Title
Notice/Advertisement Title: Public Utilities and Sustainability Committee Hearing - Minutes
Contact Name: Chelsea Golterman
Contact Telephone Number: 614-645-3091
Contact Email Address: CLGolterman@columbus.gov
Body
Public Utilities and Sustainability Committee Hearing
Meeting Minutes
Date: June 3, 2026
Time: 3:30 P.M.
Location: Columbus City Hall, Council Chambers, 90 W. Broad St. Columbus, OH 43215
Councilmembers Present: Councilmember Christopher L. Wyche, Councilmember Emmanuel V. Remy
Call to Order
[Chair Wyche] 3:36 P.M.
Introductions
[Chair Christopher L. Wyche]
Thank you all for joining us for our third Public Utilities and Sustainability Committee Hearing of the year. Last November, Council approved a new rate structure for our utilities that expanded eligibility for the city’s utility discount programs and increased rates for all Columbus Water and Power customers. The decision to increase rates was not made lightly and there were a lot of community concerns around the impact of high resource users on the system and how we are growing as a city. In response to the community’s questions and concerns, council amended the ordinance to require a mid-year review of our discount programs, the impact of water utilization and the corresponding cost of service provision to regional high-capacity users, how they are ensuring high-capacity users are supporting a fair share of infrastructure investment and expansion, and potential modifications to the capital investment plans to mitigate future rate increases. Tonight, we will get that update. Before we dive into the presentation, I wanted to give the floor to Vice-Chair Remy to say a few opening remarks.
[Vice Chair Emmanuel V. Remy] Thank you very much for holding this hearing. I’d like to thank Deputy Director Jon Lee for attending and for his work, and Chair Wyche for holding consistent hearings. Our residents have a lot of questions as to how the City is managing our utilities. Residents deserve to understand our government is working, addressing affordability, and considering future growth and challenges.
[CM Wyche] Thank you Councilmember.
Presentations: Columbus Water & Power - Water Use, Capital Projects, and Discount Programs
[Chair Wyche] Here to present on behalf of Columbus Water and Power is Deputy Director Jon Lee. Deputy Lee, the floor is yours.
Jon Lee, Deputy Director, Columbus Water and Power
[Mr. Lee] Good afternoon. With me is Noah, member of our Community Outreach team.
Today my presentation focuses on a prior amendment made that focuses on affordability for water customers. Please note, we will present a more detailed presentation to Council prior to June 26. Affordability remains a big priority for Columbus Water and Power. Here is an overview of what we have been doing in 2026: rebranding our Income Qualified Program, showcasing our program more on social media; staffing up CWP’s CAP program staff, restructuring the intake process within CWP, getting out in the community in hot zones, working with community organizations to host sign-up events, establishing new relationships with community partners, educating on our program, understanding other assistance programs in the community and how we can work collectively, engaging experts to help with data analysis, and understanding what is working well in other states/utilities. Importantly, we are meeting customers where they are.
[Chair Wyche] My apologies for interrupting. On the benchmarking with other communities, were there challenges experienced by similar communities?
[Mr. Lee] The biggest challenge is enrollment and getting over 10% enrollment. We’ve seen some creative solutions and different governance structures.
[CM Wyche] Thank you.
[Mr. Lee] Delinquent balances have remained relatively stable over the period. Significant delinquencies seen during the pandemic, but they have gone down. We have not seen enough billing cycles in 2026 to draw strong conclusions. There are clear service areas that show delinquency. 9% of delinquent accounts are enrolled in CWP’s discount program. Our biggest opportunity is helping customers before they fall behind. These findings help CWP focus on outreach resources where they can have the greatest impact. Some strategies include customer outreach, customer assistance, and collections process improvements.
For more than a decade, we have been tracking affordability metrics. All four metrics have been met in every year from 2015 through 2024. Delinquency has not been found to significantly increase with rate increases.
Participation in our discount program has growth steadily since 2023. Nearly 10,000 accounts are currently enrolled.
[CM Wyche] On the duplication piece, is that ‘I am already enrolled and have applied again’?
[Mr. Lee] Exactly.
[CM Wyche] Thank you.
[Mr. Lee] Discount program enrollment is concentrated in areas where poverty rates are the greatest. Our community engagement plan has introduced some changes which have increased enrollment. We have focused on simplifying the customer experience by reducing paperwork and streamlining the process, as well as sending out mailers. We have created materials in multiple languages to reach more people, and we have also partnered with other community organizations to better understand community needs and share resources. We have concentrated a lot of efforts in the North and South area. We have more work to do on the West side.
Next, looking at opportunities. There are tens of thousands of households that qualify for assistance, but are not enrolled. Of eligible single-family homes, 54% are renters. While multifamily housing often received the most attention in affordability discussions, a larger number of potential enrollment opportunities among single-family households.
I’d like to discuss some of the challenges with multi-family residences. Many residents are not directly billed, meaning that assistance programs do not directly reach those they are intended to help. Multifamily enrollment presents unique challenges because of master-meter arrangements and utility costs embedded in rent. Education and outreach remains crucial. There are no perfect solutions, but there are opportunities to advance and improve.
Next, we will move into high capacity users, including utilization and costs to high capacity users. Infrastructure is designed to meet peak demand, not average demand. We have found that as the region grows, we must keep monitoring peak demand and look at ways to monitor water usage. Customers should pay costs that are proportional to the demand they place on the system. You are aware that we recently made a significant change to commercial rate structure and capacity fees. We are also evaluating a water reuse rate.
We are also reviewing multiple strategies to align infrastructure costs with customer demands, including an inclining block rate class and a high peaking rate class. We are also looking at different capacity fee methods, including the buy-in method, the incremental method, and combined method. These methods aim to ensure that new development pays its full share of infrastructure needs to serve it. Another item to study was ways to mitigate future rate increases. Overall, we’re always looking to mitigate rate increases by exploring creative financing strategies and grant opportunities.
We have found that holding rates against inflation levels would lead to a hold in capital projects, including those such as the fourth water plant construction.
I’ll wrap up with some closing remarks. In regard to our assistance program plan, we are focusing on what is working. Something that has really moved the needle is the dedication and development of our staff. Data collection and analysis has been crucial. Additionally, having resources and budget dollars for outreach, event planning, and partner workshops has been helpful. We are also continuing to market our CARES donation program, so that it can be more successful in the future. We do believe that auto-enrollment for eligible participants could be an important aspect in increasing enrollment, but that has been difficult.
[CM Wyche] I appreciate you, Deputy Director, for walking us through that presentation. Seeing the data is very helpful, especially regarding single-family homes. The fact remains, people do not know that this program exists. My first question is, I am auto enrolled in my bill payment, are there ways in which we can connect with those folks like me, to see if they are willing to support the CARE program?
[Mr. Lee] That is a great idea. Those with auto-payments set up may not be aware of the program, as they are not going into the portal as often as those who manually submit payment and receive notifications about the donor program. One thing I’d like to share is that we had a little bit of money left over and we were able to provide credits to residents. We have some money left over, and plan to target seniors that are experiencing delinquency and help pay those delinquent bills.
[CM Wyche] My next question is, how are we engaging internal departments to increase awareness and promotion of our assistance programs?
[Mr. Lee] We are engaging internal partners. We are hosting roundtables that bring in members from the City, from the State of Ohio, and nonprofits. We wanted to showcase our program and learn about their programs. We did engage with internal partners at an event in May.
[Vice-Chair Remy] What’s driving some of the balances for delinquent accounts?
[Mr. Lee] I would say that the delinquent accounts are likely due to quarterly billing, which results in large bills. We are moving towards monthly billing, which will hopefully be more manageable. We are also exploring budget billing.
[Vice-Chair Remy] When do you anticipate monthly billing to start?
[Mr. Lee] We are looking at July or August if everything goes well.
[Vice-Chair Remy] What is the process when an account goes delinquent?
[Mr. Lee] When you get a bill, you have 28 days to pay. After that, you go delinquent. You will get two letters, and a postcard which serves as your final notice that your water is going to be shut off. This can span quite a while, and we are flexible with payment plans and unforeseen circumstances, such as a leak. The last thing we want to do is shut off somebody’s water.
[Vice-Chair Remy] Can you send us those letters and postcards so that we can review them and the language used. I’m concerned we are not doing the proper outreach for potential delinquent accounts.
[Mr. Lee] I don’t believe we have language surrounding the discount program on those postcards. We can share that with you. Great idea.
[Vice-Chair Remy] How big is your call center that handles customer service?
[Mr. Lee] About 50 employees.
[Vice-Chair Remy] Maybe we look at installing some technology, even in that call center. Other cities that have auto enrollment, like Philadelphia and Seattle, have approximately 60,000 enrollments.
[Mr. Lee] We are exploring solutions. We want to avoid a situation in which a landlord receives a discount on utilities, but that discount is not seen by tenants.
[Vice-Chair Remy] Have you met with the apartment association?
[CM Wyche] To jump in, there is a portion of code that restricts our ability to offer discounts. We need to address that and be more flexible.
[Mr. Lee] Right. Again, there are a lot of opportunities to work and partner with community organizations and developers. Councilmember Remy, to your point regarding other communities, they were taking data and making assumptions to apply the discount to those they thought were eligible. They were not requiring things such as income eligibility. It is based on trust, and that’s how they’ve seen their numbers increase.
[CM Wyche] The opportunity is there to push more data information to promote our discount program. One thing I wanted to bring up regarding the notification process on delinquency. When you are stressed about your bill, the last thing you want is to open another letter from CWP. Maybe we can send out a text. We need to shake it up.
[Mr. Lee] We actually are going to have that as part of new billing system. The challenge is getting those phone numbers for accounts that do not currently have one listed. We are also looking at integrating technology within the online portal to remind customers to add their phone number to their account. We hope to have more signups as a result of this technology investment.
[Vice-Chair Remy] Do you have customer emails?
[Mr. Lee] It varies.
[CM Wyche] That is something I noticed in the presentation. Are we using enterprise dollars to support the utility assistance program?
[Mr. Lee] We are having discussions with the City Attorney regarding our program and the use of enterprise funding.
We will be implementing a new customer portal with our new billing system.
[Vice-Chair Remy] When that portal goes live, when will we begin notifying customers of the change?
[Mr. Lee] That outreach has begun and is happening now.
[CM Wyche] We are building out this team. It is important moving forward to set clear goals for sign ups moving forward, and to consider delinquency rates come November as we have rate discussions. Councilmember Remy, any additional questions?
[Vice-Chair Remy] No. Thank you for the presentation. I think we’re moving in the right direction, and we shared a robust number of recommendations and ideas today.
[Mr. Lee] Thank you. We are trying to do what is best for our customers. We will have more to share in the fall.
[CM Wyche] I appreciate the time and attention that has been dedicated to this. Thank you Deputy Director.
Closing Remarks
[Chair Wyche] As of the start of the hearing, my office received no written testimony. You can review the presentation given by visiting my webpage at columbus.gov. Thank you to all who attended the hearing or joined us online.
Written Testimony
Visit <https://bit.ly/WycheCBUSCityCouncil> to review all submitted testimony and presentations.
Adjournment
[Chair Wyche] 4:49 P.M.
Constituents can reach Councilmember Christopher L. Wyche’s Aide at <CLGolterman@columbus.gov> or his Analyst at <EMMorales@columbus.gov>. To stay up to date with Councilmember Wyche by following him on social media or by subscribing to his newsletter at <bit.ly/WycheCBUSCityCouncil>. Upcoming events and public hearings hosted by Councilmember Wyche can be found at <bit.ly/WednesdaysWithWyche>. Members of the public can watch Columbus City Council Meetings and Council Committee Public Hearings at <youtube.com/cityofcolumbus>.