No.

Why not? Not that I like power company's but when their input cost's go up in this case from NG you will have to pay more. Do you think they are a charity?

They should and will get it.

Then…. the state should get its act together and mandate consolidation of all these small co-ops with GMP for a statewide regulated utility.

Redundancy would be removed over a couple of years and then the same cost and benefit can be received by each Vermonter.

Too expensive already.

ROI of additional consumer cost not justified.

I'm not paying for some executive's increased bonus.

I don’t think any one of these utilities is really the large corporation we may put it out to be. GMP is definitely big, but that is not one of the DUs requesting a rate increase. Below are the utilities. Most are town/city ran or are a coop: Stowe Electric, Burlington Electric, Washington Electric Co-op, Vermont Electric Co-op, and Morrisville Water & Light

Just a few thousand customers for most of those. The thought that when they pay significantly more for electricity they should eat the loss is just silly. At least for those of us with GMP they are not trying to raise rates because they smartly do not contract for electricity generated from fossil fuels.

Trying to imagine the fat cat CEO of Morrisville Water & Light out on his yacht right now. Ya no not really.

Well the solution then is to go solar and tell your utility to disconnect you. I won't hold my breath.

Yeah...So the whole reason we have utility co-ops is because GMP and the "big players" were unwilling to run cable to a lot of the rural areas.

Correct. Time to end this flat out inequity in service, price and benefit from a basic public good.
Vermont can do better.

Question is, do our legislators care?

No! Not unless you change minimum wage to a livable wage!

how about they reduce their operating costs as a business/utility that's regulated and stop passing everything to the end user/consumer we can't support every hike/raise and cost they encounter specifically in these cold months possibly leading to recession and lost jobs.

You should take a tour of the facilities of some of these providers. Most are very small operations and enjoy giving tours. There is nothing left to cut that would not impact worker or customer safety. Most are also non profits so just where do you expect them to find the money to subsidize you?

Amazing how much of a general lack there is here in how shit works in the real world. If you owned a gas station and your distributor raises your prices would you keep yours the same and take a loss? Of course not. Think about it.

I don’t want rate hikes, no one really does. But they are necessary in many cases because costs aren’t going down plus utilities need to pay for upgrades and repairs

Isn't that part of the indirect cost of living in a rural area? I mean there's all sorts of consequences to the choices people make.

Till the people at the top start bleeding money, like the people at the bottom have to, to survive, no rate hikes. Like for what electricity alone costs per unit from hydro-quebec vs what customers pay, with the infrastructure in place already 50 years, it's more corporate greed like everything else.

Never mind all the record profits that have been posted by these companies the past 20 years alone, each year increasing.

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Income-based rate hikes.

Morrisville is already planning a 11% hike… it’s so expensive to begin with for water and electric from them….this is just ridiculous. People complain about NYS, but having lived there before… water and electric were damn cheap compared to VT. I guess only the 1% can afford to live here.

Preach

I live 5 minutes outside Montpelier on a paved road right off of rt12 and GMP still won’t service it, not all of us want to live in Burlington

I've lived in the country, outside of super Small towns, in regions with similar population densities as Vermont and utilities were far less expensive. 12 cent kwh power and water bills around 25 a month. I thought solar would have paid for itself by now. Something stinks in Vermont.

I mean... If this quote from the article is true, I feel like asking for a rate hike once every 10 years is actually pretty reasonable:

> Morrisville’s utility, like Stowe, serves more than 4,000 customers and hasn’t raised its rates in over 10 years.