Madam Mayor, Council Member Corliss, thanks for the question. It is part of the discussion. I probably should have had information on it. It's definitely a pain point for folks. So we're considering ways to reduce that. Is there a way that through the application for either reduced rate or the hardship discount, that can also just kind of go back to like, let's just put it all under one roof and also consider the deposit because we're hearing more and more that's becoming an issue.

Yeah. Steve, the other thing to consider is with our elderly population, like we talked about how we have some compounding aspects, probably true, right? With the weatherization is these are people who are home all day. So the utility bills are probably a lot higher than the working families that are leaving. I've seen this with my mother-in-law coming in. Two TVs were on all the time. We got it done to one. Anyways, but yeah, so I can see that there's some really great need to focus on maybe that target population as well, who are going to have these probably higher utility bills than many families because of them being home most of the time. So appreciate the work on that. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Steve, thanks. Wait, did you have something? Nope. Thanks so much for the presentation and really for all the work that's gone into this. And just echo the interesting council members in seeing this as efficient as possible to ease the burden on our most vulnerable residents as they seek the support to both get into homes and then stay housed with the rising cost of utilities. Thank you.

Thanks, Mary.

And with that, we will break until six o'clock.