The Duncan Banner

Local News

March 13, 2010

Cain explains debate over city bills

Matt Tillson

MARLOW — There’s a debate brewing in Marlow between its utility customers and the city. Marlow City Administrator Janice Cain said some customers have received higher electric bills, more than they expected. This has happened since the Jan. 28 ice storm.

“The big issue that we have had is the electric billing and the variation in bills received,” Cain said. “We have collected about $60,000 less than the bills in the same time frame for 2009.”

Many factors are involved in looking at comparisons in electric billing and usage, she said, including the cycle for the billing days.

The billing dates for the cycle of the ice storm was 33 to 39 days depending on where the meter is located. This is longer than the previous month’s billing cycle that ran anywhere from 25 to 29 days. The length is because meter reading was started later than normal, again, because of the ice storm.

In reviewing the billing, the average difference can be from $20 to $50 less, she said. Some of the bills will not be affected at all because of extra days. By taking an average month of only the electric cost and dividing that by the number of days billed, electric cost per day could range from less than $2 per day to $3 per day, depending on whether the person uses electric for their heating, or if they use gas.

The City of Marlow was without power from 2:27 p.m. Jan. 27, until 10:05 a.m. Feb. 8, Cain said. When power was restored most people began handling their daily chores at home and this was reflected in a spike of useage at each of the substations.

“Most people that I have talked to, immediately went to doing their chores at home like catching up on laundry, getting electric hot water tanks heated, vacuuming and those types of things,” Cain said. “The day that Marlow went off power we were pulling around 5.1 megawatts. A couple days after power was restored we were pulling in a range of almost seven megawatts, which shows that people were utilizing electricity heavily.”

Cain said that all of these factors came into play for the city and she noted that customers who had bills due Feb. 1, did not receive any penalty on their bill and power was not cut off.



— Matt Tillson is a reporter for the Duncan Banner. He can be reached at 580-255-5354 Ext. 142 or via e-mail at matt.tillson@duncanbanner.com.

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