How T or C’s electric utility rate compares to other cities in New Mexico

by Kathleen Sloan | April 7, 2021
5 min read
transmission tower viewed from below
Photograph by Lukas Baton courtesy of unsplash

The question of whether electric utility rates in Truth or Consequences are too high has been raised several times recently on social media. Opinions abound. The Sun did the research to provide a definitive answer and reports the results below.

The type of utility ownership was considered in grouping rate comparisons with other New Mexico communities.

T or C is among only five cities in the state that own an electric utility, according to the American Public Power Association’s publicpower.org website. Aztec, Farmington, Gallup and Raton also own electric utilities. Among those cities, T or C charges the second highest rate; Aztec charges the most. Aztec and T or C are small cities, which may partially account for rates higher than the larger cities of Farmington or Gallup. But Raton is also a small city, and it charges the least of any city-owned electric utilities in the state.

Aztec’s and T or C’s rates may be higher because they transfer money out of their electric funds and into their general funds. T or C plans to transfer $1.5 million out of the electric fund this fiscal year, according to the second-quarter budget report the city submitted to the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration. Aztec transferred $650,000 out of its “joint utility fund,” which pools electric, sewer and water utilities funds, and into its general fund in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2019, according to the most recent year-end audit report available on the New Mexico Office of the State Auditor’s website.

The Sun also compared T or C’s electric utility rate to other New Mexico cities of like size, such as Taos and Edgewood, serviced by rural cooperative electric utilities. These were the highest utility rates among those compared, reflecting the cost of installing and maintaining miles of transmission lines to serve areas with less dense populations. The Sun included Sierra Electric Cooperative’s rates among this group, since it also is a cooperative serving rural customers in Sierra County and parts of Catron, Luna and Socorro counties. Sierra Electric was the most expensive among all rates compared.

The Sun then looked at PNM, a commercial company and the largest electric utility in the state. Its economies of scale allow it to charge lower rates than T or C in isolated towns with populations less than 3,000, such as Bayard, Lordsburg and Clayton, while also serving high-density areas. Other towns PNM serves are Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Los Lunas, Belen, Santa Fe, Alamogordo, Las Vegas, Ruidoso, Silver City and Deming.

The Sun compared only residential rates, using as our metric a past bill for 132 kilowatt hours received by this reporter from T or C. Since management costs and asset upkeep affect and are included in the billed amount, we combined the kilowatt rate and base monthly fee to arrive at a per-kilowatt rate.

City-owned electric utilities

T or C has a population of about 5,900 and about 4,160 electric customers, according to a recent “Utility Billing Report.” It is the only utility among those compared that charges a “cost adjustment,” which covers the city’s operation and management costs and is tied to the kilowatt usage. The cost adjustment is $.04136 per kilowatt hour, or $5.46 for 132 kilowatt hours. The monthly fee is $8, which also covers management costs. Usage is $ .09 per kilowatt hour, or $11.88 for 132 kilowatt hours. The total cost, without tax, is $25.34, or $ .19 per kilowatt hour.

Aztec has a population of about 6,530 and about 3,500 electric customers, according to a city spokesperson. The $25.75 base monthly rate includes the first 100 kilowatt hours. Each kilowatt hour, from 100 to 500 kilowatt hours, is $ .038. The remaining 32 kilowatt hours cost would be $7.26, for a total bill of $34.23, or $ .26 per kilowatt hour.

Farmington has a population of about 45,258 and its city-owned utility has about 46,000 customers, according to the city website. The monthly charge is $6.75, and each kilowatt hour is $.10010. Usage of 132 kilowatt hours costs $13.21, for a total bill of $19.96, or $ .1512 per kilowatt hour.

Gallup has a population of about 21,854 and about 10,544 customers, according to the city’s Electric Department Director John Wheeler. The $7.80 monthly fee includes the first 50 kilowatt hours. Thereafter, each kilowatt hour costs $ .13. The remaining 82 kilowatt hours cost $10.66, for a total bill of $18.46, or $ .1398 per kilowatt hour.

Raton has a population of 6,047 and 4,550 electric customers, according to a utility spokesperson. The monthly base rate for urban residents is $ .0567 a kilowatt hour and for rural residents $ .0602 a kilowatt hour. There is a “fuel charge” of $ .0765 per kilowatt hour for both rural and urban residents. An urban resident pays $17.70 for 132 kilowatts, or $ .134 per kilowatt hour. A rural resident pays $18.04, or $ .1367 per kilowatt hour.

Electric Cooperatives

Taos has a population of about 5,967. Electricity is provided by the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, with 22,278 customers, according to its website. The monthly service charge is $20.50. Each kilowatt hour is $ .11349. Usage of 132 kilowatt hours costs $14.98, for a total bill of $35.48 or $ .269 per kilowatt hour.

Edgewood has a population of 6,071. The Central New Mexico Electric Cooperative, which provides Edgewood’s electric service, has a total of 13,500 customers, according to its website. The monthly service charge is $21.75 and each kilowatt hour is $ .132. Usage of 132 kilowatt hours costs $17.42, for a total bill of $39.17, or $ .297 per kilowatt hour.

Sierra Electric Cooperative serves 3,185 customers, including unincorporated areas of Sierra County, as well as the City of Elephant Butte, according to its website. The monthly system charge is $25, and each kilowatt hour is $ .14385. Usage of 132 kilowatt hours costs $18.99, for a total bill of $43.99, or $.333 per kilowatt hour.

Commercial electric company

PNC is the state’s largest electric utility, with 525,000 customers. The monthly service charge is $7.11. The first 450 kilowatt hours are $ .0779432 each. The second 450 kilowatt hours are $ .1240339 each. Above 900 kilowatt hours are $ .1495326 each. Usage of 132 kilowatt hours costs $10.29, for a total bill of $17.40, or $ .1318 per kilowatt hour.

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

1 thought on “How T or C’s electric utility rate compares to other cities in New Mexico”

  1. Sophia Peron

    Thanks for the info, but it’s not about the cost—it’s about HOW the city spends our electric REVENUES!

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