2023 Director’s Letter
Director Jackie Flowers
I am pleased to present our 2023 Annual Report. This report showcases our performance and achievements for the year. I’ve highlighted some of our key progress and achievements below, and if you’re a little more detail-oriented or any of the topics pique your interest, you’ll find additional development statistics for each of our utilities in greater detail further down. I hope you enjoy learning a little more about your utilities.
Twenty twenty-three brought new industry challenges such as supply chain disruptions, economic shifts, and evolving regulations. Despite them, Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) held a renewed sense of purpose with 13 guiding principles adopted by our Public Utility Board aimed at helping us carry out and focus our new strategy work. As part of that, we leaned in on Guiding Principle 13: Customer Service, by aligning our organizational values of safety, belonging, customer focus, integrity, and respect with our strategy to meet our mission of delivering clean, reliable services essential to quality of life and our customers’ needs.
As part of that effort, we reorganized our enterprise-wide Customer Services, Public Affairs, and Communications offices into one unified Customer Experience and External Affairs division, which helped us lead and implement a unified customer experience strategy with organizational alignment. The newly combined team focused on work to help us ensure our customers and communities experience compassion and equity in action from our utility, so they are understood, valued, and empowered. CXEA aims to deliver through knowledgeable, empathetic advocacy and consistent, transparent, and competent support.
Our utility completed a comprehensive, independent 10-year management review as part of the City of Tacoma Charter examining our allocation of resources and support across functions including personnel, technology, physical infrastructure. Eight years of external customer survey data helped us identify areas for improvement and data from the American Public Power Association, American Water Works Association, and comparable utilities aided in benchmarking across key operational areas. Overall, our review found that TPU consistently maintains its position as one of the nation’s leading public utility departments, demonstrating a commendable record of accomplishment compared to benchmarked peers; a trajectory that promises to solidify our utility’s position as a leader in the industry. We also learned our water utility surpassed the American Water Works Association benchmark of peers with a competitive average monthly water bill of $42.02 positioning it as a competitive leader. Our power utility continued to rank withing the top 30 utilities based on metrics established by the American Public Power Association boasting a notably low likelihood of outages and swift service restorations.
Here is a peek at our department divisions’ efforts and successes guided by the above listed guiding principle and other individual utility objectives.
Tacoma Power: Living our values
Our power utility provided nearly 100% service availability by continuing to deliver upon its clean, renewable hydropower legacy. Tacoma Power fully embraced our new unified mission, vision, and values, proactively enacting and prioritizing them. The utility was honored as part of the American Public Power Association’s (APPA) Safety Award of Excellence for the first time and helped other utilities and fire services. Amid supply chain issues from mid-2020 to 2023, it completed over 200,000 advanced meter upgrades. The utility moved steadily toward modernization, with over 68% of meter upgrades completed by the end of 2023. Tacoma Power also expanded its bill assistance for customers while modestly increasing rates by 3.5% to support operations. Tacoma Power also conducted outreach in our community to build trade career awareness alongside our water utility and other partners.
Tacoma Water: Adjusting and modernizing operations for agility and responsiveness
Tacoma Water’s 2022 development statistics were record-breaking, primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic and low interest rates. As interest rates began to rise in 2023, many of our Water customers fast-tracked housing projects while others waited. Overall, these led to a reduction in new service transactions, likely due to uncertainty, and a return to an expected pre-pandemic statistical level. Thus, in 2023, Tacoma Water’s development work streams began to catch up on backlogs impacted by the demands of 2022.
The utility installed new water mains, upgraded the Hood Street generator and control system, shut down and inspected pipelines, and completed long-term planning studies. It dedicated time to protecting our natural resources and ensuring the health of our watershed by improving road drainage and reducing sediment into streams, working on the Howard Hanson Dam downstream fish passage facility, and acquiring land within the watershed to protect water and habitats. It also extended financial grant assistance to customers for water service lines and launched leak notifications. The utility enabled these capabilities by completing advanced meter upgrades, resulting in realized benefits.
Most notably, the WestRock Company’s Tacoma paper mill closure of 2023 resulted in a $25 million annual revenue loss for Tacoma Public Utilities. The financial impact on Tacoma Water necessitated an additional rate adjustment. As part of the Public Utility Board and Tacoma City Council approved rate increase, Tacoma Public Utilities provided enhanced residential assistance programs for qualifying customers, and Tacoma Water proactively explored ways to reduce ongoing and future costs in support.
Tacoma Rail: Maintaining service and safety
Our rail utility maintained its impressive legacy of on-time performance and advanced its sustainability efforts by securing almost $9M in grants for battery electric locomotives and supporting infrastructure. Safety and environmental compliance were also a priority as Tacoma Rail completed oil spill drills and executed contingency plans. Ultimately, our rail utility continued to effectively meet its goal of providing efficient, cost-effective rail service to diverse areas.
As you read our more in-depth division reports, you’ll notice they made meaningful progress toward our unified mission. I’m incredibly proud of their dedication to public service, resiliency to disruptions and shifts, and impressive overriding results. We will continue working to be a resilient, sustainable public utility you can feel proud of owning for generations.
Jackie Flowers
Director of Utilities