Arlington Advocate Thursday, August 30, 2001
Schlichtman lobbies for town municipal light department
By DANA FRONCZAK
STAFF WRITER

While it hadn't left Paul Schlichtman's mind for long, all it took was a television screen full of fuzz to bring it back to the forefront.

Watching the Board of Selectmen's meeting Monday, Schlichtman -- thanks to a power outage at Town Hall -- saw in so many black and white dots another view of the problem he wants to solve.

Even as the Arlington School Committee member and testing coordinator at Madison Park High School in Roxbury hastily prepares for fall, his "other" project in the works is raising consciousness about the idea of a municipal light department in Arlington.

"I think you have to," Schlichtman said. "NStar is just a distribution system. If the town is just a distribution system, there's an accountability."

Schlichtman's idea comes in the wake of not only numerous power outages throughout Arlington and the region, but what many perceive as a lack of customer service and accountability on the part of electrical utility company NStar.

"I still haven't found a way to talk to a real person," said Selectman Diane Mahon at last Monday's board meeting.

Schlichtman developed www.schlichtman.org/nstar as an information center for people who want to learn about municipal light departments. Forty-five departments exist in Massachusetts, all of them formed in the early years of electricity, sometime in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

No city or town has formed a department since about 1920, said Linda A. Bernat, assistant general manager for finance and maintenance at the Reading Municipal Light Department.

The Reading department not only distributes electricity to Reading, North Reading, Wilmington and Lynnfield Center, but also maintains and repairs street lights for a number of communities including Arlington.

"Reading Light has been in existence since 1894, with about an initial investment of $50,000," Bernat said. The company generates $60 million in annual revenue and employs 90 people. She said the Reading department is the "largest in New England with respect to kilowatt-hours," meaning that they provide more electricity than any other municipal electrical utility, mostly because of Wilmington¹s heavy industrial base.

Like other distribution companies, she said, the department buys most of its energy from "gas and oil, fossil fuels," but also buys some hydroelectric and a small amount of nuclear power.

Reading took over Arlington's street light maintenance this year. They also maintain light for Framingham and Winchester, among others.

"Arlington customers (have) been frankly, elated," said Bernat said. "The most a customer waits is about is about a week, at max."

Board of Selectmen Chairman Charles Lyons said, "The town should seriously consider acquiring its own distribution system."

"Philosophically, I believe in local government, and I think local government does a lot better job," Schlichtman said. "Any political will to change the infrastructure has to be in the context of lousy service."

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Arlington's lights are out again, and the electricity is on in Belmont. Why? Belmont has a municipal light department.

Remember when you called Boston Edison (NSTAR) with a street light problem and nothing was done for six months? Now a call for service (1-888-650-0050) gets the light fixed quickly. Who are we calling now? The Reading Municipal Light Department now has the contract to maintain Arlington's street lights.

When the local power company was truly local, they were responsive to the towns they served. Now we have NSTAR, a large utility that is barely responsive to the acting governor.

Arlington should investigate taking control of its electric infrastructure. Wouldn't it be worth considering municipal electric service with the dedication to service, low rates, and accountability at town meeting that other towns enjoy?

• Visit the websites of some Massachusetts municipal light departments, and look at their dedication to service.
• Visit the NSTAR website and consider their lines of accountability. HINT: Click the Financial Info link.

Here's an excerpt of Peter J. Howe's Boston Globe article, published August 24, 2001, about our electric woes.

But just three hours after the utility leaders left [Swift's] office, a cable failure at an NStar substation in Everett caused nearly 6,000 customers in East Arlington, Somerville, and parts of East Boston, Charlestown, and Chelsea to lose power for up to two hours, according to NStar spokesman Michael Durand.

That outage followed a spate of failures this summer, mostly blamed on record-setting power demand driven by heat, that have caused more than 600,000 customer-hours of outages since July 12 in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville alone.

Paul Schlichtman, an Arlington School Committee member and community activist who is pushing a move to have the town form its own municipal utility because of NStar service problems, said: ''We've been having so many outages this summer that the probability was probably pretty high we'd have one today. The service has never been particularly reliable, but just has gotten worse and worse. There are Third World countries with better service.''

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Warrant Article 34 for Arlington Municipal Power

On December 31, 2001, the first step toward creating a municipal power and light company for Arlington was taken when a municipal power article was submitted for consideration by the 2002 Annual Town Meeting. What this would do is give the Selectmen a green light to move forward on developing a business plan, investigating the costs, approaching NStar about the possibility of a voluntary sale, and putting together a financial package to present to the voters if a public utility seems to be a fiscally viable option. There would also need to be subsequent TM votes to establish the utility and determine its governance under the Town Manager Act (our town charter), create an enterprise fund, vote a budget, vote any appropriations subsequent to a successful referendum. Here's the text of the warrant article:

To see if the Town will vote to accept the applicable provisions of the Massachusetts General Laws including without limitation Chapter 164 relating to the establishment of a municipal light and power company, to authorize the Selectmen or other appropriate agency to take by eminent domain or purchase or lease that property which is owned by existing electrical and power companies doing business in the Town, appropriate a sum of money to fund such an acquisition and to establish such an enterprise including the possibility of borrowing all or part of such funds, to determine how the money will be raised or expended, to authorize ballot questions to seek the approval of the electorate, or to take any action related thereto.

Arlington Town Meeting, May 6, 2002:

Selectmen's recommended vote under ARTICLE 34
APPROPRIATION/LAND ACQUISITION
ESTABLISH MUNICIPAL LIGHT AND POWER COMPANY
This vote has the support of the Arlington Finance Committe, and was adopted by a large margin in a voice vote by Town Meeting, May 6, 2002.
VOTED: The Town does hereby establish a committee to study the feasibility of establishing a municipal power and light company. Said committee shall consist of seven members including the Town Manager or his designee, the Town Treasurer or his designee, the Chair of the Capital Planning Committee or his designee, the Chairman of the Finance Committee or his designee, two members to be appointed by the Board of Selectmen, and one member to be appointed by the Town Moderator. The appointing authorities should consider for appointment those individuals who by education and experience are knowledgeable in matters related to the economics of power generation and distribution. The committee will organize and conduct its affairs in accordance with Section 9 of Article 1 of Title I of the by-laws, however, its members need not be registered voters in the Town. The Town Manager or his designee will serve as chairman and shall call the initial meeting of the committee. The charge of the committee will be to examine the feasibility and economic viability of establishing a municipal power and light company to be owned by the Town pursuant to the provisions of M.G.L. c. 164 or special act. It shall make its recommendations to the 2003 Annual Town Meeting or to any intervening or subsequent Town Meeting to which it is prepared to report.

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Towns looking for alternatives to NStar power

By Caroline Louise Cole, Globe Correspondent, 1/13/2002

ARLINGTON - A summer's worth of extended electrical power outages has convinced one influential community leader that Arlington's town government could provide better service to its residents at a cheaper cost than its current electricity supplier.

And at the same time town officials in Stoneham, which has also suffered repeated power failures, are looking to a neighbor for a more reliable source of electricity.

In Arlington, Town Meeting member Paul Schlichtman, who is also a School Committee member, is proposing that his community cut ties with NStar Electric and create its own energy-distribution company. The new town department would take over the maintenance of the town's wiring and utility-pole system as well as the purchasing of electricity and distribution of the power to local customers.

''NStar Electric has basically abandoned Arlington,'' said Schlichtman ''There are Third World countries which have a more reliable source of power.''

NStar Electric, the result of the recent merger of Boston Edison, Commonwealth Electric, and Cambridge Electric, provides electrical power to about 1.3 million customers in the Boston area, said company spokesman Michael J. Monahan.

Monahan took issue with Schlichtman's characterization of his company's performance in Arlington but did not deny its aging distribution system needs improvement.

''We had a bad summer, but we are addressing the problems,'' he said, noting the demand for power increased at the same time New England was hit with a heat wave.

Monahan said his company recently announced a $25 million equipment upgrade for Boston and a similar $12 million investment that would be spread over its suburban service area, which includes Arlington, Burlington, Lexington, Newton, and Medfield.

''We've already done substantial tree-trimming in these communities and an extensive infrared survey of the system to detect line weaknesses this past fall,'' Monahan said.

That's too little too late for Schlichtman

''They've had plenty of warning their transmission system was going to go down,'' he said, noting that Arlington has been hit with more than its share of sporadic power outages for several years.

If Arlington voters sign onto Schlichtman's idea, it would be the first community in Massachusetts since 1928 to set up a public power authority, often termed a municipal light department, according to the Northeast Public Power Association.

Stoneham, which is also served by NStar, has flirted with creating its own electricity distribution system for two years because of deteriorating service, said Selectman Chairman Anthony Kennedy. A more likely scenario, Kennedy said, is for his community to purchase power from Reading's municipal electric company. His board has hired a consultant to analyze both options, he said.

Currently, some 1.2 million Massachusetts residents and businesses depend on electricity distributed by one of the 40 municipally-owned power companies in the state, said Patrick Hyland, executive director of the Northeast Public Power Association headquartered in Milford. Nationally, 20 million Americans buy their power from 2,000 community-owned utilities, Hyland said.

In the NorthWest Weekly area, Belmont, Concord, Littleton, and Reading operate their own electric distribution departments. Additionally, Reading's Municipal Light Department supplies power to Wilmington and North Reading and the downtown section of Lynnfield.

''Across the country, public power companies have a proven track record for providing a reliable source of energy and at lower rates on average than investor-owned utilities,'' Hyland said. ''It's one example of a situation where smaller is better. Municipal departments can respond to power outages faster because their trucks are closer to the problem.''

Locally-run power suppliers are often an additional source of revenues to tax-strapped communities, he said.

Last year Reading's Municipal Light Department paid $1.6 million to Reading in an ''in lieu of taxes'' payment under a rate structure that produces bills that are on average one-third to one-half less than what NStar customers pay, said spokeswoman Priscilla Gottwald.

An additional $933,899 in ''excess revenues'' were divided by its four member communities based on their rates of electrical usage, Gottwald said. As its largest customer, Wilmington netted $557,129 in 2000 payouts, followed by Reading at $167,564, North Reading at $159,308, and Lynnfield at $49,898.

Lower rates for customers and revenue to the town would be an added bonus, Schlichtman said.

''At the very least a public power company would be self-supporting,'' he said. ''My main concern is that NStar has allowed its transmission system to deteriorate in Arlington to the point that power outages have become an almost daily, par-for-the-course experience in many areas. It's not unique to Arlington, but we've been among the hardest hit. My own neighborhood was without power for two straight days over July 4th and then lost power for some period of time as often as daily through August. We had three power outages Christmas week.''

Schlichtman argued that because NStar is a for-profit company ''it's a good business decision not to do maintenance.''

But Schlichtman's proposal, which faces its first political test at Arlington's April Town Meeting, is already meeting resistance.

Selectman Chairman Charles Lyons said he believes pressuring NStar to improve its service and the state Department of Telecommunications and Energy to follow up on customer complaints is the more cost-effective route for his community.

''No question last summer was crazy, but I have been impressed with the recent response from both the state and NStar,'' Lyons said. ''NStar is going to spend millions of dollars here to bring in a new distribution line and the DTE is finally taking our complaints seriously. It's an interesting idea, but I just don't think we have the resources right now to buy their system.''

Arlington's town manager, Phillip Farrington, said he hasn't taken a position on Schlichtman's proposal because he wants to allow the political process to take its course.

''If any community can pull this off, though, it's Arlington,'' he said.

Should Arlington voters approve Schlichtman's proposal, the next step is negotiating with NStar to set a price on its wiring system and other distribution-system assets, said Robert Wilson, a spokesman for the state DTE.

''The only time the state DTE gets involved is if the town doesn't like the price NStar is offering,'' he said. ''If NStar simply won't sell, that's a matter for the courts.''

Just the process of investigating other options often produces improved service from privately-run utilities, said Madalyn Cafruny, a spokeswoman for the American Public Power Association.

''As a general rule, investor-owned utilities don't want to lose their customers, so we have seen them offer concessions like putting wiring underground in downtowns to get rid of unsightly utility poles as a way of getting a community to stay with them,'' she said.

In the meantime, the Stoneham Chamber of Commerce is working with local businesses to help them recover monetary damages due to recent power outages, said executive director Sharon Iovanni.

Monahan at NStar said his company has already distributed $1.3 million in claims since last July to residential and business customers for ''lost product,'' such as spoiled groceries or melted ice cream. The company has no policy for rebating the cost of lost business, he said.

However, Monahan said NStar did make an $8,000 corporate donation to the new Stoneham Theatre in September after its owners complained of several nights of lost ticket sales.

''Let's face facts, our image was not that good in the community,'' he said.

Caroline Louise Cole can be reached via e-mail at cole@globe.com.

This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe's Northwest Weekly section on 1/13/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.