PORT HADLOCK – Port Townsend city representatives gave a boost on Wednesday to discussion that could lead to a partnership among the city, Jefferson County and the Jefferson County Public Utility District to provide both county and city electrical power.
City Councilman George Randels, a member of the city’s newly formed Alternative Electric Management Committee, said he was interested in such a partnership.
“I think it would work,” he said.
Some PUD commissioners see the Oct. 27 acquisition of of Puget Energy Inc., parent company of Puget Sound Energy – which provides electricity to most of East Jefferson County – as a possible opportunity to provide electricity to county residents.
The PUD now provides only water service in areas outside the city of Port Townsend.
At the PUD commissioners’ Wednesday night meeting, Port Townsend representatives talked about a possible partnership.
Randels was joined at the meeting by city committee member Jerry Spieckerman and Judy Surber, the committee’s facilitator and a city senior planner.
“We would be open to PUD to share in the cost of an initial feasibility study,” Surber told the PUD commissioners,
She added that the city group would examine possible ways to use a range of alternative energy sources to build a power system that could cover the county from Port Townsend to Port Hadlock to Quilcene.
Spieckerman invited PUD leaders to join the city committee.
The county and Port of Port Townsend have also been invited to join.
Surber said the city committee’s first task is to determine if it is in the city’s interest to pay for a feasibility study.
The committee is also taking a new look at a council task force study in 2000 that recommended examining alternative energy management.
“We are poised to go to the City Council in April with an update on the City Council report,” Surber said.
Nordland resident Steve Hamm, representing Port Townsend’s Local 20/20 Energy Administration Group, supported the idea of the three-way partnership.
“I think we could generate some support for getting some petitions for signatures,” he told the PUD commissioners.
PUD commissioners Wayne King of Gardiner and Dana Roberts of Port Townsend see the new PSE ownership as a possible opening for the PUD to take over PSE’s infrastructure and offer local service.
In November 2008, they would like to put the question, “Shall Public Utility District No. 1 of Jefferson County construct or acquire electric facilities for the generation, transmission or distribution of electric power?” before the voters who would make up the district.
Another option is that PUD customers would gather petition signature of those comprising 10 percent of those living in the district, the law states.
Both commissioners say the timing may be right: PSE’s franchise with the city of Port Townsend comes up for renewal in 2010 and Jefferson County’s franchise with PSE is now being negotiated.
