KCK officials want to remove unpopular fee from utility bills. When could it happen?
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Kansas City, Kansas, officials say they are working to get a Wyandotte County fee off of utility bills, which when unpaid has left residents without water or electricity.
But it’s unclear when that might happen.
The Board of Public Utilities, known as the BPU, provides water and electricity across KCK and for years has acted a bill collector for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. One county fee in particular, the payment in lieu of taxes, known as the PILOT, has led to utility shutoffs for households where residents can pay their water and electric bills but struggle to afford that UG charge.
In a Facebook video this month, Mayor Tyrone Garner said he is working with BPU’s general manager and the county administrator on separating the fee, known as the PILOT, off BPU bills so customers are not penalized.
“The goal is to make sure that you’re only cut off and penalized for not paying your actual utility bills,” he said, noting that change would lift a “great burden” off of some residents.
The PILOT fee on the publicly-owned utility’s bills helps the UG make up for revenue losses from property taxes that are not collected from the BPU, since the municipal utility is tax exempt. The money is used to help fund city operations.
Garner hopes to separate the bills by 2024, but said there were “minute items” officials needed to work through first. The PILOT and other UG fees, which have “nothing to do” with water and electricity usage, have become about half of BPU bills, he added.
The mayor’s office did not provide additional information about next steps when asked several times this week. It’s unclear, for example, how the UG intends to bill residents for the PILOT fee if it is removed from BPU bills.
The fee, added to BPU bills more than a decade ago, is higher than ones at many comparable utility companies across the U.S. Comparable fees tax around 5.5% on average, but the UG set the rate in Wyandotte County at 11.9%.
In each recent year, the PILOT has collectively brought more than $30 million in for the UG, according to the BPU’s annual report.
At the BPU’s meeting this month, General Manager Bill Johnson also said he is working with Garner and County Administrator David Johnston on “separating the bills,” but noted he was not sure if it would happen before the end of the first quarter next year.
“I need to work back with staff on seeing how much decoupling of our system, of our processes that is gonna still be needed,” Johnson said.
A long time coming
BPU board member Tom Groneman was pleased the UG was “finally willing to consider” changing the bills, something he said the county’s governing body had not been prepared to do in the past.
Utility board member Rose Mulvany Henry, who has served since 2019 and was reelected this month, said separating the bills is something the board has pushed for “for a long time” to alleviate the burden of struggling ratepayers.
“Personally, I’m really thrilled,” Mulvany Henry told The Star this week. “I hope I see it and I hope I see it soon, but I can’t tell you what it looks like because I don’t even know.”
At the BPU meeting earlier this month, board member David Haley, who is also a Kansas state senator, called the UG taxes added to BPU bills “onerous.” They have given the BPU a bad name as the county’s tax collector, he said.
“When I first brought (separating the bills) up, everyone said, ‘It’ll never happen,’” Haley said, adding that Johnson’s advocacy will change how the BPU is perceived “when it finally happens.”
In the meantime, some residents who have described themselves as “getting pinched” have had their utilities shut off for being unable to pay a few dollars. Residents also rallied over the summer before the BPU voted 4-2 to increase water and electric rates.
Haley recently got a call about a woman whose service was cut off because she missed her payment by $4. Her lights were off “for days on end,” he said.
This story was originally published November 17, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
