City Council to question City Light about billing issues

Ashley House property in Shoreline

Monday night the Shoreline City Council will hold a dinner meeting with the Parks / Tree Board at 5:45pm.

The regular council meeting will begin at 7pm, in the Council Chambers, City Hall, 17500 Midvale Ave N.

Council will take action on amendments to Ordinance 824, prompted by the request of Ashley House to remodel a very large and derelict house in the Echo Lake neighborhood into a nursing facility for medically fragile children.

Ashley House has a relationship with Seattle Children's, which refers children being released from the hospital who need intensive medical attention that their families cannot easily provide at home. Ashley House would have 15 children, 24/7 skilled nursing care, and minimal traffic impact in the neighborhood.

Ashley House has facilities in Kent and Enumclaw. No other facility like this exists in Shoreline.

In order to permit Ashley House, staff had to update the code, which covers a variety of facilities. Report is here.

Study items include the financial update for Potala Place (see article) and City Light billing.

Councilmembers McGlashan and Scully requested that staff reach out to Seattle City Light to request that they present information and answer questions from the Council regarding billing concerns that they are hearing from community members.

Electric bills received by some Shoreline residents have been hundreds of dollars higher that bills received historically. Staff has had some preliminary discussions with Seattle City Light staff, and their staff has explained that some of these issues may be due to the implementation of a new billing system that was installed at the end of 2017. Other issues may also be driving some of these concerns.

Council will be joined by Kelly Enright, City Light Director of Customer Care, to help provide more information about some of the concerns that Council is hearing and support the utility can provide Shoreline ratepayers.