Colorado Springs Utilities hikes rates and impacts the whole community.

Imagine living paycheck to paycheck with your bank balance constantly threatened by a pending charge or check that hasn’t cleared. Imagine you’re having trouble paying bills because of medical issues and the charges that are piling up.

Then comes along more reality: Gas prices are ridiculously high. Inflation is no longer transitory and seemingly in danger of becoming permanent. For most people, rising costs at the gas pump and grocery stores are cause for concern, if not outright alarm. But what happens when your utilities company spikes your bill so much that it causes you to more than just worry?

More People Living Paycheck to Paycheck

For an increasing number of people in the Pikes Peak region and across the state, living paycheck to paycheck is a new reality. The stress of trying to make ends meet can be burdensome. For families, financial hardships can mean sacrificing certain goals or dreams just to pay bills.

For Keokuk Sorrells, the year 2022 has been a difficult one. Dealing with medical issues and bills, she was stunned when she received her Colorado Springs Utilities bill earlier this year.  It was much higher than she had expected. On average, CSU consumers saw their bills rise by 27% for natural gas and 13.5% for electricity.

For Sorrells, who works as a quality assurance specialist at a bank, the sudden increase in her utilities bill “caused financial hardship.” she wrote in an email. A single, working mother, Sorrells lives in a townhouse rental with her son, a high school student.

Colorado Springs Utilities Rate Increases Impact Residents

Sorrells had to ask friends for financial help after she could not find assistance from local nonprofits and churches in Colorado Springs to cover her bills. She had been paying small amounts to CSU but kept falling further behind on her bill. 

She applied for the state’s Low-income Energy Program (LEAP) but was rejected. “I make too much gross [income] for a household of two,” she wrote. Sorrells mentioned some of the nonprofits and churches she met with simply referred her to LEAP.

Zack Yellen, a homeowner and married father of two children, said the sudden rate increases were “somewhere between a minor inconvenience and a major inconvenience.” Yellen, an assistant manager at a restaurant added, “We’ve had to reevaluate our priorities” as the family adjusted to both rate increases and consumer inflation.

As an example, he offered, they’re paying close attention to the energy use in his home, focusing on reducing costs without sacrificing too much convenience for his family.

On the Colorado Springs Utilities website, a page called Customer Assistance offers visitor links for financial assistance, including Project COPE, which allows payment assistance for those struggling with emergencies. Sorrells couldn’t find the help she needed on those pages.

For now, she’s relying on friends. But the future remains in question for Sorrells; with rising costs and inflation eroding her ability to pay her bills, she feels, “If the utilities increased any more, I am not sure how I would combat that increase.”

CSU offers HEAP, or Home Efficiency Assistance Program, to help make homes more efficient in terms of both energy and water usage. This program is designed to help homeowners reduce their utilities costs by focusing on energy and water audits used to assess and measure water and energy efficiencies.

On June 28, the CSU board approved rate increases for natural gas and electricity prices, sparking public controversy and questions about why costs are increasing. The rate increases were expected following steep increases in natural gas prices worldwide. According to CSU, the increase in prices will cost ratepayers an extra $27 each month on their utility bills.

Andie Buhl, a CSU Board Administrator, wrote in an email that as of early June, there were 1,806 customers “on an active payment arrangement” with a small number of ratepayers receiving financial help from COPE.

Buhl also wrote that there has not been any “immediate increase in requests for utilities assistance” following rate increases. “Past due status usually builds over time,” she added and noted, “Many customers are still playing catch up post-pandemic.”

Buhl mentioned CSU “anticipate[s] there will be a noticeable increase in requests for assistance by end of the summer.” As natural gas prices rise and inflation continues pinching wallets, consumers in the Pikes Peak region will likely suffer some financial hardship. Some will struggle mightily. Some will breeze through these difficult times.

But for Keokuk Sorrells, inflation has been making life difficult for her this year, and sudden, dramatic spikes in utility bills really don’t help, especially with so few financial alternatives available.

Fortunately for Sorrells, for now, she’s temporarily dodged a financial calamity.

The Maverick Observer is an online free-thinking publication interested in the happenings in our region. We promote open views without bias. All views are welcome – it is how we learn from each other and grow as a community.