It’s college football season again, and thoughts among many in the South, and elsewhere, turn to tailgating and touchdowns, hot dogs and sodas, field goals and fun. (Here in Chapel Hill, we like to remember alumnus Andy Griffith’s famous 1953 comical monologue about football, “What It Was, Was Football.”) Meanwhile, those of us at the UNC Environmental Finance Center (EFC) have completed our first-ever Alabama Residential Water and Wastewater Rates Dashboard, which, in fact, ties in with – you guessed it – football! (As well as tying in with the affordability of water and sewer bills by customers in Alabama, of course.) Continue reading
Tag: affordability (Page 4 of 5)
By Sarah Royster and Mary Sketch
The Environmental Finance Center analyzes annual data from multiple sources, including the NC Division of Environmental Assistance and the NC Division of Waste Management, on solid waste fees from North Carolina counties and municipalities. Using surveys from various government commissions on solid waste charges per household or resident, this data was combined with annual census data to reveal several interesting trends. Continue reading
In previous posts, we have talked about publicly available data on inflationary measures including the Consumer Price Index and the Construction Cost Index as well as on commercial energy use from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the US Census. The US Census also has a rich set of data on the financial position of households within our community. These data are especially relevant and helpful for determining the affordability of government utility services such as water and wastewater rates.
David Tucker is a Project Director at the Environmental Finance Center at UNC Chapel Hill.
How affordable are electric rates for “average” or “typical” residential customers in North Carolina? That is a complicated question to answer, and this article represents only a beginning to that investigation. Continue reading
Water Rate Increases Among 1,961 Utilities in Six States in the Last Decade
Shadi Eskaf is a Senior Project Director for the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Our research shows that water rates have been rising faster than CPI inflation in the past few years for hundreds of utilities, particularly after the financial crisis. In some states, however, there were also many utilities whose rates failed to keep pace with inflation.
From a rate-setting perspective, utilities that raised rates more frequently had a double advantage over utilities that raised rates only occasionally or rarely. First: the average annual rate increase was lower than the one-time rate increases of utilities that occasionally raised rates, reducing the rate shock that customers experienced when rates rose. Second: despite the lower average rate increases, utilities that raised rates more frequently accumulated, on average, a larger total increase in rates in a five-year period than utilities that raised rates only occasionally.
- The UNC EFC’s webinar on financial benchmarking tools for elected Maryland officials is TOMORROW from 1-3PM ET! Lea… https://t.co/dvrxpdrhl2
- @GEFAloan Information about the Georgia Rates Dashboard can be found here: https://t.co/N3ZMh6rEof
- REMINDER! Learn how to maintain long-term financial sustainability in this FREE webinar on May 31. Hosted by the UN… https://t.co/CIfHsyIuTj
