by James Jordan, Sumner Newscow — The recently passed budget for the City of Wellington took into account a slight increase in electric rates, and some of that is offset by a tax increase that was passed last week. Tuesday, during a work session at the Public Safety Building, the city council tweaked the rate system more. Unfortunately for electric customers, future rate increases are not out of the question.

The council members agreed to some adjustments in principle and will likely vote on them at the next regular meeting set for next Tuesday.

Council members also decided to go ahead with the electric substation project that has been in the works. Westar is a partner with Wellington in the project, and is paying for most of the several million dollar project. The substation would make power outages more rare, and that would help big industrial customers. It could also make residential power more reliable. The city will finance its portion through a bond issue and it will mean an increase of a few dollars on monthly electric bills.

Council members felt this was a way of helping businesses and taking care of infrastructure.

The council also agreed to go from having seven classifications of electric utility rates down to five to make things simpler. Two commercial rates will be made into one. They also decided to stop having winter and summer rates, and go with a single rate for thee entire year. This could make some rates go up and others go down, but they believe it will even out over time..

Council member Kelly Green said the city not allowed anything for improvements to the city in its budget, so she did not want to postpone this project.

“It is something we need,” she said.

Council members also discussed having various departments pay utility bills, or at least be charged for them. This is mostly an administrative task, but it would give the city more information about how much energy various departments are using.

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