Officials discuss El Paso Electric rate increase at special City Council meeting

City Council called for a special meeting on Wednesday to discuss the proposed rate increase.

El Paso Electric took to the podium in order to better explain their reasoning’s for the spike in rates.

The company’s CEO Thomas Shockley said “it moves the company closer to being fair for all of our residential customers, as opposed to some having to subsidize the others.”

Other residents of El Paso disagreed, and said it’s unfair to those using solar panels.

Robert Braunlich, who works for Border Solar, and says this proposed rate increase could jeopardize his job.

Braunlich spoke during open floor and said, “What El Paso Electric is proposing is making solar a lot less attractive to people and in essence it jeopardizes what I could do… if solar becomes more costly to people there is obviously less incentive to buy it, so i could lose my job.”

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