Tensions high as customers push against Liberty Utility rate increase

NIXA, Mo. — Standing room only at Nixa City Hall for the latest in a series of public meetings regarding a proposed rate hike by Liberty Utilities.

Residents from across rural Christian County were lined up ready to give the Missouri Public Service Commission their opinions.

"When I saw this paper here, I was immediately ready to see what I can do to switch over to White River Electric Company. I'm just going to call it what it is. This is absolute price gouging through and through," Seth Ramming said.

"This rate increase abuses the customer base and the large increase request is unwarranted for a company with the strong financial position," Kathy Coons said.

Kelly Price with Liberty Utilities says your usage determines the increase on your bill.

"The difference is, roughly we're looking at very specific line items on the bill that include the usage, the peak credit and the customer charge. It's roughly a 34% increase for customers who use about 1000 kilowatt hours a month," Price said. "Those are residential customers and that equates to roughly $49 in the summer a month and about $47 in the other months of the year."

Price says the request is justified.

"This rate update request is to cover investments that we have made in our system already, about $700 million worth of investment. These are things like updating substations, replacing utility poles, adding wildlife guards to our system, so that we have fewer outages," Price said. "We're doing cybersecurity and physical security updates because of modern threats. It's all these things that help allow us to provide safer, more reliable service to our customers."

Speakers don't seem too interested in protecting investments, but rather making sure their utility bill doesn't skyrocket.

"There's a lot of disabled people, there's a lot of people who are on Social Security. I don't really feel like this is actually going to do very well for people who live there, nor do I really feel like it's going to do well for business," Ramming said.

"I just happened to be a senior citizen. I worked for 52 years before I retired. I am on a fixed income. I get a two and a half percent raise. You're asking for 30. Inflation is not near that. Why do you think that you need that much money? You don't. You need to run your business better," Audrey Grobe said.

"If you raise this, it's going to cause people to choose between cooling or heat. Eating o not eating," Leo Arledge said. "If you raise it, you will kill a lot of small businesses in Sparta because they will not be able to afford it."

"We know that nobody wants to pay higher rates. We understand that, but we also know that our customers count on us for safe and the central service and the types of investments we have made already that are part of this particular case are the types of projects that allow us to respond to outages faster, have fewer outages, and provide that safe, reliable service to our customers," Price said.

There are multiple hearings throughout Liberty's service area expected later this week.

"Your source and testimony on this matter are very important to us and honor assure you that your thoughts and your comments will be taken seriously and taken to heart as we go through this process. So thank you for being here," John P. Mitchell, one of the Public Service Commissioners, said.

If approved, the rate increases could go into effect as early as the beginning of 2026, although it's unclear at this time when the Commission could make a ruling.

However, one speaker made it clear, in his words, that anything more than a clear denial would be insulting to the public.

"It says Missouri Public Service Commission. You're here to protect the public, and if you guys approve them having this increase, you're not serving the public," Rick Hagan said.