Council approves sale of transmission assets

Lori Hammelman
Posted 4/15/18

Rochelle officials approved the sale of the city’s transmission assets Monday evening in a special City Council meeting.

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Council approves sale of transmission assets

Posted

ROCHELLE — Rochelle officials approved the sale of the city’s transmission assets Monday evening in a special City Council meeting.

The approval authorizes city manager Jeff Fiegenschuh to execute the purchase agreement with Nextera Energy Transmission Mid-Atlantic, LLC. The deal comes after four months of negotiations.

Since August 2015, Rochelle Municipal Utilities has operated the 20 miles of 138 kV transmission lines and associated substation facilities the city currently owns. In July of 2017, RMU requested a proposal to either sell the transmission assets or seek opportunities for a partnership in order to meet current operational and potential future needs.

Fiegenschuh said the sale would allow the city to focus on the distribution system. He also acknowledged this sale in no way would affect RMU customers, possibly staving off rate increases due to money generated.

“One thing I’d like to point out is any money we receive for the community development, I would like us to put that in the downtown area. That would be $20,000 a year for 10 years,” Fiegenschuh said. “It’s a great deal for the utility and a great deal for the city.”

After the meeting, Fiegenschuh clarified what impact the sale has to the community.

“This allows us to focus on our core customers, which is our distribution customers and get away from being transmission owner. We get to partner with a company that has the capital and has the ability to maintain and expand if need be,” Fiegenschuh said. “Our customers won’t see any change. We will continue to serve them. We will be able to focus more resources on them…This influx of money, we will be able to make more capital purchases and hopefully more stabilize, especially our commercial rates. In essence this could really be a good thing for our customers, because maybe next year we won’t need a rate increase because we will have this money coming in.”

Council also approved the collective bargaining agreement between the Fraternal Order of Police and the city, which was set to expire on May 1. A new agreement was negotiated in late February and in early April, with both sides giving and receiving concessions.

The new agreement will include no residency requirements along with no changes in group insurance for current employees. Increases are reflected for new hires after May 1, 2018. Also included were wage increases of 2 percent effective May 1, along with 2 percent in January of 2019 and again in January of 2020 and effective Jan. 1, 2021 an increase of 2.75 percent. Other stipulations in the agreement included the investigation division and court time reimbursements.