Adios, Black Hills Energy ...?

Your electric bills from Black Hills probably have increased 40 percent or more over the last five years. That's because Pueblo's rates are now the very highest among the 20 largest cities in Colorado.

How would you like to see your electric bills not only level off, but start to decline during the 2020s? Yes?

It never will happen if Black Hills continues to be our electricity supplier. Never.

But if we do what Pueblo City Council President Steve Nawrocki proposed during the City Council meeting on Feb. 13, the ability to stabilize electric bills and to begin a downward trend over time should be the expectation for all residents and businesses in Pueblo, as well as a condition for embarking on any city-owned utility.

Getting there from where we are today will take effort and commitment by City Council, by city government and by all of us. This won't be easy given what we know about how Black Hills operates, but it is absolutely doable.

That's because, as the councilman pointed out, there is a state law in play that we are referring to as the "off-ramp" because it provides relief for cities that find themselves in undesirable situations with the utility serving them under a franchise agreement.

The "off-ramp" law allows the city of Pueblo to exercise its right to provide electric utility service by purchasing or condemning the citywide electric distribution system within its boundaries from Black Hills. Pueblo can exercise this right during years 10 or 15, or at the end of its 20-year franchise agreement with Black Hills Energy.

Importantly, the "off-ramp" does not allow or require, as has been reported, that Pueblo purchase the $500 million dollar-plus, gas-fired, generating station plants that Black Hills built by the Pueblo airport. A city exercising its "off-ramp" option is free to purchase power on the open market from other generators, or to generate its own power.

In Pueblo's case, the franchise agreement is dated Aug. 11, 2010, so year 10 is coming up fast in the year 2020. In the reality of utility planning horizons, the 2020 "off-ramp" option feels like tomorrow. The time to get started on this is now.

For that reason, our network -- Pueblo's Energy Future -- asks City Council to take Councilman Nawrocki up on his suggestion to investigate the possibility of forming a municipal electric utility.

At present, some 29 municipalities -- including Colorado Springs and Fort Collins -- run their own electric utilities, supplying about 17 percent of Colorado's population. Municipal utilities are city-owned and are not-for-profit.

That said, we recommend broadening the list of possible options beyond just the municipalization concept for supplying electricity to our community. Council should also consider the following:

Consider creating a largely independent enterprise, similar to the Pueblo Board of Water Works.

This option could offer advantages if Black Hills decided that, with Pueblo pulling the plug, the company no longer wanted to serve the roughly one-third of its customers outside of the Pueblo region (which includes Canon City, Florence, Rocky Ford, Victor, etc.).

Consider creating an urban electric cooperative, a concept related in significant ways to Colorado's 22 Rural Electric Cooperatives which are customer-owned and not-for-profit.

Issue a formal request for proposals from companies in the business of providing operational management for city-owned utilities. This would allow the city to evaluate having an experienced third-party operate and manage its city-owned electric utility until such time as the city is prepared to do so on its own.

Delving into the details, merits and challenges of the above list of options will take time, commitment, dedicated research and probably some funding support.

Our network, Pueblo's Energy Future, commits to being a no-cost contributor to that effort.

Over the course of the next year, Pueblo's Energy Future will hold a series of free outreach meetings for the public, with the first meeting on March 30.

We also will lead a number of work sessions at City Council, with the first on April 10. Detailed announcements will follow.

Our group has a good feel for the tough sledding that Black Hills has been delivering to our community. Black Hills has a well-documented history of doing what's best for its shareholders at the expense of what's best for the residents and businesses of Pueblo. Its expensive investments have been a ball and chain around our collective economic neck, stifling business growth and burdening our residents.

Other troubling issues involve the way Black Hills treats our most disadvantaged residents, and how it comes up short on its commitment to energy efficiency and renewable energy.

We request that as a first step Pueblo City Council sign a resolution declaring that in 2020, the city of Pueblo intends to exercise its right to purchase or condemn the local electric distribution system from Black Hills, so long as the city's legal, financial and operational criteria are met in order to take such action.

We believe that this resolution will insure that the city of Pueblo moves forward with due haste to investigate its options to create a brighter energy future than the one we can expect if we continue to be served by Black Hills, and to determine the criteria that must be met in order for the city to exercise its right of purchase or condemnation.

We also believe that such a publicly declared resolution by City Council will provide the proper legal framework for the city of Pueblo to engage with a variety of entities who offer information, goods or services of interest to the city in this regard.

Here's the chance for change. We all need to stand up and support a commitment to a brighter energy future for Pueblo, and perhaps to be positioned to say "adios" to Black Hills.

Steve Andrews is a retired energy consultant.

Susan Perkins is a lawyer in the energy sector. Both are members of the network Pueblo's Energy Future.