The March primary is just around the corner and early voting begins in a few days.  Besides the Presidential and other primary races, Huber Heights residents will have Issue 1, Energy Aggregation on the ballot.  After I vent, I’ll address the pertinent points that I believe should affect your voting decision. 
  
The City’s website HHOH.org, now has notice of Energy Aggregation being on the ballot on its front page.  This will lead you to the “Just the Facts” page.  Within that page you can find a   Power Point Presentation on Energy Aggregation the Impact Group created to educate our residents on this issue.  Toward the end of the PP presentation you can find the ballot language:

OFFICIAL QUESTIONS AND ISSUES BALLOT
PRIMARY ELECTION – MARCH 15, 2016
MONTGOMERY COUNTY
 
PROPOSED ORDINANCE
ELECTRIC AGGREGATION
 
CITY OF HUBER HEIGHTS
A majority affirmative vote is necessary for passage.
Shall the City of Huber Heights have the authority to aggregate the retail electric loads located in the City of Huber Heights, and for that purpose, enter into service agreements to facilitate for those loads the sale and purchase of electricity, such aggregation to occur automatically except where any person elects to opt out.
YES
NO
 
Please review the rest of the PP presentation before reading the rest of this post.   Update:  Even better than the PP presentation is the presentation given by City Manager Rob Schommer at the Feb 8th council meeting.  Please watch the video.  The presentation starts at 16 minutes 40 seconds of the video.

Understanding the next section of this article depends on you having looked at the power point or watched the video I link to above.  The section after that I address the question why would the city pay a third party when residents can already pick their own.

Of course I have some items to augment the official discussion.

The first item I would like to address only comes into play if you have been listening to the discussion from some of the proponents.  They make a statement that you need to ignore.  This statement goes like this “The only thing this vote does is give the city the ability to go out and negotiate.  It doesn’t mean it will actually be implemented.” This is a poor argument because I believe it is said in the hopes that it can convince residents not to worry about what comes after the election.  In fact, this ballot measure is the only time residents have the power to stop council from implementing the plan.  There will be public hearings but council is not bound by public hearings like they are bound to a vote.  This is actually quite important because a yes vote on aggregation never expires.  This city council could commit to making sure terms that say anyone could opt out at anytime but will the council that negotiates the deal six years from now might not have that same outlook.  

Now let’s look at the issue in the context of what was presented in the slide show.
 
The first slide I’d like to address is slide 6 of 16.  If staff and council lived up to the commitments made during the public discussions prior to the passing of the ordinance, this slide contains the only issue that brings doubt to a yes vote.  In this slide it tells us that the City will hire a firm to negotiate with the energy providing company in order to determine the rates and terms of the program.  As it turns out the firm that does these negotiations doesn’t do it for free and they will have to be paid.  Today the City is briefing that these fees could be paid for in one of two ways;  1. directly from the General Fund or 2. as part of an additional fee added to the bills of those people that take advantage of the program. (Please look at the comments below concerning the second option). 

When the assistant city manager from Troy came down and briefed the deal they got, I computed that the negotiating fees only cost $4 per household that took advantage of the program.  I also believe that most of the residents in Troy if they took advantage of the program would save $50 to $150 a year.  Not only that but the verbal brief from this representative tells us that Troy negotiated a deal where there were no opt out fees ever.  Meaning that if a resident failed to opt out initially, was in the program for a few months, then decided they wanted to go with another company then they could switch.  Also, the rate they negotiated was very good and set for 3 full years.  Evaluating (i.e. making a calculated “bet”) that we could do similarly to Troy, I’d be willing to take the chance and vote yes on this ballot measure.
 
Unfortunately, here comes the rest of the PP presentation to implant doubt.  First of all, in the last paragraph of page 6 it states, “The consultant that is hired will require a fee for services rendered. This cost will either be paid by the City as a lump sum, or as a prorated fee for the homeowners at approximately $15 a year, or a little over $1 a month on their bill.”  This contradicts my understanding of previous discussion in two ways.  First a prorated fee for homeowners that shows up on their bill was specifically ruled out by council (it seems that this has changed, I'm researching what all was said in public meetings) and secondly I have no idea where $15 a year came from.  On one hand spending $15 to save $150 might make sense and even spending $15 to save $50 puts us ahead.  But because there it is possible that negotiations won’t lead to anything close to these savings, I would not be willing to spend that money up front.  Also, playing into this decision is that we know what Troy paid for this service and it calculated to $4 a customer.  Not sure why anyone would be good with paying 4 times that rate. 
 
Moving on to the next slide and we see a bullet that says, “You may opt-out every three years without paying a switching fee”.  The terms of the opt out are something that we as a City will negotiate.  I am sure at the time of ordinance adoption the previous Council made it clear that “anytime” opt out is the only option that they would accept.  I’m perplexed as to why there is a sentence in this brief that makes it appear that our residents will be stuck for 3 years if they don’t opt out during the initial opt out period.  Update: after reviewing the video from the Feb 8th meeting at 31 minutes 20 seconds I'm even more perplexed because the City Manager specifically states that council made a commitment not to charge any cancellation fees if a resident cancels outside the official opt out period.  
 
Generally, I’m in favor of this ballot measure, however, remembering my first point that a yes vote never ends makes the inconsistencies found in this PP presentation very troubling.  If staff and our $48,000 a year marketing firm can't even put together a document that accurately talks about what council committed to just two months ago, why should we believe these commitments will still be in effect ten years from now.  Staff needs to clean up the PP presentation to represent what council discussed and directed staff to brief and make it clear that they understand their direction so that they don’t waste our time and money after the election.  Otherwise, I’ll be advising residents to vote no this time.  That’s also a risky course of action because electricity prices are very low and if we delay we may lose the opportunity to lock them in before they rise to normal levels.  

If you live in Huber Heights (and DP&L is the electric supplier) you can compared your current rate with other offers by looking at this website

 

Why would the city pay a third party when residents can already pick their own

There are two reasons:  First, based on the comments by the Troy representative I believe it is possible for a city to negotiate a deal that is better than any other deal available at the time of negotiations.  Second most people do not constantly monitor their rate and are paying much more than the best deal they could get today, therefore having an automatic enrollment would more than likely save those people a lot of money.  Key for either of these two reasons to be compelling enough for people to vote yes would be the ability to opt out or cancel service without any cancellation fees.

When thinking about the first reason there are a couple things to keep in mind.  1.  The best rate that a person or city could get today doesn't mean that there won't be a different rate next month or even next week.  This makes comparing what Troy negotiated more than a year ago with what is available today a (mostly) useless exercise.  You need to compare what they negotiated with what a single person could have gotten by themselves on the same day the Troy rate went into effect.  Now what happened since then is important and if rates are significantly lower today than the city rate then a resident isn't saving money.  Troy program is advertised to be no opt out or cancellation fees ever.  So in this situation a Troy resident that sees a lower long term rate can jump on it.  Your present Huber Heights Council has committed to this same way to handle fees.  What the 2020 City council might do, who knows?  2.  Opinion:  For a resident that is paying attention to their rates and always picks the lowest rates at the best time of the year to do it, then the savings that person will see probably isn't as high as the 10 or 20%. that is quoted by proponents of the system.  

The second reason will offend anyone that does monitor their electric rates every month and actively selects plans.  That's because this program should really help those that don't.  For instance this month a person that has not chosen an electric supplier paid 7.2 cents a KWH.  Suppose the city was able to get the lowest rate available on the Energy Choice website which is 5.25 cents.  Being automatically enrolled at this price would mean that customer would save 27% on the electric delivery portion of their bill.  Though it will seem hard for those that constantly monitor to understand, the majority of electric customers don't always keep track of their rates and a lot of them pay much more than the best rate.