Who’s To Blame For $702 Electric Bill?

(Updated) ​“We have bills here that are sky high,” Lauren Palulis said, as she confronted her temporary landlord with a copy of her apartment’s $702.38 electric bill for the month of January.

“Call the electric company and PURA” if you have complaints about the cost of electricity, replied her landlord for-now, Farnam Realty’s Carol Horsford. Make sure the city’s Building Department properly inspected the complex’s insulation. But don’t protest a group that has no power over the price of power.

That scene — and reckoning over rising utility costs — played out during a protest on the sidewalk in front of Farnam Realty’s downtown office at 107 Whitney Ave.

Palulis was one of a dozen tenants union members, organizers, and supporters to rally outside of Farnam’s office Tuesday afternoon to protest high utility costs, among other concerns, at 1455 State St.

That’s the former Koppel Photo Engraving Co. building in Cedar Hill that an affiliate of Ocean Management gut-renovated less than five years ago before reopening it as a 17-unit apartment complex.

The building has electric heat, meaning that tenants don’t have separate gas and electric bills. Even with this combined utility set-up, Palulis insisted, something is clearly wrong, because her two-bedroom apartment’s monthly power bill this winter has reached $500, $600, and now $700 — which she called ​“insanely high.”

“We don’t use excessive electricity,” Palulis said, so something must need to be fixed with the building itself.

A holding company controlled by Ocean’s Shmuel Aizenberg is still the legal owner of 1455 State, but the property has been wrapped up in a foreclosure battle since 2023. Last August, a state judge appointed Horsford to serve as 1455 State’s ​“receiver,” meaning that Farnam is responsible for collecting rent, performing maintenance, and handling other property management work until the court case resolves. 

As the vice president of the 1455 State Street Tenants Union, Palulis helped lead Tuesday’s protest alongside her partner, roommate, and tenants union colleague Zach Postle. Also in attendance were Connecticut Tenants Union President Hannah Srajer, Vice President Luke Melonakos-Harrison, and Secretary-Treasurer Peter Fousek.

Palulis and Postle said they pay $2,600 per month in rent for their two-bedroom apartment. They’ve lived there for two years. Their rental is spacious, with high ceilings and stretching across two floors. And yes, their apartment — like all of the other residential units at 1455 State — has electric-powered heat. 

But still: $702.38 for an electric bill covering Jan. 6 through Feb. 4? Following other recent monthly electric bills totaling $641.62 and $571, respectively? That can’t be right given their electricity usage, she and Postle said. 

They also said they’re not alone in experiencing these sky-high electric costs. They said other tenants at 1455 State are feeling that pain, too. (The only other 1455 State tenant to speak at Tuesday’s rally was Shane Biagiarelli; he said he’s lived at that building for only two weeks, and hasn’t gotten his first electric bill yet. But, based on what he’s heard from his neighbors, he’s bracing for a hefty bill.)

Before Tuesday’s rally started in full, Horsford and Farnam Senior Property and Accounts Manager Aviva Katz came out to the sidewalk to tell Srajer, Palulis, and Postle that the union was protesting the wrong people. 

Horsford and Katz stressed that Farnam is just the court-appointed receiver for this property. They’re not the owner, which is still Ocean. They said that their company is only temporarily managing this property, and that Ocean plans to take back control soon. They repeatedly said no to Srajer’s request that Farnam strike a collective bargaining agreement with the 1455 State St. tenants union, as Ocean has done at 311 Blake St. Horsford and Katz said that landlords are not legally required to negotiate collective leases; and besides, they said, Farnam will not be responsible for 1455 State for too much longer. Srajer and the other tenants union members responded that, per the court’s appointment, Farnam is in charge of the property right now, and so they’re the ones the tenants union should be negotiating with.

As for Palulis’s and Postle’s electric bill, Horsford said, they should take their concerns to the power company, United Illuminating, and to state utility regulators at the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA). Those entities have the most direct impact on the cost of electricity in Connecticut, which has gone up and up and up in recent years.

Horsford then took a look at Palulis’s $702.38 bill — and pointed out that $132.51 of that, or around 19 percent, consists of ​“public benefits” charges for statewide energy efficiency programs and renewable energy investments, among other state law-mandated expenses.

“Public benefits are not the problem here,” Palulis countered. ​“The problem here is that the building’s not retaining heat.” She and Postle argued that 1455 State’s apartments appear to suffer from inadequate insulation. That’s what’s driving these high electric bills, they argued; that’s what Farnam, so long as it’s the property’s court-appointed receiver, needs to address.

“If there isn’t insulation, then it’s a problem” with the city Building Department’s initial inspections of the renovated property, Horsford replied. She said that, per state building code, properties like this need external and internal insulation. If the Building Department signed off on improper insulation, then the tenants union needs to direct their complaints to the city.

Don’t bring these complaints to Farnam, Horsford continued. If you have a problem with how the building is insulated, then go to the city and ask: ​“Was the building properly inspected? Was insulation properly done?” 

After Horsford and Katz returned inside to Farnam’s office and the tenants union mounted their sidewalk protest, Palulis said that the tenants union — and all 25 residents of 1455 State St. represented by the union — is not issuing an unreasonable demand.

“We’re not asking for hardwood floors and marble countertops and gold toilets,” she said. They just want the underlying cause for their high electric bills to be addressed.

Update: On Wednesday afternoon, city spokesperson Lenny Speiller told the Independent that the city’s Office of Building Inspections and Enforcement conducted an insulation inspection of 1455 State St. on Aug. 30, 2021. The property passed that inspection. ​“The city has received no complaints or reports related to insulation-related issues or unpermitted work at this property since the certificate of occupancy was granted,” he said.

He added that, earlier on Wednesday, ​“city officials reached out to a tenants union representative at 1455 State Street to schedule a joint inspection by the Livable City Initiative, Building Department, and the Fair Rent Commission.”

Breaking Down The Bill

A PURA spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of Palulis and Postle’s situation. They encouraged all customers who experience ​“any unusual usage patterns” on their utility bills to reach out to the utility company directly, and, if they’re unable to reach a resolution, to reach out to PURA’s customer service unit by telephone at 1 – 800-382‑4586 or by email at pura.information@ct.gov.

A UI representative did send over some context in response to this reporter’s questions about Palulis’s and Postle’s $702.38 January bill.

In an email message, the UI rep pointed out that the usage on the electric bill is 1,968 kilowatt-hours (kWh). By comparison, they said, the average UI customer uses 700 kWh per month — meaning that Palulis and Postle used nearly three times the amount of electricity of an average monthly UI customer. ​“This is likely due to the customer using electric heat,” the UI representative said. 

They also pointed out that the time period between Jan. 6 and Feb. 4 ​“covered most of the coldest days of the year, and this season had particularly long and frigid cold snaps. This also would explain the particularly high usage.”

The UI representative then broke down where the itemized charges on the electric bill go:

• 38 percent of this particular electric bill’s charges go to ​“supply” prices, they pointed out; those are the ​“costs of energy generation that is deregulated in Connecticut — these charges are a 100% pass-through from UI customers to the companies that generate electricity (e.g., using natural gas, renewables, nuclear, etc.)”

• 13 percent of the bill goes to transmission prices, which are ​“the costs to maintain the interstate regional grid that carries power across state lines from energy generators into the distribution system (UI owns a very small portion of the transmission grid — only 138 miles of transmission lines, compared to 3,600 miles of distribution lines — so the vast majority of Transmission charges are passed through to the regional grid operator (ISO-New England) and other companies that maintain a larger portion of the transmission system).”

• 30 percent of the bill goes to local delivery charges, which is ​“the only portion of the bill that UI collects and ​‘keeps’ to support the local distribution system — the poles, wires, transformers, substations, line crews, etc. that ensure the safe and reliable delivery of power to our customers’ homes and businesses.”

• And 19 percent of the bill goes to public benefits charges, which pay for ​“a variety of policy programs developed by the legislature and/or regulators, such as incentive programs for clean energy programs, low-income assistance programs, and other state-mandated programs. UI is required by legislators and regulators to include these charges on the bill, collect them from customers, and use them to implement programs passed by state policymakers.”

UI spokesperson Sarah Wall Fliotsos provided the following additional comment for this article: ​“We at UI recognize the impacts that high supply costs and the high costs of state policymakers’ programs in the Public Benefits Charge — neither of which UI controls or profits from — are having on our customers, particularly for customers who use electric heat during the coldest months of the year. 

“To mitigate these high costs, all our customers can consider Budget Billing, which stabilizes bills across the year based on annual (rather than monthly) usage, and Flexible Payment Arrangements, which can spread any overdue charges over up to 18 months for residential customers. Energy efficiency assessments through EnergizeCT can also help ensure that energy is not being lost to poor insulation, unsealed windows, inefficient lighting, and other easily solvable factors. We encourage any customer struggling with their bill to contact us to hear about these and other energy assistance programs they may qualify for, based on their individual financial circumstances.”