Cody Colt, public works team identifying ways to lower utility bills for homeowners in Yelm

Cody Colt, Yelm public works director, took some time during a Yelm City Council study session meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 1, to update the council on how he and his team are working on lowering utility bills for homeowners in Yelm.

Colt noted that 60% of residents in Yelm, right now, are homeowners. He stated their bill in 2027 on average would be $155.94 if the council doesn’t take action, but would see an adjusted bill of $146.82 with council action. He said homeowners would save 5.9% each month with these changes.

“I know you can look at it and go, ‘it’s only $9,’ but everywhere in the world where everything is going up, this is the one thing we can lower,” Colt said. “Most of that is because of growth.”

Colt said that council can take action with the new, proposed rates and that the item will go before councilors later this month.
He noted that Yelm residents’ water rates won’t be adjusted at all, and claimed the rate was last adjusted in 2021.

Colt added the City of Yelm has been watching sewer rates closely, and said there’s an opportunity to lower Yelm residents’ sewer bills.

“We have the opportunity to lower sewer, which lowers your overall utility bill. That’s why we’re doing it. You’ll see that reduction here in the commercial and in the residential,” Colt said. “Just to give you an idea, I’ll give you some numbers. In 2027, for a single family home, their base rate bill for sewer is $104.84. That’s in 2027, their base rate for sewer if we did nothing. We’re proposing to lower it to $92.32. You’re $6 lower on just the sewer part of the bill, which helps out people quite a bit.”

Colt pointed to budgeting and growth as the primary reasons why Yelm is able to potentially lower sewer rates. He also claimed that growth is going to help pay for the city’s new sewer plant.

“We have no capital projects in the pipeline for sewer right now, except for just pipe maintenance around town because we’re building this giant plant,” Colt said. “As time goes on, maybe there might be an adjustment. I recommend reviewing rates every budget cycle, but I don’t think there’s any issue over this budget cycle or the next budget cycle if we lower sewer rates this way. The one thing we are doing is raising stormwater rates 80-cents. Stormwater is a fund that hasn’t been changed since 2017 and it’s not doing enough to keep up right now.”

Colt added that he will be bringing three coordinates related to water, sewer and stormwater to change rates to council this month. He reiterated that water isn’t changing rates at all, but rather just some verbiage.

“The overall citizen of Yelm’s utility bill will go down,” Colt said. “They’ll have about 5.9% in savings per month next year.”

Colt noted that an apartment owner’s utility bill would also go down, but he’s unsure if those savings would be passed along to renters and tenants.

“I know, just like everyone else here hears about growth and the impacts, one of the positive impacts is that we are able to spread that cost a little more,” Mayor Joe DePinto said. “With the growth, we can spread it and lower it. That’s what we have been doing. It is a silver lining.”