My City Raised My Utility Rates 20% — and Told Nobody

My October utility bill was $518.32. The highest it's ever been, by a lot.

So I did what any reasonable person would do: I downloaded 22 months of statements, parsed every line item, and built a spreadsheet. What I found is the kind of thing that makes you want to show up at a city council meeting.

The numbers

January through October of 2025, I paid $2,986 for utilities — about $299 a month. The same ten bills in 2026: $3,605. That's $619 more. A 20.7% increase, year over year.

Now, I'll own my half. Usage went up — my spouse moved in, and our water usage jumped 27%. Electric's up 8.5%, gas 3.1%. That's real, and that's on us.

But here's the thing: only about half of that $619 is from using more. The other half? The city raised the rates. Three separate times.

The three hikes

1. Electric base charge: $14.60 → $20.00/month (+37%). Hit my February bill.

2. Gas base charge: $2.08 → $8.00/month. Nearly four times the original. Hit in July.

3. Electric energy rate: 13.12¢ → 14.97¢ per kWh (+14.1%), raised in three quiet steps across 2025 and 2026.

Those two base charges alone add about $135 a year to my bill before I use a single kilowatt-hour. Just for the privilege of being connected.

The part that got me

Here's where it goes from annoying to genuinely outrageous. I looked up my city's published city code. It still shows the old rates. The only automatic increases the code allows are 5% a year on gas and 4% a year on electric — which can't explain a 4x jump or a 37% spike. So the city council voted on each one of these, specifically, and the online code just never caught up.

And how were we told? Under state law, a city only has to post new ordinances as a pamphlet at City Hall for ten days. No bill insert. No notice on the statement. No email. A piece of paper, in a building, that nobody goes to.

Legally posted. Functionally invisible. I love that for us.

Winter is coming

It gets worse. The per-unit price of natural gas — which floats with the wholesale market — is trending higher this year, and it always runs hottest in the winter months, right when you're using the most. This heating season, the new $8 gas base charge, the $20 electric base charge, and the higher electric rate all stack on top of each other. I'm budgeting an extra $20–25 a month on gas alone this winter.

Love that for me.

What I'm doing about it

I'm calling the City Clerk and asking three questions: what are the ordinance numbers and passage dates for each of these hikes, and did any notice beyond the ten-day pamphlet ever go out? Simple questions. They should have simple answers.

And here's my suggestion to you: go pull your own last twelve months of statements. The math is all right there in the line items — the rates, the base charges, the adjustments. You might be surprised what your city voted on while you weren't looking.