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This Is Not a Test
Unless an agreement is reached soon, teaching assistants at the University of Washington will go on strike next week. The timing is significant: It's finals week, and TAs are badly needed to administer tests and grade papers.
University officials are standing firm, however, claiming that they can't meet TA demands for neutral third-party arbitration. As for the timing of the possible strike, Norm Arkans, associate vice president for university relations, says, "In case it happens, we'll do our best to finish the quarter with as little disruption as we can." PHIL CAMPBELL
Stranger Personals
Chairman Wills
While it's cool that the city council's energy committee is backing energy chair Heidi Wills' proposal to create a special third billing bracket for the "hot tub crowd"--the top one-plus percent of residential electric customers who wolf down more than 1,800 kilowatt hours per month in the summer and over 3,500 in the winter--Wills' colleagues are being shortsighted for not supporting her other dash of socialism.
Wills wanted to redistribute this July's Seattle City Light rate hike by applying it proportionally among the current rate categories. (There are two rates. Customers who stay below 300 kilowatt hours per month in the summer and 480 in the winter are charged .4 cents per kilowatt hour. Customers who climb above those limits pay about .8 cents for each kilowatt hour over the threshold.)
Under Wills' proportional proposal, customers who average a higher use of the more expensive energy (typically single-family homes who heat with electricity) would take about a nine percent increase, while customers who average a lower use of the more expensive energy (typically apartment dwellers) would take about an eight percent increase. In other words, the people who use the most power would bear a proportionally bigger share of the rate increase.
If the city doesn't apply Wills' weighted distribution plan, customers who use less would pay an 8.7 percent increase, while customers who use more would get away with a smaller 7.6 percent increase. Conservation-happy Wills doesn't think that's fair.
While capitalist models reward and promote consumption ("the more you use the less you pay"), Wills wants to do the opposite. "This is what's great about a public utility," she says. "You can do some social good--like encourage conservation and protect low-income users." Unfortunately, her colleagues think that's too confusing. JOSH FEIT
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