Washington’s City Council, during its meeting Monday, unanimously voted to not pay for a new study of its electric rates and the cost of providing electric service to the city’s power customers.

The study would have cost $24,500 and been conducted by Utility Financial Services. The study’s cost would have been defrayed in part by a $5,000 grant from ElectriCities, to which the city belongs. A cost-of-services study, among other things, is used to fairly assign charges to cover the costs of providing services to each customer class.

“I think this is an unnecessary expenditure. We had a cost-of-service done and the results were presented to us last October. I don’t think we need to spend another $25,000 for a cost-of-service study when we’ve got one on the shelf that’s six months old,” Councilman Doug Mercer said. The existing study should be sufficient for city officials to use in evaluating the city’s electric rates, he said.

“We haven’t looked at it in any detail. So, I would suggest that we not approve the budget ordinance amendment for a (new) study, spend some time studying this one and make necessary adjustments based on this report,” Mercer said.

The study, presented to the city Oct. 19, 2015, recommends that Washington’s electric customers should have their overall electric rates (per kilowatt hour) reduced by 5.64 percent, with residential customers receiving a 2.52 percent reduction. The study also recommends increasing some fees, including facilities charges, related to providing electric service. Booth & Associates conducted the study.

At that October meeting, Booth & Associates spokesman Terry Brege said the goal of the study and its recommendations was to fairly distribute the costs of providing power to the different rate classes so they pay their fair share based on their power consumption and associated costs of providing service to them.

Brege said a reason the city might want to consider increasing the facilities charge — at least in the customer column and over time mover it closer to the distribution column — is it produces rate stability, revenue stability.

The city is considering adjusting the electric rate for industrial customers so they fairly share the burden of paying the city’s wholesale power cost. The proposed budget keeps power rates at their current levels.