Once highly popular among utility customers, appliance repair calls have fallen for two straight years. This year, Clark Public Utilities expected to serve about 3,500 appliance repair customers. The program will cease to operate on March 31.

Declines came as the utility struggled to comply with state rules that require it to operate at a profit. Briefly in 2006 it looked as though the agency might be able to pull it off. But job orders are down, expenses are up, and staff could not find a way to make the books balance without raising rates and cutting the wages of unionized employees.

Utility commissioners on Tuesday voted 2-1 to discontinue the service, which provided low-cost repairs to electric appliances and also offered a $2.95 monthly water heater maintenance program.

At least some of the seven field technicians who worked for appliance repair will lose their jobs, but details are not clear pending talks with union officials, said Mick Shutt, utility spokesman.

“I am sad that people may be losing their jobs, but I am pleased to hear it is ending,” said Nathan Kysar, owner of Nate’s Plumbing Inc. in Brush Prairie. “The government should not be allowed to go into the private sector and compete against us when we have to make payroll, pay taxes. At the end of the year if we don’t make money we go broke. If they don’t make money, the public pays for it.”

Despite the frustration of plumbers and electricians, the appliance repair program was once more widely used in Clark County, and all three utility commissioners said they were sad to see it go.

Books didn’t balance

In 2005, the year the Legislature handed Clark Public Utilities a mandate that it could no longer subsidize appliance repairs, the program spent $76,974 more than it earned. Despite a fee increase in 2007, the utility has not been able to make up that loss.

Projections for 2008 had the appliance repair operation with net income of around $14,500 based on revenues of around $1 million. That would still leave the program overspent by $64,241 because of past years’ red ink.

“This is a very sobering situation,” said utility commissioner Byron Hanke, who lost a bid Tuesday to keep the program running at least through April. Hanke’s commissioner campaign platform six years ago included a promise to protect appliance repairs.

“Before I am willing to vote to drop it, I’d like to hear from our customers,” Hanke said.

He was outvoted.

“People could say ‘Keep it! Keep it! Keep it!’ But that doesn’t mean they’ll call us if we charge $10 more than somebody else,” said utility commissioner Nancy Barnes, who voted with Carol Curtis to end the program.

“If I thought an outcry from our customers would change anything, I would wait,” Curtis said. “But an outcry will not give us what we need.”

Public support

Past outcries kept appliance repairs running despite challenges from the state. In 1998, then-Attorney General Chris Gregoire, a Democrat, issued an opinion that Clark Public Utilities was illegally competing with private businesses.

Then a 1999 utility-commissioned poll found that 72 percent of customers favored the repair service, and Clark leaders decided to keep going despite state reprimands and fees.

Local legislators were deluged by appliance repair supporters in 2005, when they voted to make the program legal. But when they authorized the service, legislators also prohibited Clark Public Utilities from subsidizing the program — it would have to become profitable to survive.

That new rule proved too much for the appliance repair department, which the utility took over when it acquired Portland General Electric’s Clark County operations in 1946.

“This has been coming for a long time,” said Jim Windus, a retired pulp and paper engineer who attended Tuesday’s utility commission meeting.

“The appliance repair service in the 1950s and 1960s was a core part of the mission of the utility,” Windus told commissioners. “That service did not exist in the business community. It does now. Now you should focus on hedging natural gas and running a large utility. Appliance repair is not where your business should be.”

Courtney Sherwood covers Clark Public Utilities. Reach her at 360-735-4553 or courtney.sherwood@columbian.com.