A yearlong billing dispute between a utility provider and a small school in the Northeast Kingdom has been exacerbated by the strain of the Covid-19 crisis. And now the matter is before a state commission.
The Hardwick Electric Department, a municipal utility serving 11 towns in Lamoille and Orleans counties, installed a meter at Craftsbury Academy between 2010 and 2011.
The system was supposed to measure how much electricity the school of about 200 students used from the utility provider.
But according to Hardwick Electric, the meter only registered 15% of the K-12 school’s electricity use between 2010 and 2019.
So in late 2019, the utility asked Craftsbury Academy to pay up — to the tune of about $140,000.
Over the next few months, as the two parties tried finding a resolution, Hardwick Electric sent the school a letter March 2 saying it would shut power off if the bill wasn’t paid in full, agree to a payment plan or get a state order prohibiting disconnection.
School officials believed those demands were unfair.
On March 11, the Craftsbury district filed a complaint with the Vermont Public Utility Commission, petitioning the state body to rule that the school doesn’t have to pay Hardwick Electric.
“The fact that they didn’t inspect that device and catch it over nine years of reading the meter every month — that’s our argument,” school board chair Harry Miller said.
Miller and district officials contend that they aren’t responsible for the faulty metering and resulting underpayment.
Hardwick Electric said in a statement the repayment is “a matter of fairness.”
“Hardwick Electric’s ratepayers should not have to cover the cost of Craftsbury Academy’s electricity,” the utility wrote. “It is our hope that Craftsbury Academy will now do the right thing and pay for the electricity they used for nearly a decade.”
Hardwick Electric manager Mike Sullivan said in an email Thursday that the academy shared responsibility for the metering installation.
The case before the state commission, which was first reported on by the Caledonian Record, is still in progress.
But in order to allow deliberations between parties to continue, the commission on May 28 granted a request from the Department of Public Service to delay proceedings until July 2. (The department had been brought in to offer comments on the school’s complaint.)
Miller said the school board decided to issue a statement about the situation last week to let taxpayers know that the school is not at fault.
“We always paid our bill,” he said. “We were never told that we were getting a discount.”
He added: “To come back and say, ‘Well, we need another $150,000 or whatever it is,’ is basically telling the ratepayers in Craftsbury that you’re gonna have to come up with the money.”
If a resolution isn’t reached, Miller said the district must have a special vote to adjust the school budget to pay the bill.
Cutting the budget in order to pay the power bill could mean the loss of teachers, he said, and further increase financial strains for the school as it tries to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
Hardwick Electric said it has offered the school several payment plans over the last year of discussions. Those are recorded in a June school board document: The utility would take $10,000 off the total if the school made payments over 99 months; $15,000 off for a 75 month payment schedule; or $20,000 off if the school paid over 51 months.
Craftsbury Academy chose to ignore the proposals, according to Hardwick Electric’s recent statement, and “spread misinformation” instead.
Miller said the school had offered to settle the dispute in cash, for an amount significantly less than the bill, but Hardwick Electric declined that offer. He did not reveal the settlement amount.
