Compare Minnesota city electric utilities (advanced)

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The first column stays Luverne unless you change it. The second column is the city you are checking.

and

Cities named in the Luverne debate: Saint James · Jackson · Granite Falls · Marshall · Hutchinson · New Ulm · Fairmont · Austin · Worthington · Windom · Litchfield · Buffalo

Where these numbers come from, and their limits

Inputs are the State Auditor's city finance data for 2015–2023 (its latest published years) and federal EIA-861 filings for 2024. Margins, ratios, pooled figures, and the variation measure are calculations from those inputs. A missing input is shown as a dash and left out; it is never counted as zero.OSA city finances EIA-861 2024

The median and the strip use only cities with a comparable value for that row; the count under each median says how many. On the strip, each faint tick is a city, the solid dot is the first column, and the hollow dot is the second.

The utility: Luverne and Jackson

In 2023, Jackson’s electric fund recorded $1,100,129 in transfers out: 19.7% of electric operating revenue, equal to 62% of the city’s property-tax levy.

Measure	Luverne	Jackson	Median of comparable cities
Electric operating revenue, 2023	$8.26M	$5.57M	$3.42M121 cities
Population, 2023	4,942	3,309	2,478125 cities
Operating margin, 2023	13.9%	16.9%	8.0%121 cities
Transfers out, share of revenue, 2023	5.8%	19.7%	2.9%119 cities
Transfers out per resident, 2023	$96	$332	$40119 cities

How to read these measures

Operating margin, 2023. Calculated: operating income divided by operating revenue.
Transfers out, share of revenue, 2023. Calculated: electric-fund transfers out divided by operating revenue. Payments booked as an operating expense (PILOT) are not transfers and are not included, so a low or missing transfer does not mean the city received nothing.
Transfers out per resident, 2023. Calculated: transfers out divided by 2023 population. Residents are not the only payers. Businesses, institutions, and customers outside city limits also pay electric bills, so this is not a burden per payer.

The city side, 2023

How much of the city budget comes from utility transfers, and what the tax rate looks like.

Measure	Luverne	Jackson	Median of comparable cities
Electric transfers out vs. the tax levy, 2023	17.2%	61.9%	7.9%119 cities
Transfers from all enterprise funds (including liquor), share of city resources, 2023	10.6%	18.1%	4.3%125 cities
City tax rate, 2023	66.8%	62.2%	61.6%125 cities
Levy per resident, 2023	$560	$537	$517125 cities
State aid (LGA) per resident, 2023	$315	$447	$343125 cities

How to read these measures

Electric transfers out vs. the tax levy, 2023. Calculated: electric-fund transfers out divided by the certified property-tax levy.
Transfers from all enterprise funds (including liquor), share of city resources, 2023. Calculated: transfers from every city enterprise fund (electric, water, sewer, liquor, and others) divided by governmental revenues plus those transfers. The State Auditor data do not split this by fund, so it is not an electric-only figure and not the amount exposed to Luverne’s three-utility proposal.
City tax rate, 2023. Calculated: certified levy divided by tax capacity. Lower can mean a bigger tax base, a leaner budget, or utility money standing in for taxes.
State aid (LGA) per resident, 2023. Local Government Aid divided by 2023 population.

Tax rate and levy figures start in 2017.

Nine years, not one

Single years mislead. Transfers jump when a council moves reserves for a project.

Operating margin by year

Luverne (solid), Jackson (dashed). Operating income as a share of operating revenue.

Transfers out by year

Luverne (solid), Jackson (dashed). Electric-fund transfers out as a share of operating revenue. Cities that book their payment to the city as an expense (Austin, New Ulm) will look low here. Marshall is left out because its State Auditor fund combines electric and water.

Technical details

Pooled figures, variation, price, and investment and financing indicators

Measure	Luverne	Jackson	Median of comparable cities
Operating margin, 2019–23 pooled	6.8%	25.7%	8.8%123 cities
Transfers out, share of revenue, 2019–23 pooled	9.0%	9.7%	3.3%121 cities
Variation in yearly transfer rate, 2015–23	0.57	0.55	0.5988 cities
Revenue per kWh, 2024 (federal filing)	10.76¢	12.66¢	11.87¢119 cities
Electric customers, 2024 (federal filing)	2,348	1,971	1,350120 cities
Bonds outstanding vs. revenue, 2023	1.79×	0.20×	0.00×121 cities
Interest paid, 2023	$488K	$88K	$537121 cities
Capital spending vs. depreciation, 2019–23	3.25×	1.64×	1.12×117 cities
Capital-funding balance before financing, 2019–23	−⁠$11.69M	$3.30M	$230K117 cities

Operating margin, 2019–23 pooled. Calculated: five years of operating income divided by five years of operating revenue.
Transfers out, share of revenue, 2019–23 pooled. Calculated: five years of transfers out divided by five years of operating revenue.
Variation in yearly transfer rate, 2015–23. Coefficient of variation: the standard deviation of each year’s transfer rate divided by the average rate, over years with both figures reported (at least seven). 0.10 means the rate typically sits about 10% of its own average away from that average. It is not a range, a confidence interval, or a year-over-year change, and it does not show what caused a rate to be steady.
Revenue per kWh, 2024 (federal filing). Calculated from EIA-861: total retail revenue divided by total kWh. An average across all customer classes, not a bill; it is lower where industrial load is large.
Bonds outstanding vs. revenue, 2023. Calculated: electric-fund bonds outstanding divided by one year of operating revenue.
Capital spending vs. depreciation, 2019–23. Calculated: five years of capital outlay divided by five years of depreciation. Depreciation is based on historical cost, and projects come in lumps, so a figure below 1.0 does not by itself show that equipment is wearing out. It is not an engineering assessment.
Capital-funding balance before financing, 2019–23. A limited constructed measure: operating income plus depreciation, minus capital spending and transfers out, five years pooled, shown only when all four inputs are reported for all five years. It is not a cash balance or a cash-flow statement: it leaves out bond proceeds, debt repayment, interest income, and working capital. A bond-funded project, such as Luverne’s 2022 generation project, makes it strongly negative.

Before you quote a number

Payments booked as an expense. Austin and New Ulm record their payment to the city as an operating expense (a payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT) rather than a transfer. That lowers both their transfer figures and their operating margins, so their transfer cells are flagged and left out of medians. Other cities may do the same without being identified here. Marshall's State Auditor fund combines electric and water, so its fund-based cells are flagged too; its audit books the payment as a transfer to the General Fund. Bills and city money compares a defined city-support measure instead.
Luverne's price. Shown as Luverne filed it federally, like every other city. Its federal kilowatt-hours (79,268 MWh) are higher than the 73,828 MWh in its audit and state filing, which would make its price per kWh 11.55¢ instead of 10.76¢. The difference has not been explained.MN Department of Commerce eFiling City of Luverne
Out-of-town customers. No statewide dataset says how many of a utility's customers live outside city limits.
Tax-exempt institutions. Hospitals, schools, and government buildings pay electric bills but no property tax. Measuring their share takes billing detail no statewide dataset has.
Who inside a city pays. Averages hide the split between homes and businesses. Only utilities that file the long federal form report revenue by customer class.