Did opening your $300 Baltimore Gas and Electric bill briefly make your heart stop? What if it was $10,404.66?

That’s the kind of bill some small businesses are facing.

Unexpectedly high natural gas and electric costs this winter have Baltimore residents’ heads spinning. Laundromats are getting hit especially hard, and many of them are weighing how to pay their utility bills without impacting their customers.

Laundromats use a significant amount of water, electricity and natural gas. So when BGE increases their delivery rates by some 12% and Baltimore charges 15% more for water and sewer use, businesses filled with dozens of water-guzzling washers and power-sucking dryers really feel it.

Rapidly increasing expenses have put a strain on Spin Cycle Coin Laundry, a family-owned laundromat in Charles North.

“Over the years, rent has increased, electricity has increased, gas has increased, water has increased,” said Lesly Lemus, co-owner of the laundromat. “Where is the money going to come from to make up for the increased expenses that we have if we don’t pass it on to the customer?”

Lemus, her husband and her brother-in-law purchased Spin Cycle Coin Laundry in October 2022. They’ve kept the business afloat, but since BGE and Baltimore City implemented rate increases in January, it’s been particularly challenging, she said.

Hot summers used to be the toughest season for the business’s finances. Electricity was easily the laundromat’s most expensive utility bill, hovering at around $1,800 per billing cycle, according to BGE bills reviewed by The Banner.

Like most Baltimoreans, the business had its air conditioner running. Unlike most city residents, they have 52 washers and 48 dryers to power.

As the seasons changed this year, Spin Cycle Coin Laundry’s natural gas bill took the top spot. By the November billing cycle, the owners were paying more than $1,900 for natural gas.

But in January, when BGE’s delivery rates went up, the business’s gas bill jumped from that $1,900 to more than $2,460 in January and $2,930 in February.

Looking over the BGE bills the last few months has been “a wake-up call,” Lemus said.

Zeke Cohen, chairman of the City Council and Board of Estimates, said Baltimore had to increase the city’s water and sewer rates in January to pay for upgrades to the water system because of a federal consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency.

But raising rates was not Cohen’s first choice.

“I felt there was more that the Department of Public Works could do to collect unpaid bills,” he said. Cohen abstained from the January vote to increase water, sewer and stormwater rates.

When it comes to BGE, Cohen and seemingly every other lawmaker, from the City cCouncil to the federal government, has a harsher assessment.

Cohen, joined by his fellow Council members and U.S. representatives, have called for the Maryland Public Service Commission, which approves BGE’s rate plan, to roll back this year’s increases and stop future hikes.

While the utility company blames unusually cold winter weather, more expensive natural gas and an increase in usage for costly bills, lawmakers and consumer advocates also point to pricey construction projects as a driver of higher bills.

“It [Baltimore’s water system] is a public utility that requires investment and maintenance versus the situation with BGE, where every time the bills go up to pay for infrastructure investments, their shareholders make significantly more profits,” he said.

For as long as its owner can remember, Hipp Laundromat’s highest utility bill was for water and sewer. But in recent months, one of the Elwood Park business’s biggest expenses has been paying BGE.

Hafiz Ghani purchased the 55 washer and 55 dryer laundromat nearly four years ago. He had sticker shock in January when he opened Hipp Laundromat’s bills for usage in October, November and December. The total was $10,404.66.

And that was before January’s delivery rate increases kicked in.

“My water bill went up a lot, and my BGE bill has ridiculously gone up for some reason,” Ghani said. “I don’t know why.”

BGE bills are primarily made up of costs associated with supply and with delivery. The price for gas and electric supply is not set by BGE, which has noted that natural gas costs 30% more this winter compared to last. On delivery, BGE’s charges — including all of the increases— were approved in 2021.

These increases help BGE recoup the cost of replacing and upgrading some 900 miles of old, cast-iron gas pipelines.

Utilities are “the lifeblood of a laundromat,” said Brian Wallace, president of the Coin Laundry Association, a self-service laundry trade and industry association based in Illinois.

Wallace said the balancing act absorbing increases or passing them off to customers, many of whom come from underresourced neighborhoods or live in buildings without washers and dryers, is a catch-22.

Hipp Laundromat charges between $3.99 for a regular load up to $9.99 for a jumbo load. Spin Cycle Coin Laundry has comparable prices.

With such a no-frills business model — wash, dry, fold and repeat — laundromats have few options for recourse and need to find creative ways to increase revenue without charging customers more.

Lemus and Ghani don’t want to increase the prices at their respective laundromats for fear of losing customers.

“My customers are very happy here,” Ghani said. “They’re very loyal, and it stays busy by the grace of God. So, I don’t want to, but if I have to, I have to.”

Spin Cycle Coin Laundry started offering the Maryland lottery last year and uses one of their televisions for horse racing. The Lemus family also upgraded the business’s website and added curbside laundry services, something Ghani is considering for Hipp Laundromat.

Next on the Lemus’s list is fixing up the existing vending machines and potentially selling non-laundry-related items.

Ghani is more hesitant to make big changes.

“It’s not easy for me to make those decisions right now,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen right now, or in a month or two months. We will see what happens.”

But he knows, with the way these increases keep coming, he will have to make a choice, eventually.