ST. PETERSBURG \u2014 On Oct. 4 in South St. Petersburg\u2019s Wildwood Park, 16 members of a group calling itself \u201cDump Duke\u201d gathered to share strategy before pairing up to canvass in nearby neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
They were there to inform residents and ratepayers frustrated about the prices and services provided by Duke Energy that they could do something about it by signing a petition.<\/p>\n
The signature drive was part of a grassroots effort to demonstrate to the City of St. Petersburg legitimate interest within the community to seriously explore jettisoning Duke \u2014 their longtime energy provider \u2014 when the 30-year franchise agreement between the two parties expires next summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of the easiest things to canvas for,\u201d said Dump Duke organizer Marley Price, comparing it to her experience knocking on doors last year for an unsuccessful candidate for St. Petersburg City Council.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Duke, everyone knows them. Most people have had a bad experience with them, so it\u2019s really to relate that back and tell them something new \u2014 that it doesn\u2019t have to be that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those and earlier efforts have spurred several members of the City Council to take up the idea. The board voted, 5-3, in August to call on Mayor Ken Welch to seek bids for a feasibility study evaluating the pros and cons of leaving Duke and forming a municipal utility, something that 33 other communities now operate in Florida.<\/p>\n
Consultant study<\/p>\n
That early vote came as Pinellas County\u2019s next largest city \u2014 Clearwater \u2014 has received its own, long-anticipated feasibility study prepared by NewGen Strategies & Solutions about what would happen if that city ended its relationship with Duke Energy, whose franchise agreement expires at the end of this year.<\/p>\n
Projecting a 30-year period beginning in 2026, the report concluded that if the city dropped Duke Energy, its effective rates over the next five years would end up approximately 7% lower on average than the Duke rate on an annualized basis. After that, the effective rate would run approximately 18% lower on average than the Duke rate for the remainder of the 30-year period.<\/p>\n
The study values the cost of acquiring Duke property at $572 million but also notes that the real cost of Duke\u2019s assets could run between 50% lower or 100% higher than its estimate \u2014 meaning around $1 billion. That was the estimate offered by an outside energy consultant hired by Duke Energy of Clearwater\u2019s costs.<\/p>\n
In Florida, 54 utilities provide electricity to residents. They include the big four investor-owned providers \u2014 Duke Energy Florida, Florida Power & Light, Florida Public Utilities, and Tampa Electric Co. (TECO). Those four serve approximately 75% of the state\u2019s population, with the remaining 25% provided by 33 municipal electric utilities and 16 rural electric cooperatives, according to the Florida Municipal Electric Association.<\/p>\n
While it would be convenient if an investor-owned utility sold its private assets to a public entity, it never works that way. If Clearwater municipalizes its electric utility, it would have to go the eminent domain route \u2014 by far the most expensive option, as Duke officials have been explicit in stressing that they have no intention of selling their system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know it\u2019s going to be a fight and it\u2019s going to take time,\u201d said Clearwater City Council member David Albritton after the board approved the study. \u201cIt\u2019s a risk. We all know that. But it could be a lower rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NextGen study is loaded with caveats, however, including an explicit statement that \u201cthere can be no guarantee that Clearwater \u2026 will achieve cost savings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winter Park\u2019s success<\/p>\n
Some of Florida\u2019s largest communities, such as Orlando, Jacksonville, and Tallahassee, have run their own municipal utilities for decades, but not a single one has launched since Winter Park, a northern suburb of Orlando, did so in 2005. That took place following a referendum approved by 69% of the electorate in 2003.<\/p>\n
Randy Knight, city manager for Winter Park, described recently on the Florida City and County Management Association podcast how its municipal utility has buried 80% of its power lines underground over the past 20 years, which \u201chas been just huge in reliability \u2026 and not having storm outages at all has been fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this last storm, we had 271 customers out of power after the hurricane came through, and had all of that restored in 12 hours,\u201d he said (the Winter Park municipality serves approximately 15,000 customers). \u201cNone of those outages were in the underground part of the system \u2026 . It was a testament to what we were doing was the right thing and, you know, the community loves that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of May, our rates were 32% lower than Duke Energy\u2019s and 2% lower than the statewide average for municipal utilities,\u201d Knight added to WKMG television in August.<\/p>\n
Nationally, the last local community to form its own electric utility was the Jefferson County Public Utility District in Washington state in 2013.<\/p>\n
Boulder\u2019s decade-long experiment<\/p>\n
There is no greater example of how hard it can be to break away from an investor-owned utility than what happened in Boulder, Colorado, which spent nearly a decade trying to break away from Xcel Energy. That effort ended in 2020 when voters approved a settlement with Xcel to trigger the reinstatement of a franchise agreement abandoned a decade earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe rational,\u201d suggests former Boulder City Council member Bob Yates, when asked what words of advice he would give Clearwater and St. Petersburg council members who support municipalization efforts. \u201cBe objective and clear-eyed about your evaluation, not only of your goals and objectives, but also how long it will take and how much it will cost.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the case of Boulder, taxpayers approved $29 million for the losing effort. Yates says that when investor-owned utilities decide to fight, they won\u2019t give up easily.<\/p>\n
Boulder residents pushed the local government to separate from Xcel because of frustration with the lack of urgency the power company expended in pursuing electricity from green power sources like wind and solar.<\/p>\n
Yates, who served on the Boulder City Council from 2015 to 2023, said that while he personally never supported the effort, he wishes Pinellas County lawmakers the best of luck. \u201cI don\u2019t think it was a good use of time or money, but the situation may be very different in Florida, so I wouldn\u2019t want to presume to tell the good folks of Florida how to handle their affairs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ursula Schryver is senior vice president for education, training, and events for the American Public Power Association, a D.C. trade group representing the nation\u2019s 2,000 public power utilities. While there is a sense of urgency with the impending end of the franchise agreements in Clearwater and St. Petersburg, it\u2019s generally \u201ca long process and requires a lot of commitment on the part of the community and leadership and so forth,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
St. Petersburg Mayor Welch, who at one point in his career worked as an accountant with the old Florida Power Corp., has suggested establishing a new 10-year agreement with Duke next year to ensure that residents could rely on \u201cstable and dependable services\u201d as the future of energy in the city is debated. But Schryver says that rather than signing a shorter franchise agreement, \u201cnow\u2019s the time\u201d for the city to begin negotiating its wants and needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have to continue serving the community \u2014 Duke or whomever the incumbent is has to continue to serve the community, even without a franchise agreement,\u201d she said. \u201cI would suggest negotiating and continuing to look at the option of forming a public power utility without signing that franchise agreement vs. signing a five-year one and then you\u2019re going to be in the same place that you\u2019re in now, five years down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what the city of Tampa did during the aughts. After its 20-year franchise agreement with TECO expired in 2006, the city spent two years negotiating with the utility before signing a new 25-year agreement in 2008.<\/p>\n
St. Petersburg City Council member Richie Floyd says the fact that the city\u2019s franchise agreement is scheduled to end next year gives the city \u201ca once-in-a-generation opportunity to look into the city\u2019s options.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a radical idea or anything, although I think it\u2019s an important one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
St. Petersburg City Council member Brandi Gabbard is also enthusiastic about pursuing municipal power.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the residents are asking of us is for us to really be able to control costs and to be able to give them a level of service that they are demanding, and so I think that we need to listen to our residents,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to explore it. I\u2019ve been very honest with residents that I don\u2019t have a crystal ball. I don\u2019t know what the future holds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gabbard expressed dissatisfaction that the city hadn\u2019t as of early October even set a timeline for sending out the request for proposals for a consultant study. \u201cThere\u2019s no guarantees that this is actually going to come to fruition, but for us to drag our feet and not respond the way that residents are asking us to, I think is doing a disservice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orlando Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani argues that having a local utility through which residents can exercise direct influence \u201cis always preferable to relying on the Public Service Commission as your advocate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMost constituents don\u2019t even know the Public Service Commission exists but having a local utility board that you can present to, engage with, and really influence leads to better consumer experiences,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
After the Clearwater City Council voted to begin a formal reappraisal of Duke\u2019s distribution system, Duke said in a written statement that creating a city-owned electric utility would be \u201cenormously expensive, risky, and take years to complete.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we have said before, our system is not for sale. That position has not changed. Duke Energy remains committed to serving our Clearwater and St. Petersburg customers, and we look forward to working with both cities on the best path forward \u2014 which we believe is renewing the franchise agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pinellas County residents are also being hit by social media ads from \u201cWe Stand for Energy,\u201d a campaign created by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), calling on them to \u201cTell the Council: Don\u2019t Waste Taxpayer Money\u201d by pursuing municipalizing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs feasibility studies consistently show, municipalization efforts threaten to increase customer costs by billions of dollars without improving service,\u201d said an EEI spokesperson when asked about the campaign. He declined to respond to a question about how much EEI was investing in the effort.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Dump Duke advocates say they\u2019re not relenting, although Price concedes it\u2019s discouraging that Mayor Welch has declined to meet with the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, there will still be enough public pressure still that they have to do something,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 4, as Dump Duke advocate Jason Scott began knocking on doors in South St. Petersburg, he met a man who said that he used to work for Duke as a lineman but now works across the bay for Tampa Electric.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s your opinion of Duke?\u201d Scott asked him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a good company to work for, but I understand that a lot of residents were complaining about high bills and stuff,\u201d the man, who did not want to be identified, responded. \u201cI do understand why.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Scott asked him about the cost of his monthly bill, the man quickly jumped in.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course I want cheaper bills, but at the same time that Duke kind of monopolizes everything. I don\u2019t see a way to get out of the situation without it being more expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, he ended up signing Scott\u2019s petition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG \u2014 On Oct. 4 in South St. Petersburg\u2019s Wildwood Park, 16 members of a group calling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3403,3401,3402,202,204,203,199,1640,201,200],"class_list":["post-2858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-clearwater-city-council","tag-duke-energy","tag-dump-duke","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-city-council","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}