Everett committee hears plan for municipal electricity aggregation; votes to invite consultants for full meeting

The Everett City Council Committee on Government Operations & Public Safety heard a presentation on Monday on municipal aggregation — a proposal that would let the city contract for the electricity supply portion of utility bills and automatically enroll basic-service customers on an opt-out basis — and voted to make no recommendation while inviting the presenters to the council’s next full meeting.

Community planning specialist Jonathan Frias, who identified himself as “a community planning specialist and energy advocate of TCO Everett,” told the committee municipal aggregation would let the city “purchase electricity in a bulk” and set supply rates for residents and small businesses rather than leaving those charges to National Grid or third-party suppliers. “Municipal aggregation is going to allow the city to save the rates for a period of time,” Frias said, adding the city could seek contracts for one to two and a half years depending on policy choices.

The presentation outlined three product options the city could offer: a basic product with no added renewable content, an intermediate product with additional renewable energy, and a 100 percent renewable option. Frias said aggregation affects only the supply portion of a bill; delivery and distribution charges would remain set by National Grid and the Department of Public Utilities (DPU). The packet presented to the committee included a comparison (labeled page 19) that the planning staff said showed a potential community-wide residential savings of about $2,000,000 under a hypothetical Colonial Power Group rate.

Colonial Power representatives Mark Capitone and Denise (Colonial Power representative) answered technical and market questions. Capitone explained that National Grid does not generate electricity but buys supply under a twice-yearly DPU process and that a municipal aggregation program can time purchases differently: “This allows you 2 10 trading days during the year, and allows you to choose exactly when you're going to lock in,” he said. On consultant fees, Capitone said Colonial’s fee is “0.001. We call it a mill or it's 1 tenth of a penny,” meaning a contract price of 10¢ would show on a bill as roughly 10.1¢.

Committee members pressed on consumer protections and outreach. Councilor Garcia said the city should ensure materials are multilingual and accessible, including interpreters and targeted meetings: “I just wanna make sure that when we are sending things out, having meetings, that we are transparent, we have multilingual things shared, interpreters, whatever we need to do, just to make sure it is inclusive for everyone in the city,” she said. Frias and Colonial Power described the statutorily required individual mailing with a 30-day opt-out window, supplemental information sessions (including at the council on aging), online and telephone opt-out options, and an enrollment policy that the presenters said would allow residents to leave and rejoin the program without penalty in most scenarios.

Committee members also reviewed implementation steps described by presenters: the administration would prepare a municipal aggregation plan, the council would vote on the local plan, the plan would be filed with the state Department of Energy/DOER and the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities for approval, and only then would the city go to the market to procure supply. Presenters said the city could change consultants or end the aggregation without penalty, but restarting aggregation later would require repeating the application process and could take about two years.

After discussion the committee voted 3-0 to take no recommendation on the draft municipal aggregation order and to invite the presenters back to the council’s final meeting in April for the full council to review materials and ask questions. The committee instructed staff to share the packet presented at the committee with all council members.

Votes at a glance: the committee approved referral of an earlier resolution (sponsored by Councilor Stephanie Mahins) back to its sponsor; and it approved the motion to issue no recommendation on municipal aggregation and to invite the consultants to the full council meeting (3 yes, 0 no).

The presenters and staff will appear before the full Everett City Council at the committee’s last meeting in April to answer additional questions and provide the committee packet to all council members.