Coldwater BPU approves privacy policy to enable TexPower outage texts

The Coldwater Board of Public Utilities on a unanimous voice vote approved a privacy policy drafted by the city attorney that clears the way to implement TexPower for outage and customer notifications. The policy requires city-council adoption before the utility can enable the vendor’s automatic opt-in texting feature; board members voted to forward the privacy policy and proceed with implementation steps once council approves. Customer-service staff told the board the utility sought a mass-notification vendor after a customer satisfaction survey completed before March 2024 found a need for improved communication. Stephanie Burdick said a demonstration team from engineering, electric and IT evaluated vendors and selected TexPower, and that an outage in May that removed internet access hastened the need for a redundant notification channel. “The benefits of TexPower include automatic opt in,” Burdick said, adding that “less than 10% of our current customers are actually using the notification process” through the website and that automatic texting would substantially increase reach. Burdick said the draft policy says the utility “will not sell customer information and [it] will only be used for our own internal purposes to provide information to our customers.” She said customers will still be able to opt out after automatic enrollment. Board members voted without recorded roll-call names; the motion to approve the privacy policy and proceed to implementation passed on the voice vote. The action is a policy-approval step: final activation of TexPower requires subsequent council approval of the privacy policy and completion of integration with the utility’s outage-management system. Implementation details discussed in the meeting included integration with a future outage management system currently under review and the goal of increased redundancy for notifications when the utility’s web back end is inaccessible. Burdick said the city attorney prepared the privacy policy and that staff will post it on the utility website and bring it to council for formal adoption. The board took no additional formal direction beyond approving the policy and moving forward with council review.