During the Board of the Water, Light and Sinking Fund Commission’s monthly meeting on June 16, members of the board which oversees Dalton Utilities heard financial updates from the company’s Chief Financial Officer James Wauscher as of April 30.

Wauscher said, regarding Dalton Utilities’ income statement for the period, the company’s revenues are “back to where we typically see.”

According to the statement, total operating revenues for Dalton Utilities equaled $26.3 million as of April 30, compared to the same month in 2025, which totaled $24.3 million.

“For a month-to-month comparison, we’re running about $2 million ahead,” he said. “Year-to-date, we’re about $12 million ahead of where we were last year ($114.8 million in April 2026 versus $102.5 million in April 2025). In both cases, those are going to be tied to commodities and we’re about $6 million ahead of where we thought we would be on our budget year-to-date.”

Looking at expenses, Wauscher said April’s numbers “came down pretty much level to where we were last year,” at a total of $19.3 million.

“I do want to point out that we did make a gas adjustment, which impacted our expenses and brought our overall margin down for one month,” he said. “This is an adjustment that actually applied to January, February and March. Year-to-date for our expenses, though, we’re looking at about $8 million ahead. Again, we look at the sectors that are leading that, which are going to be our electric and our gas. And that is very similar to our budget.”

When looking at the financial narrative, Wauscher said the current year-end projection for total margin is $53.1 million compared to a previous estimate of $54.1 million.

“It did come down by about $1 million,” he said. “What’s mainly driving that right now during this time of the year is going to be our consumption and the gas prices. So, we’re holding pretty steady in consumption for electric and gas, and those are going to be the main kinds of departments that lead that when we talk about commodities.”

In regards to the operating margin, Wauscher said the projected 2026 year-end total margin is $53.1 million compared to the actual 2025 year-end total of $50.8 million, about a 5% increase.

Wauscher said capital spending is an area that has changed in April 2026 compared to previous months.

“We took a good look at what we think the capital plan is going to do because it’s not an exact science,” he said. “Once projects start moving, they can move very quickly. You can spend a lot of funds and, conversely, there’s a lot of things that can delay a project from starting from when you think it will. So, we’ve taken a sort of mid-year look – even though we’re only projecting through April – to see where it might wind up. The biggest change is on the electric side. A $33.7 million variance is what we anticipate paying for this year on our upcoming power plant project. The other $3.7 million is going to be tied to other projects, such as transmission projects.”

Wauscher said cash flow projection is another area involving changes.

“Basically with our financing income, originally we thought we were going to get $10 million this year,” he said. “We’re probably going to use $3 million of that if everything goes right for us. We got our new revenue bond issuance for the power plant project, which is cash coming into us and we have to account for that full amount of cash. The majority of this is going to be reserved for future years on that power plant project, so we take it right back out as reserve funding.”

Focusing on consumption, Wauscher said areas such as gas and water need to involve some planning while electric is “holding its own” compared to last year.

“We’re about a 1% differential there,” he said.

According to data presented, total electric kilowatt-hours (KWH) for actual year-to-date in April equaled 934.1 million, while actual year-to-date KWH totals for April 2025 equaled 925.2 million.

“Data centers have increased some,” said Wauscher. “Those can fluctuate a little bit month to month and they kind of come back down a little bit that we’ve seen so far through May and June. But right now, they’re very close to where they were last year (438.9 million KWH in April 2026 to 421.0 KWH in April 2025). Overall, everything else is tracking pretty close to where we were.”

Wauscher said gas included a 10% differential from where the company was last year in overall consumption, with April 2026 totaling 21.0 million hundred cubic feet (CCF) and April 2025 totaling 23.3 million CCF.

“A large part of that is going to be our industrial, commercial and residential,” he said. “Residential is definitely going to be weather-driven and can even impact commercial a little bit. But our industrial is something we’ve seen kind of come down, which is matching what we’re seeing in the water. Overall, when you take everything into account, we’re about 10% below where we were at this point last year.”

On water consumption, Wauscher said everything “looked pretty normal and good,” except for the industrial side.

“We saw it level off last year and then now we’re seeing it go down again and continue to go down,” he said. “We haven’t seen the floor on that yet, so we’re keeping an eye on this. In terms of customer makeup, residential outstripped our industrial makeup in terms of total flow a few years ago. But industrial still does impact some of our financials and our planning.”

Comparing this year to the previous year, April 2026’s total water centum gallons (CGAL) equaled 16.3 million, while April 2025’s total CGALs equaled $17.4 million, a differential of about 6%.

“From the data we’re seeing and the trend in the way it’s continuing, we’re going to be taking a good look at this and seeing if there are any adjustments we need to start planning for now and in the long term,” Wauscher said. “Hopefully we can start seeing the floor to this and get an idea of when the investment will level off for us. But for now, we’re going to start some planning around the industrial sector on the water side, because when we see the same thing on the electric side, we’re not seeing the same amount of drop.”

Dalton Daily Citizen

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