Several West Plains residents brought their utility bill concerns to the podium at the city council’s monthly meeting held last week and attended by dozens of concerned citizens.
Tensions ran a bit high at moments, but the discussion between West Plains utilities customers and city council members was in general focused and civil.
City council chambers weren't completely full, but there was a much bigger crowd than usual, possibly prompted by social media discussions of electric rates and recent increases noticed by customers. Organizers of the citizen effort estimate about 70 people in attendance during the April 21 session.
Mayor Mike Topliff acknowledged their concerns and noted utilities workers have been fielding questions and looking at usage history regarding individual accounts and will continue to do so as requested. He also asked for customers to be courteous to utilities clerks who take payments and have no control over rates or billing.
Linda France, Cindy Hayes and Leann Dorn were on the agenda to speak at five minutes each, with Dorn getting an additional five minutes because she also had a complaint about a blocked drain near her home that caused high water during heavy rain events.
Dennis Franks was also on the agenda to discuss utility bills but was a no-show. However, Stephanie Buchinsky, who doesn’t live in town but has a business in West Plains, was granted five minutes to speak near the end of the meeting.
France presented a packet of information to council members and said she was in contact with the utilities department, adding she lives in the downtown area and started looking into the issue when a family member’s bill doubled from December to January.
As time went on, she continued, she began to hear from other residents and business owners whose bills had jumped. She wondered if it didn’t have to do with the installation of smart meters beginning in 2019, and asked council members if every customer has one, how they are read and if the meters are under warranty in case of faulty or false readings.
One commercial customer’s bill, she said, went from an average of $600 during the winter to a January bill of $2,500. Another residential bill on an empty rental house being remodeled in December had an electric bill of $150, and the next month was $360, even though no work was being done and the house remained unoccupied, she said.
“The kilowatt hours per month, the gallons of water used, the dollar amounts of these bills have doubled, tripled or even more. Significantly more than a few-degree drop in temperature or a 15% rate increase would warrant. We have hundreds of residents with the exact same issues and it’s causing alarm, frustration and worry, really, for all of us,” she added.
“There, budgeting isn’t the issue. We can’t budget for an average of two- or three-hundred-dollar utility bill, then suddenly get slapped with a six- or nine-hundred-dollar utility bill. That poses a struggle for all of us and many of us simply can’t pay it. It seems evident something is systematically wrong with the meters or the billing system,” she continued, before formally requesting a face-to-face meeting with Utilities Director Shayne Eades and City Administrator Sam Anselm.
Hayes said she is a retired teacher living on a fixed income and saw her bill more than double from December to January, from $210 to $530; she felt something was amiss and took the issue to the “West Plains MO Info!” Facebook page.
She said within a few days, 128 commenters echoed the same concern. She acknowledged that utilities cutoffs, per city policy, don’t happen if the low temperature is below freezing or the high temperature is above 90 degrees, but said customers should be provided with a list of resources like Ozark Action or charitable organizations linked to churches.
Hayes also expressed her concern the rates would have a trickle-down effect causing people to spend less money at local restaurants or small businesses, especially those who live paycheck-to-paycheck.
“I just think there’s some mistakes being made, possibly not even human mistakes, and I think everyone here is concerned about this and wants to see answers and maybe some changes and better planning as far as the bills and how they’re figured, and we just some hope that things are going to get better for us and for the city,” she commented before providing pertinent information to council members.
Dorn’s statement echoed much of what had been said, and as a hairdresser, she said, she spoke for herself and some of her clients. She added she used her fireplace all winter and still had a bill a couple of hundred dollars higher than the previous year. She said she agreed with France’s previous statement that a meeting should be held to explain the billing process.
Anselm, in response, said newly sworn-in council member Ron Grennan, prior to the meeting, had a question about how usage compared over the last several months, including January 2024 when the city used about 18.8 million kilowatt hours of electricity, and noted the city meters used the same type of meter.
In January the number increased to about 19.57 million kilowatt hours, but the biggest year-to-year jump was from February 2024 at about 13.5 million kilowatt hours compared to about 15 million hours for February 2025.
He said that in every customer account that was examined at the customer’s request there was a direct correlation between low temperature days and electricity usage, and some days when school was dismissed and an increase in residential usage might be expected because children were home for more hours.
He also said, based on the temperature correlation, the usage should be significantly lower for the March billing cycle soon to be calculated. He reminded the audience utility workers could check the meters, for a service charge, to look for any discrepancies, and the meters have been checked for accuracy with the company that provides them.
Anselm also pointed out the billing period for December was 22 days while the billing period for the following month was 33 days.
“Those cycles happen on the billing,” he said. “We like to stay within the month as close as we can, but holidays and some other things will come into factor. We had a storm back in December, I think, that knocked out a lot of power, and that power outage knocked out a lot of our remote data collectors that were used to collect the remote meter data. So we had to shorten that cycle up in order to get the data that we had available and get it out in time to get the system fixed and back online.”
A work session with council members will be scheduled in June and open to the public and streamed online that will explain the data collection and billing process, and present options to council members, including online on-demand access to usage information at no charge to customers, he said, and that he understood the concern about bills. He also encouraged people to call or send an email to the utilities department for an explanation of bills or to have further information provided.
Buchinsky, speaking toward the meeting’s end, countered that her business is in town and she audited most of her bills back to 2019, and noted increases that happened during winter months with customers using propane or wood heat but still saw a huge jump in their bill, including their shop building, taking into consideration the blower was run on electricity.
She also wondered why her household bill from Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative didn’t see a comparable increase when their home is powered entirely by electricity.
Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative purchases their electricity from a different source than the city.
Buchinsky also questioned the lack of consistency in billing cycles, pointing out that customers on autopay, in particular, might see a huge difference from month to month and be hit with a surprise increase.
Topliff concluded the meeting by again thanking all for coming and speaking to their concerns and Anselm offered to meet with Buchinsky to go over her billing history.
