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How to reward utilities customers who conserve — raise their rates, of course

I live in the third largest city in Missouri, or as we like to call it, the "big city with a small town heart" -- or, as I like to call it: "The big city with a hick town mentality."

Forgive me for being just a little angry over my fair city, but we've just gotten news the last couple of days about one of the most bone-headed municipal plans I've ever heard of.

Our utilities are furnished by a municipally owned utility company, fittingly called "City Utilities" or "CU," for short. We have some really good things going on here, as evidenced by CU's constant public message that we have the seventh lowest utilities rates in the entire nation. (I'll take their word for it; I don't know.) Nevertheless, here's the bizarre, frustrating story.

If you read this report in our local newspaper, CU is planning to increase the cost of natural gas, in part because we good customers have been using less natural gas in recent years. Get it??

Our fine utility company cannot come up with a good plan -- like cutting back on some incredibly overblown executive salaries and perks, for example -- to fund the necessary revenue to provide and maintain natural gas service. So, they tell us we are facing a rate increase. Making this one of those public occasions that truly proves the lame gag about "No good deed goes unpunished." To put it plainly: "You've conserved on natural gas use, so your reward will be a rate increase."

How wonderful. In an age when everything from global warming to dwindling oil resources calls out to the nation and world to CONSERVE -- our good leaders at our City Utilities want to emphasize the point by punishing energy conservation with a rate hike.

Ah, well, what do I know? I'm just a guy who reads the papers.
[tags]energy conservation, natural gas rates, Springfield City Utilities, punishing conservation, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]