For nearly a decade the City of Evanston has tussled with Commonwealth Edison over the utility’s ability to keep the lights on in the north suburb.
And even though the city recently came to an accord with ComEd, lawmakers are keeping the company on a short lease: They want a drastic reduction in the length of a new contract with ComEd and they say they will look for other power distributors if the company continues to be unreliable.
“It’s not out of the question” that the city might look for someone else to distribute electricity to its 73,000 residents, said Ald. Steve Bernstein (4th).
Last week the city announced that ComEd had signed on to an agreement to make major infrastructure improvements to its distribution system in an effort to improve reliability.
In a separate agreement, the city has crafted a three-year renewal of its franchise contract with ComEd, with an option for two one-year extensions. City officials say any extension would hinge on how well infrastructure improvements are made.
The proposed agreements were unveiled last week and will be the subject of a public hearing Thursday at which residents will be allowed to comment. The City Council is scheduled to vote on the two agreements at its regular meeting Monday.
“Credibility has been a big problem,” said Bernstein, a member of the city’s energy commission. “We want to confirm in our minds that they have done what they promised us that they would do.”
The improvements ComEd has promised include replacing lines to increase capacity, adding supplemental feeder lines, rebuilding the substation that serves southeast Evanston and adding devices that will protect the system from lightning.
The utility also has agreed to install a new monitoring system that allows it to determine immediately both where a power failure has occurred and its cause.
Those improvements are to be combined with a system of inspection, testing and regular reporting to city officials.
“This is an opportunity for us to improve our relationship with Evanston and do whatever we need to do to get reliability up,” said ComEd spokesman Keith Bromery. “We are happy with the agreement.”
Last October the City Council decided not to automatically renew its 50-year franchise agreement with the utility and to look at other options.
Alternatives, other than negotiating a new agreement with ComEd, included looking for another company to take over the wires and to distribute electricity or having the city take over the wires and establish its own municipal electric utility.
The bad blood between the city and the electric company stems from complaints that Evanston has far too many power failures.
Adding fuel to the fire was ComEd’s policy of trimming trees into the unpopular “Y” cut, in which tree limbs are cut away from overhead wires.
In a city proud of its leafy heritage, residents and lawmakers were unhappy with the way trees looked after they were trimmed.
Ald. Ann Rainey (8th), long a critic of the utility, said that the new agreements are positive.
“From day one our goal was reliability, and that’s the most you can ask and it’s the least you should expect from your utility company,” said Rainey, who also is a member of the energy commission.
“I’m confident that they will do what they say, and if they don’t we will know in a very short period.”
As for the controversial tree-trimming, the company has agreed to a new policy that calls for more frequent but less aggressive trimming.
The public hearing begins at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave.
