A dozen customers and activists call on the city-owned utility to do more to help those falling behind on their bills.
A dozen protesters gathered at CPS Energy headquarters during a monthly board meeting Wednesday afternoon, calling on the city-owned utility to stop disconnecting services to its most vulnerable customers who are unable to pay their bills.
The group briefly disrupted the board at the end of its public comment period by chanting “half measures are not enough” and holding a banner that stated “disconnections are inhumane.” CPS Energy does suspend disconnections during extreme heat or cold. The city-owned utility also encourages customers to sign up for a payment plan, which allows them to pay down past-due balances in smaller chunks over time. If a customer is making payments, they don’t risk having their power shut off despite the past-due balance. During the public comments portion of the meeting, activists and customers followed one after the other for their two minutes at the podium to criticized the current policies, calling them inadequate and ineffective. “I had struggled with the electricity being cut off due to being a high-risk pregnancy and not being able to work,” customer Asia Anderson said during her remarks. “I have a 3-year-old and 1-year-old … the electricity got cut off and I had no other resources to help me.” READ MORE: City to return $26 million to CPS Energy in effort to hold down rate hikes The protest is the latest clash in what’s been an ongoing fundamental dispute among the city, activists and trustees for years — whether to manage the city-owned utility more like a profitable business or a public service. Anderson said she made payments when she could, but it wasn’t enough to keep the lights on. She said that at one point during the summer, she ran an extension cord from a neighbor’s home to power an air-conditioning unit to keep her children from overheating. The protesters — largely made up of organizers from Climate Justice San Antonio, the Southwest Workers Union and the San Antonio Coalition of Dignified Housing — have sent CPS a letter listing specific demands on how they’d like to see the utility’s policies changed. They’d like CPS to keep the power on for customers, even if they fall behind on bills, if they fall into one of the four categories: they are in a low-income households based on the area’s median income the household is able to demonstrate a high debt-to-income ratio someone is unemployed a member of the household is reliant on critical care, medical regimens or devices. The group has sent similar demands to the region’s water utility, the San Antonio Water System. CPS does have a critical care program for customers who rely on medical devices, but the program creates a grace period — it doesn’t stop shut-offs. During the pandemic, CPS Energy did stop disconnections for more than a year. During that time, its past-due balances ballooned, the utility reported. Since resuming disconnections, it has encouraged customers to use payment plans to keep their power on. The number of disconnections has dropped, but the utility says it’s still not in the range it was before the pandemic. The amount of past-due bills is often a point of contention, with trustee John Steen regularly bringing up that high levels affect the utility’s overall bottom line and financial health. READ MORE: CPS Energy working to cut past-due bills, but 73,000 still at risk of having power shut off CPS Chief Financial Officer Cory Kuchinsky shared in late March that CPS ended the month of January with $135 million in past-due bills, down 35% from the pandemic-related peak of $208 million. He said the customers responsible for about half of the current past-due total were on payment plans, which have an 80% success rate. But those protesting say the plans aren’t enough. “Payment plans are not necessarily helping,” DeeDee Belmares, an organizer with climate group Public Citizen, told board members during the public comments period. “It is putting these people further and further into debt, along with everything else that is rising. It’s just so expensive for them to pay their bills.” Belmares asked trustees to remember the faces and the people behind those past-due balance updates. “Let’s look at disconnections for our most at risk, most vulnerable,” Belmares said. “Let’s look at how we change how CPS Energy is charging rates … So we’re here. We’re going to keep on coming.” The utility’s last 4.25% rate increase went into effect early last year. CPS expects to have to regularly revisit rate increases as it invests in new generation to both keep up with rocketing demand and to lower the amount of harmful emissions to the atmosphere. READ MORE: CPS spending nears $2.5 billion as utility plans whopping 60% increase for generation, transmission Even with the latest increase, data shared by CPS shows that San Antonio’s utility costs are the lowest in the state. For the 12 months ending in January, CPS’s average combined gas and electric bills for the period was $169.64. Austin, for example, was $219.05 for the same period and New Braunfels $226.42. But those costs are still complicated by San Antonio’s poverty rate, which is higher than both the state and national averages. Community members have been pushing CPS to restructure how it charges its rates, calling for adjustments for those in poor neighborhoods with older homes that tend to be less energy-efficient. Those customers, despite having the lowest incomes, have some of the highest energy bills for comparably sized homes. CPS has pointed out that its dated software prevents it from being able to offer tiered rates in its billing process. But it has begun a $304 million overhaul of its antiquated systems, a process that is expected to take 10 years. CPS Energy’s nonprofit arm last year increased the amount of bill-pay assistance for eligible customers to $1,200 per year. READ MORE: CPS Energy customers can get up to $1,200 in bill pay aid under expansion of assistance program Outside of the nonprofit, CPS runs its own Affordability Discount Program, which reduces the amount customers owe on their electric and gas bills by as much as $220 a year. The program is funded by an 83-cent monthly charge on customers’ bills, up from 60 cents before the latest rate increase. At the end of the public remarks — in which 20 people signed up to speak — CPS board Chair Francine Sanders Romero encouraged customers facing immediate issues to talk to CPS customer service teams that were at the meeting. “We are listening to what you say,” she said. “Thank you for being here today.”
San Antonio Water System Public Citizen San Antonio Coalition Southwest Workers Union Asia Anderson Cory Kuchinsky John Steen Deedee Belmares Francine Sanders Romero Anderson San Antonio Austin New Braunfels Dignified Housing Climate Justice
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