Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

And why don't we go around the room quickly and introduce ourselves. We'll start on the left to the newly appointed member of the board as of yesterday, Alderman Brower, please.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Alderman Brower, Alderman 3rd District. I am now in my, it's been 14 and a half months in office. Okay. And it's been a pleasure to serve the residents of District 3. Very good. And next up, please.

Good morning, Mr. Chair. John Rogers, Deputy Director for the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation. Excellent.

Good morning, Mr. Chair. James Washington, Public Works Coordination Manager in the Department of Public Works.

Good morning, Mr. Chair. Jim Carpenter, Advocate of Public Transit, just like you. Jim, make sure you're speaking into the mic. Jim, there's a microphone in front of you. Good morning, Chair. Jim Carpenter here, Advocate of Public Transit, just like you.

Good morning, Kevin Soucy, Citizen Member. John December, resident of Milwaukee, advocate for transit.

Alderman Scott Spiker, 13th District. All right, excellent. We have one file in front of us today. It's item 260221, communication relating to the creation of a publicly owned electric utility by the city of Milwaukee, sponsored by Alderman Brower and myself. I think we'll start today by having brief opening comments from some of the board members who have indicated a desire to make comments. So we'll start with Alderman Brower. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I really want to express my deep gratitude to you and to the staff here at City Hall and this body for meeting today to discuss this really, really important topic. Because we are faced with so much here in the city of Milwaukee. Not only are we faced with rising prices across the board, whether it's these landlords gouging us out, or Kroger shutting grocery stores down and then raising prices. Or whether it's, frankly, our current utility continuing to raise prices again and again. The working people of this city are suffering. right now. And I am so glad that this council and this body are taking heed of that and exploring this possibility today for us to utilize Chapter 197 of the Wisconsin State Statutes to replace WE Energies with a utility that's democratically owned. As a socialist alderman, I believe that we should have democracy in every single part of our economy. Because it's one thing to just elect people. It's one thing to be able to vote for president. It's one thing to be able to vote for your representative. But it's another thing to be able to have a say in the material conditions that affect you every single day. And when you have a corporation like WeEnergy's, They may suppose and present that their first priority is to deliver electricity, but as with any company that you can trade on Wall Street, the real hidden, or maybe not so hidden, priority of that entity is to deliver profits for shareholders. And I think it's about time that in this world we seriously reconsider that economic arrangement where we have an economy where every single human life is valued, everybody has an equal say no matter what zip code you live in, no matter what your skin color is, no matter what your gender is, that we have equality and that we have democracy. And so this is one step that is allowed under current state law We're not asking Madison to do us any favors here, although we do think they should. But we're not asking Madison to do us any favors. We are advocating under current law. And I ran on this, and I am so proud that we are hearing this right now to have this conversation about whether we use this statute that currently exists in law, which is one step. for us to be able to have an economy that works for every single person, where everybody is self-actualized, where everyone can reach their full potential, where no one is oppressed. And I know there's probably some right-wing troll out there that's going to comment on me saying that, because 1130 Talk Radio was just talking about making fun of people fighting oppression this morning. But I actually think it's a good idea to fight oppression. I actually think we should be doing that in this world. Call me a crazy leftist Marxist here, but I think that people should be able to live their lives how they want and have a say in every single aspect of their lives. I just really appreciate, Mr. Chair, the opportunity of you calling this meeting. I appreciate everybody on this committee for showing up today. And I especially, and also I want to thank our experts here who are going to testify and provide testimony, as well as the members of the public who are here as well. Look at this crowd. Look at these people who've shown up on a workday. Some of you I know have taken off of work because this issue is so important to discuss here today. So I just want to say from the bottom of my heart to every single person present here, Thank you for raising your voice. It's one thing to be an elected official, but it's another thing to really be a member of the community and advocate and stand up when it's difficult. So all of you are doing that today. Thank you all so much. And thank you so much for allowing me to have some remarks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all.

Yes, I would like to make an opening statement, too. First of all, I want to reiterate that I took the public transit here, the green line, with my wife, and I believe in public transit. So the government does a lot of good things in providing services, public transit being one of them. That's why I'm on this committee. But I also believe in public utilities. Let me read a few comments using my background as an economics instructor. I'm a proud member of Milwaukee DSA. Also, I believe in a mixed economy, whereas there is a place for markets and competition and profit, but also a place for government provided services. The provisions of utilities like sewer, water, and energy have proven to be a good place for government services. When I first started reading about publicly owned nonprofit utilities, I learned this is no far out fringe idea. It is a model supported all over the country by people of different political persuasions. Let's get the facts straight. Energy networks are what economists call natural monopolies. Allowing multiple companies to provide redundant energy networks in a given geographical area makes no economic sense. Energy networks are best provided by monopolies. The problem is we energies is a profit driven monopoly and sometimes profits get in the way of providing the best solution to a problem. For example, sometimes it's more cost effective to improve energy efficiency rather than to provide more energy. But a for-profit utility does not have the incentive to provide energy efficiency because this reduces the consumption of energy and this reduces profits. Consider data centers all over this country. Communities are enacting moratoriums on data centers because of negative effects of these data centers on utility bills, the environment, and other negative externalities. But profit driven utilities have no incentive to oppose data centers because data centers lead to higher energy consumption and higher profits. Recently, WeEnergy's proposals were reviewed by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin. And let's review some of the things that Thomas Content said about this review process. Some of the things that WeEnergy tried to pull off because they're a for-profit company. But before I do that, I just want to bring attention to a notice I received from WeEnergy with my last energy bill. saying that my energy bill will increase by double digits next year, 10.28%. That is totally unacceptable. And it's being driven by a for profit motive. I believe that a publicly owned utility would not be increasing my bill by double digits next year. But let me take a couple quotes from this excellent article in the journal Sentinel by Tom Content. Thomas Contents, who is the Executive Director of the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin. This is some of the things that WeEnergies was trying to get away from that the Public Service Commission rejected. Protected WeEnergy's proposals to require consumers to pay 25% or about $1 billion for natural gas power plants to be built for data centers. Decided that customer protections should be in place for smaller data centers than WeEnergy has proposed. Data centers rate increases, CUB will scrutinize aliens and excels energy data centers plans. Cubs will actively review the price hike proposals we energies and WPS put forward, seeking double digit increases for residential customers over the next two years. Beyond data centers, Wisconsin needs to put affordability first. Energy costs have been rising at a clip well above inflation since data centers showed up. To soften the blow, CUB recommends these changes be implemented by the governor and the legislature. Stop utilities from profiting on dead power plants. Customers across the state are paying $1 billion for piles of rubble that have nothing to do with keeping the lights on. Restore balance in how the state's energy future unfolds. Utilities push profit-centric plans that rely solely on building power plants, but ignore energy efficiency and other technologies that can save customers on their bills. A better planning process for each utility's needs, including distribution, can fix this. And act reforms to ensure utility profits are linked to affordability and how well power companies tackle the burden high energy costs place on people struggling to make energy ends meet. Instead of lowering the profits, I say they shouldn't have profits. We need a non-profit system. Let's reduce the profits. Let's end the profits. Our bills will be lower. Our energy system is more sustainable, and we'll move forward in a better fashion. So thank you very much for allowing me to make this comment. Thank you to the good people of Milwaukee for coming out. I'm sure you're coming out because you're concerned about your energy bill. which you should be, but you're also concerned about the energy bills of people who cannot afford to have a low income and find a difficult time affording these high energy bills. You're also concerned about the environment. So thank you for being people of conscience who care about the environment, who care about the next generation, who care about poor people. And of course, like normal human beings, you care about yourself. So thank you very much for being here.

Okay, any other board members wish to make opening statements?

All right, then we'll proceed to our business. We have one item of housekeeping, and that is to approve the minutes of the previous meeting, which was two years ago, back on May 10, 2023. Is there a motion to approve the previous minutes? So moved. Is there a second? No second. All in favor? Aye. All right, good. The minutes are out of the way. And this is a communication file. We're here to collect information and disseminate that information to the public via your own presence here and the presence of the media, which is great. This is also being live streamed on the city channel. So there's a permanent video record of these proceedings, which people can go to and consult and review. We're not going to take any action by this committee. This board does not have the ability to recommend specific action by the Common Council. That is a step that we'll have to wait for the future and future action in terms of creating perhaps a task force. to review the potential of a feasibility study, to review the details, the facts, the costs, the details of a transaction of this sort. This is an enormously complicated process, as indicated by the legal memo that we received from the Pines Bach firm. We'll be hearing from one of their attorneys on the legal process. We'll also be hearing from the American Public Power Association. We're very honored to have Ursula Shriver here. Fresh from Washington, D.C., from the American Public Power Association. This organization, we had the honor, all of them, Brower and I met with her and her colleagues back in March when we were in D.C. for the National League of Cities Convention. It was a very interesting meeting. They presented some outstanding material to us, and that material is in the file, so anybody can get access to that material via the file. So we will start with Ursula. And she can explain the whole concept of public power, that it's not, as Alderman Brower pointed out, some wild, crazy notion, or as Carpenter mentioned, that there are a lot of cities that do this, including some very large cities. So Ursula, the floor is yours. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your organization, and then provide your testimony.

All right, thank you. Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I'll provide a little bit of perspective on public power from a national perspective, a little bit about what public power is, trends we're seeing as it relates to municipalization, and then a little bit on the process that we typically see. And then, of course, happy to answer any questions that you may have. So the American Public Power Association, we're a trade association in the Washington, D.C. area where we lobby on a federal level for community-owned electric utilities. We provide education, resources, technical resources to ensure that public power utilities have what they need to remain successful in the future. There are 2,000 public power utilities in the U.S., a little over 2,000 public power utilities in the U.S., In all states except Hawaii, they serve five U.S. territories, serving 55 million Americans. For context, about 15% of customers are served by public power utilities, 13% are served by rural electric cooperatives, and the remainder, about 66%, are served by investor-owned utilities. So as Alderman Bauman said earlier, public power serves some very large cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Antonio, Omaha, Orlando, Jacksonville, all across the country, but the vast majority of public power utilities are small. About 80% serve communities of 10,000 or fewer, and 70% serve communities of 5,000 or fewer. So public power is very diverse in terms of size, region of the country, and also priorities. So that really plays into the overall concept of public power. It's local decision-making, local control, addressing the issues that are most important to the community. So there are five core tenants of public power. Public ownership, local decision-making, not-for-profit operations, cost-based pricing, and customer-first service. So it really is all related to the community and what issues are most important to the community. So public power utilities can adjust their services to what the specific needs of the community are. And so that really plays into the umbrella program. Tenant I guess a public power is that local decision-making so decisions on rates? reliability investments in infrastructure Renewable energy any other services that the community makes are made here in the community The community has an opportunity to weigh in on decisions sit in on public meetings like this the utilities are overseen by either a City Council or elected or appointed utility board and So there's that local oversight. So citizens can vote elected officials in and out of office if they're not addressing the needs of the customer. So it really is that customer first community focus that is most important. And so in general, public power utilities have lower rates, higher reliability, more focused on customer service and customer issues. And certainly willing to dive into the details on the cost differential and reliability differential, but we do have statistics and some of it is in that document that is noted there and on our website, publicpower.org, there's a lot of statistics on the current differential in terms of rates and reliability. And here in Wisconsin, public power utilities have both lower rates and lower bills than other forms of utilities. In terms of municipalization trends, there are a number of communities that are looking at public power currently, and there have been for many years. I've been at APPA 29 years. And it's been a constant drumbeat of communities that are looking at public power. But I would say there's more interest now than there's ever been in the last several years. And I think, yeah, the reasons vary on why communities are looking at public power. Sometimes it's rates. The rate increases by the investor-owned utilities have gotten to the point where it's just not tolerable in the community. Sometimes it's reliability, particularly if a storm comes through and the incumbent utility doesn't respond well. then that may prompt a community to explore public power. And sometimes it's long-term reliability issues. Renewable energy has been a really strong driver in the last several years. A lot of communities that are interested in access to more renewable energy more environmentally friendly options and the incumbent utility has not been responsive. That has pushed a number of communities to explore their options. And then economic development. All of these issues play into economic development and the health of the community. And then finally, a lot of communities, when their franchise agreements are expiring, that's a really good opportunity to explore options and just see what's feasible. From APPA's perspective, we don't advocate for communities forming public power utilities. We obviously believe it is the best business model, but it is a local decision. We're here to provide information to help you make an informed decision and help the community understand what public power is and what the benefits may be. But ultimately, that's a decision that needs to be made by the community for the community to ensure that it's It really is the right decision for you. You know, while there is a lot of interest in public power, I will say that it is relatively rare for new public power utilities to form because it is a lengthy process. It takes time. It takes commitment. It takes money. And there will typically be pushback from the investor on utility. So you have to be prepared for that if you're going to move forward. Since 1973, there have been 90 new public power utilities that have formed. There have been 20 in the last 25 years. Most of them were small, and many of them were greenfield developments. So new industrial parks, new residential communities that formed that were not previously formed. served by that investor-owned utility. And so the large-scale examples are relatively rare, but there are some, and there are definitely some that are exploring now, many that are exploring now. So I'll give you a couple of quick examples just to show really the diversity of both public power and the municipalization process, because every municipalization campaign is different. So the most recent utility to form was Jefferson County PUD in Washington. They had about 18,000 customers. They formed in 2013. Their issues were more access to renewable energy, lower costs, and higher reliability. Those are all kind of the common issues. points that communities are looking at. But this situation was unique because they came to it, they negotiated a price with the investor and utility. So that's unusual. Usually they do go to condemnation proceedings, they go to the courts, but this one was negotiated, which can make the process, it does make the process much quicker and less expensive. So if you're able to negotiate with the incumbent utility, that is the ideal situation. It's relatively rare, but that was the most recent one, and there are other examples like that. The second example I'll provide is Winter Park, Florida, formed in 2005. They just celebrated their 20th anniversary last year. They formed because of reliability concerns. They had very poor reliability from the incumbent utility. And when they took over the system, they committed to investing all the profits that were generated from the utility back into the utility to harden the infrastructure, and they undergrounded 80% of their lines within the last 20 years. They have very high reliability, as you can imagine now. Their rates are consistent or lower than the incumbent utility. And they have obviously very strong customer service. In 2024, when Hurricane Milton hit Winter Park, they only lost 250 customers and they restored them within 12 hours, which is pretty remarkable when you think of a hurricane coming through and wiping out a system in Florida. And then the last example I'll provide is the Long Island Power Authority. They formed in 1998. They have over a million customers, so they're very unique. They formed because the investor and utility built a nuclear plant that never operated. but there were significant cost overruns and the prices were skyrocketing. So the state of New York stepped in and created the public power utility. And they're very unique because they have a public-private partnership. So it is a public power utility owned by the community operated and governed by the utility board, but they outsource the actual operations to PSEG Long Island, which is an investor-owned utility. So they still have the benefits of public power in that local control, but they... have outsourced the operations. And Winter Park did something similar when they formed. For the first 10 years, they outsourced their operations, and then ultimately they decided to bring in the operations and run it completely on their own. And they hired a lot of the people that were actually working at that outsourced company initially. So the point of all this is there are many different ways to look at this. You know what? There's not a cookie cutter answer for every community. You really do need to look at what's right for you. And that's where that feasibility study starts looking at those options very quickly. Just to give you a flavor of the communities that are actually looking at public power now, there are a lot of them. And I'll just mention a few. But there are I contacted, I would say, every other week. by a new community or state that is looking at what the options may be so st petersburg florida they just approved funding for a feasibility study to be conducted this year clearwater florida just completed a feasibility study and so they are now looking at their options whether they decide to negotiate with the incumbent utility or create a public power utility And on that note, I will just say that ultimately the goal may be to form a public power utility, but as you go through this process, the incumbent utility is likely going to offer concessions, and they're going to want you to drop this effort. So that's where it gives you some leverage to maybe negotiate with them, and if they are willing to do whatever you need to do, whether it's reduce rates, improve reliability, it gives you an opportunity to have that discussion with them. And that's where we have seen some situations where a community will explore public power, go through the process, and then the incumbent utility comes back and says, we will provide more renewable energy for you. And it meets the needs of the community at that time. And they may later decide to move forward with public power, but at least in the short term, it gives them leverage to negotiate with that incumbent utility. A couple other examples, Slayton, Minnesota, small town, but they are actually, the voters approved the acquisition and it is now in the courts. They are determining what price they are going to pay. So they are likely going to form their utility in the next, probably this year or next. San Diego, California, they looked at forming a public power utility a little over five years ago. They did a feasibility study. They decided to continue to look at their options. They re-signed a shorter-term 10-year franchise agreement so they had the time to look at their options. Five years later, their rates are still skyrocketing. There's a lot of dissatisfaction in the community. So they just completed a second feasibility study, a more detailed one, to look at what it would look like to take over in five years when that franchise agreement expires. A lot of other examples, San Francisco, California, Tucson, Arizona, it's really all across the country that we're seeing this type of activity. And then I'll wrap up just with on the process. It's not a quick and easy process. It takes time. It takes commitment from the community, from leaders. You know, it starts with this, the education campaign, explaining what public power is, what you're trying to solve by forming a public power utility, or at least the exploring forming a public power utility. The next step really is that feasibility study to determine, does it really make sense for this community? That's where you put pen to paper. You hire an outside firm to look at this. They look at what the impacts would be on rates, reliability, what other issues you want to address, what the response may be from the incumbent utility. So that tells you, do you want to move forward at all, or are you going to choose to negotiate with the incumbent utility? And then you'll go through a number of options after that, the legal analysis, the valuation, the financing options, and then the actual acquisition. There will be a referendum at some point for the community to weigh in, and there could be multiple referendums along the way to decide if you're going to move forward. And then ultimately, if you do decide to move forward with the acquisition, there would be a referendum locally, and then often the PUC will have to approve that. approve the actual acquisition. So I'll wrap up there and I'm happy to answer questions but just really appreciate the opportunity to be here and it's really exciting to hear about what you're exploring here.

Well thank you for that excellent presentation. Absolutely. You've obviously done this before so thank you. So we'll go to our attorneys now and focus on the micro level, namely what the law of Wisconsin provides relative to municipalization of electric utilities. So please, identify yourself and give us a little bit of...

Hi. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your time today. My name is Kat Grant. I am an attorney from Pinesbach LLP. The Milwaukee chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America asked us to research several key issues of importance to the Power to the People campaign. Today, I will be sharing our findings regarding the legal process that the City of Milwaukee would need to follow in order to acquire the WeEnergies facilities, the process through which such facilities would be evaluated, and the feasibility of protecting workers' organizing rights by contracting with a third-party managing entity. uh given the size and scale of this proposal it is incredibly important to note that there are several topics outside of the scope of what i will be speaking on today that would require further research and more details on the topics that i will be discussing today as well as citations are available in the memo that has been submitted for public record so the city can acquire facilities like those of we energies through one of two processes. You can go through condemnation or negotiated purchase. For the condemnation option, the city would first need to hold a public referendum to even approve the acquisition of the parts of the utility's property that are currently already used for the benefit of the public, including utility infrastructure. This means that the city would not legally be able to acquire any property of the facilities or equipment that are not actively currently used for the benefit of the citizens of the city of Milwaukee. Following that referendum, the next steps depend on the date that the utility was issued its indeterminate permit. If that permit was issued before July 11th, 1907, the city would then need to initiate a lawsuit in circuit court and prove that the taking is necessary. And necessary here does not mean It immediately has to happen or the world is going to explode and there will be no more electricity necessary here just means more beneficial than not essentially. However, if indeterminate permit was issued after July 11th, 1907, the utility is legally considered to have already consented to the process that follows after the referendum and the city would not need to initiate a lawsuit. It's currently unclear in our research what year the permit that WE Energies operates under was issued, but the company that WE Energies traces its roots to obtained its independent or its indeterminate permit in 1911. If this or later permit is the one currently used by WE Energies, then the court action is not necessary. Regardless of any court action, the city would then be required to give speedy notice to the Public Service Commission. There is no legally specified timeline as to what counts as speedy. At this point, the Public Service Commission would hold a hearing to determine the amount of just compensation that the city must pay the utility and any other terms and conditions of the purchase. Parties must receive 30 days notice of that hearing. At some point following that hearing, the PSC would issue its order and certification and the title would vest in the municipality. I will provide more specific information on how compensation is determined a little bit further in this presentation. Any party may appeal the PSC's order through the circuit court after it has come down, and following the decision, if for some reason the city or its citizens decide, actually, we don't want to do this, there is a 90-day period in which the city, through resolution, or the citizens, through referendum, could discontinue a condemnation. Alternatively to that process, the city could acquire we energies property through a negotiated purchase. Milwaukee is in a unique position legally here as Wisconsin's only certified first class city. Milwaukee can enter into a contract with we energies that provides for, amongst many other options, the purchase of all or any part of the utilities property by the city. In order for any kind of contract of that nature to be binding, it would need to be agreed to by the Common Council, the utility, the PSC, and the majority of the electorate through a referendum. If the city didn't want to use this option that it uniquely has, there is a statutory mechanism that any city in Wisconsin can use for the voluntary sale by the utility to any municipality. The city and utility would need to come to a mutual agreement on price and all other terms and conditions of the sale. The City has the option to pay for the property from its general fund or the proceeds of municipal obligations, including revenue bonds. The Common Council would then need to hold a regular meeting, preceded by one week of official newspaper notice, and adopt a resolution specifying the payment method and submitting approval for the purchase to public referendum. If the referendum succeeded, the city would then proceed to purchase the utility property. Now, I want to note a key distinction there. With the condemnation process, the referendum comes first. With the negotiated sale option, the referendum comes after all of the other aspects have been determined. Most likely the city of Milwaukee would be required to install a 7 person board of directors by mayoral appointment and common council approval, which could then appoint its own managers. Moving on from that particular set of procedures, that would... Mr.

Chair, if I may, I'm so sorry. I think I want to clarify something for the audience, and Kat, you can tell me if I'm incorrect in this, but we were talking about franchises and indeterminate permits. Maybe we should just be clear that in some states, not in Wisconsin, but in some states, the municipality actually has a chance to enter into a contract with the incumbent utility on a... Particular on a regular basis. And so like in Illinois, Chicago, it's Con Ed. They have a the city has a contract with them. We don't have that option here because of what Kat has cited with Chapter 197. We energies, we don't have any sort of regular negotiation period with them, unlike Colorado or Illinois. We energies has this indeterminate permit, which means that they have a right by law to negotiate. operate the utility in this in this area indefinitely unless we as a city take action to usurp them is that correct kat um yes that is correct okay thank you so i just want to clear that up but that's we're dealing with indeterminate permits the franchises like in california are not something that's within our legal wheelhouse unless we get the law changed um but that's i just wanted to make sure that that was that that was clear and i just want to also confirm cat because some people you know want to precondition this effort on knowing exactly every single penny that we'll have to pay for we energy's infrastructure But I think you stated in your comments that the PSC, and I think it was also in your memo, but the PSC doesn't do hearings on hypotheticals. That is correct. They're not interested in just doing like, oh, let's have whatever city is fancying this. Let's just do a six-month hearing process for our own edification. They don't do that. We have to vote yes to move forward before we'll determine valuation. Yes.

And that's in the statute currently. Okay. Yes. That's the constraint we're under. Okay. Thank you. Right. And that's simply, you know, for the sake of the PSC and the administrative burden that that would place on it. Obviously, they do not have the time and resources to do the valuation process for things that might not happen. So yeah, and we can move on to the issue of valuation, actually. So like I said, the PSC can only determine the fair price for the property after a referendum has already taken place. So first, the PSC would need to consider previous sales of a similar nature. look at the price and terms of any good faith sale of comparable property. So they factor in things like situation, usability, improvements that have been made to the facilities, and other characteristics looking at those previous sales that would create basically a reasonable belief that it is in fact comparable to the sale that we would be discussing in this case. The PSC would then also evaluate any appraisals offered by both parties. So that would be an appraisal by the city as well as an appraisal from WeEnergies in this case. And it would take those into account in making its final decision. Generally, though, the PSC historically seems to take an approach to evaluation that takes the average of two sums. And they have kind of confusing names. So you have the trended historical cost appreciated and the reproduction cost new depreciated. So the trended historical cost appreciated that takes the amount that the facilities and equipment and the land that is currently there. how much that cost to build and purchase at the historical moment that those facilities were built, the equipment was bought, the land was bought, and then that cost is adjusted for inflation using a guide like the Handy-Whitman Index of Public Utility Construction Costs. Now, they don't have to use that specific guide, but that is a guide that they have used in the past. That number is then reduced to reflect the normal expected deterioration of equipment over an average service life, and there are metrics that they use for that as well. The second number, reproduction cost new depreciated, then takes what it would currently cost right now today, to build an exact replica of the existing facilities as well as the land if you used the same materials and the same historical methods to produce that same type of facility. So they would not be using the most updated, most efficient way of construction, anything like that, but they would look at those old methods, how they were built, and apply that to things like labor charges and material charges as they currently exist at this moment instead of a statistical model. They then again reduce that number, so they take that base number and then they reduce it by the age of the equipment and other facilities based again on that same statistical model of average service life. These two values are then averaged to determine what the reasonable purchase price would be. If any of the equipment or facilities have significant damage beyond what those statistical models of depreciation would reflect, the PSE can then further reduce that cost based on that level of damage. Now, there are some complications here because the city would not be acquiring WeEnergies in its entirety. WeEnergies serves a large portion of southeastern Wisconsin, so this would only be a partial taking. There does seem historically from the PSC to be a distinction that is made between property that is part of a utility system in its entirety as opposed to property that is used to serve each of the separate public utilities operated by the company. Any property that is used to serve another community in addition to Milwaukee under at least one other indeterminate permit would likely be considered system property and would not be eligible for acquisition and excluded from the potential valuation. This could be addressed through the establishment of a municipal power district involving other municipalities. But for the sake of time, I will not go into the details of that process. You can find further details of that in the memo. So in terms of actually paying for the acquisition, the city would most likely want to use revenue bonds to finance it as opposed to general obligation bonds which are backed by the general tax revenues such as property income or sales tax. Revenue bonds are backed by the funds from the electric rates and that is what finances those bonds. That means that the revenue collected from the utility itself would pay for the acquisition. This is permissible, but the PSC does set the amount that a utility can collect from those rates. That's based on the value of the utility's capital assets at original cost minus depreciation. Utilities are typically only able to recover a rate of return of about six to seven percent and the depreciation on their assets. Once the city has acquired a facility, we then run into the problem of if it were to run into the facility directly, the utility employees would likely have their organizing rights curtailed under Act 10. There are, however, options available to avoid that outcome. Once the city has acquired a utility, it could, in theory, sell a public utility plant to another entity like a cooperative to run it. But those cooperatives aren't particularly well suited for an urban municipality. They're more common in rural municipalities. And it's unlikely that the city would be able to get the necessary approval from the PSC for that type of model. Again, for the sake of time, I'll direct everyone to the written memo for more information on that particular topic. A simpler and much more likely way to avoid the pitfalls of Act 10 might be for the city to contract with a third-party managing entity to manage operations and assets. The existing WeEnergies workforce would then become employees of that third-party managing entity and likely not fall under the limitations of Act 10. This strategy would create a stronger possibility for the protection of pensions and other benefits that the currently unionized we energies workforce has access to. Now, there are a lot of complications regarding that and the obligations of a third party managing entity in that regard, not addressed by this memo. But I will say there is nothing that prevents a third party entity from honoring the collective bargaining agreement currently held by the energy's employees and the years of service of the current unionized workforce. The city enters into contracts on a regular basis, of course, for a wide range of services, including but not limited to construction, maintenance, storage, sewing, health services, IT services, and so many other things. This is a well-established process by the city. There would need to be a competitive bidding process that's run through the purchasing division for the city of Milwaukee. This project would require that bids be advertised, sealed, and opened at a public bid opening with the final bid being awarded by the city's purchasing director. Like any option, this one also has complications to consider. It's unknown at this point what businesses or organizations currently exist that have the expertise and resources to take on a project of this scale. If a group were established specifically for this purpose, it would need to have the capacity to take on the operations before ever being granted the contract. It is also unknown at this point how much such a contract would cost the city compared to direct management as the final cost would be determined by the bidding process. As I stated previously, my research today only touches on the key issues that I've addressed above and does not address other factors that would need to be considered, nor does it address other alternatives outside of acquiring the WeEnergies process. Given the scale of this project, again, further research would be required. Thank you all for your time today. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for that excellent presentation. We'll take questions at the end of everybody. Oh, I can wait then. All right. We'll go to Mr. Rosenberg, please.

Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Sam Rosenberg, and I am here representing the more than 1,700 members, 500 of them in Milwaukee, at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 2150. I'm also an operations dispatcher at WE Energies. I want to talk about reliability. Because the members I represent, reliability is not a slogan. It is the work we do every day and every night. It is the crews going out in the cold, in the storms, and emergencies to keep lights on, keep gas service safe, and get Milwaukee back up when something goes wrong. We saw this work in action earlier this month when strong storms and tornadoes hit southeastern Wisconsin. Our members restored power to more than 80,000 customers. In some cases, crews had to rebuild major parts of the local electrical system that were badly damaged. That is the kind of work reliability depends on. IBEW, Local 2150, strongly opposes this municipalization proposal because it would put that reliability at risk. Milwaukee would not just be taking over poles, wires, and equipment. The city would have to recreate an entire utility operation from scratch. When storms hit, WE Energies can move crews, trucks, poles, transformers, wire, materials, and expertise across Wisconsin to where they are needed most. Milwaukee is not backed up by one isolated shot. It is backed up by a regional system with people and experience already in place. That is what reliability looks like in real life. It means crews can be shifted across regions. It means materials can be found and moved quickly. It means gas and electric emergencies can be coordinated at the same time. It means dispatchers and control room operators are working with field crews who know the system, the neighborhoods, the equipment, and safety risks. a city-run utility would have to build all that while keeping the lights on every day and would have to hire and train the workforce, set up dispatching, buy and maintain equipment, manage inventory, build a supply chain, prepare for storms, and create regional backup support. That is not quick and it is not cheap. That is not something that Milwaukee should gamble on. And this is not about WE Energies. This is an issue that affects every customer who expects heat on a cold night, power during a storm, and a fast response when a gas emergency happens. If the city breaks off Milwaukee from WE Energy's statewide system, it also breaks away from the people, tools, materials, and backup support that help make service reliable. Our union workforce is proud of what we do. These are highly skilled union jobs built on years of training, experience, and safety. Line workers, gas crews, dispatchers, control room operators, planners, supervisors, mechanics, warehouse workers, and support staff all work together as one system. If workers are forced into uncertainty over pensions, health care, seniority, contracts, and union protections, many may not move to a city-run utility. They have options. And if they leave, Milwaukee loses more than employees. It loses the people who know this system and know how to restore service safely. At the end of the day, reliability is not created by changing the name on a utility. It is created by trained workers backed by a statewide operation with crews dispatching equipment, materials, and experience to respond when people need help. That is what Milwaukee already has, and that is what this proposal puts at risk. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Rosenberg. Okay, next up is Brian Rieger from Walnut Wave.

Rigor is an interesting pronunciation of Rogers, but I imagine it's handwritten. That's all good. I'm grateful to be here this morning. It's a privilege being able to serve as a vessel to bring the truth and creativity and wisdom And the moral imagination that exudes from neighborhoods like Lindsay Heights on the north side. And to carry that into the halls of power where decisions are made that quite literally and quite immediately impact the lives of all of us that call Milwaukee home. And so the effects of those decisions fall pretty asymmetrically on the city's hyper-segregated society. Some decisions shorten lives in some places while lengthening them in others. improving lives here on this block, harming those on that block down there. I serve as the director of The Web, the Wisconsin eco-justice-based builders. It's a statewide movement infrastructure operation that is seeking to expand community self-determination by strengthening the capacity of Wisconsin residents to shape the systems, the institutions, and the decisions that affect their lives. We're housed at Walnut Way Conservation Corp. Our work focuses on energy affordability, housing justice, environmental health, democratic participation, and community self-determination across Wisconsin. Is that the rain?

So I'm from here, born and raised.

My grandmother raised ten of her children in Lindsay Heights. My father took care of her in that same house on 1215 West Wright Street. My own father, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 76, was living in the same room that he had cared for his mother in, that she died in. And that home is housed a lot, a lot of history, a lot of promise, a lot of pain and disappointment. And that home belongs to a 110 square block neighborhood of Lindsay Heights that has been under assault, quietly yet perniciously for decades, under watch by both white and black administrations, Democratic and Republican leadership in times of surplus and in periods of deficit. So I know what killed my father. in the disgraced Ascension money pit that doubles as a hospital, the bodily ailments that plagued his life, chronic hypertension, ever-predatory threats of diabetes. The threat of diabetes and heart attack, the asthma, the actual stroke that he suffered that rendered him blind for the final two years of his life. Underneath this physiological, physical layer lies a deeper disease in the body politic of a society that would allow such a man to lead such a life in such a home inside such a neighborhood of such a city as this. So I'm here today to discuss municipalization in Chapter 197 of Wisconsin Statutes. They don't bring me in to talk about data. They bring me in, I presume, for my rhetorical flourishing and rhetoric. Yeah. Yeah. But I want to begin suggesting that the most important question for us is not whether Milwaukee should own a utility. The more powerful query, perhaps, is whether the people of Milwaukee should have greater power over the systems that shape their daily lives. This conversation is ultimately not about electric poles and wires. Forgive me, sir. It's not about substations and transformers, utility planning and accounting. If you're paying even marginally close attention, any of us, to the public these days, it is so clearly about democracy. It is so self evidently about public health. most obviously about economic justice and climate adaptation. So it is therefore not in the least bit hyperbolic to suggest that the central political question at stake here today is who gets to decide what kind of future we build and then have to co-inhabit together. So before discussing municipalization itself, I'd like to remind ourselves what various and exciting fun forms democracy can assume, indeed has assumed, since the earliest recorded experiment in ancient Greece over 2,500 years ago, if you will permit me. Because there was this machine in Athens, a phenomenal city-state where culture, science, Art in the Agora. In the Agora stands the Claritarian machine. This was a machine that looks pretty unremarkable, but in the context of ancient Greece, was a central technology of a radical experiment in democracy. This machine, a big rock with slabs in it and slits in it, Was the random selection lottery that put people into office on administrative bodies, on governing agencies of juries. So what does that tell us? Well, it says some things that Plato and Aristotle, other political philosophers of the day, were making very clear, clear argument in favor of if you want a citizenry that can manage and govern its own affairs and to do so along some values that we could all agree are common and ethical, then everybody has to be ready at any point. Elections would tend to, and we might say they have indeed, tend towards a hierarchy of power concentration by those who have economic resources, those who have education, those who are well connected. In other words, any one of us up here, to some extent. It's very different than the democracy we have today. I think we'd agree. Now let's ask why this conversation is emerging now. Milwaukee did not suddenly wake up one morning and decide to revisit Chapter 197. This conversation has been occurring for a long time. And it's occurring within a much larger social, political, economic, and ecological contexts. Everyone has touched on them at some point in their remarks this morning. Families struggling with the rising cost of living on virtually every front. We are living through an era of expansive, expensive wars abroad and a tightening, crushing austerity at home. Homelessness in the cities rises along with the deaths of despair in the countryside. Now in 2026, there's more wealth being created than at any time in history. The bloated stock markets do not lie. It's been a steady diet of resource extraction, labor exploitation, profit generation, and private accumulation accomplished increasingly by means of the magic of, I don't even know what the F is, financialization. Communities are confronting worsening climate impacts, extreme weather, flooding, dangerous heat. Indeed, all of Earth's life support systems, if we believe in the validity and the methodology of science, are being stretched either to their breaking point or human activity has already caused it to surpass its planetary boundaries. So from data centers to detention centers, foreign wars, FBI files, across the nation, residents increasingly feel that many of the most consequential decisions affecting their lives are being made far away from the people who must live with their consequence. And to know they're making bank doing it, So whether we're discussing housing, healthcare, detention centers, data centers, energy infrastructure, environmental permitting, or economic development, communities are increasingly asking the same fundamental questions across very different, right? There are mega adjacent communities that are asking very poignant questions to their own mayor in Port Washington. I shouldn't say that about Port Washington. Anyway, who governs? Who benefits? Who bears the cost and who gets a meaningful voice in the decisions that shape the future? So what now? The conversation about municipalization then is simply one expression of that broader democratic question. Again, to which Plato and the ancient philosophers that we love to lionize had very specific concrete ideas and warnings about the so-called democracy we enjoy. So from the perspective of the communities that Webb organizes with, the current energy system is experienced. Through affordability. Mr. Carpenter brought his literal bill to the hearing. We don't encounter the utility system in some abstract policy debate. We encounter it instead through monthly bills. Difficult choices between any of the things that are way too expensive that we need to live. Longer than normal disconnections due to aging infrastructure and poor maintenance. the cascade of shutoffs that come every spring due to our own manufactured poverty. So we encounter it intimately through inadequately insulated housing, aging furnaces, unsafe indoor temperatures, and the constant stress that comes from living One unexpected expense away from crisis. Raise your hand if you are living one unexpected expense away from crisis and precarity. I'm not going to look back, but I imagine everybody's hands are up behind me. I do not even have to turn around in this so-called democracy we enjoy. It's the overwhelming majority of us, whatever myths prevail about the so-called middle class. We got the data. I'm telling the story, but you know we got the data. We've been in, at this point, I don't know, a dozen dockets with the PSC from very large customer tariffs. We work very closely with Pinesbach. Love me some Krista and Eduardo. Props to Pinesbach. Rate cases, infrastructure dockets, affordability investigation dockets, creating low income affordability program dockets, you name it. The Public Service Commission, yeah, they are low on resources. Or something like that. The data shows that energy burdens are significantly higher in many black, brown, and low income neighborhoods than regional averages, especially when compared to white neighborhoods. Some communities, now households are spending well over 6% of their income on energy costs. Some even upwards to 15 and 20. We shouldn't reduce the question of public ownership to a matter of technicality, accounting, or asset valuation, though all those are important questions. Beneath the spreadsheets, the engineering studies, the legal procedures lies a much older and more fundamental question. Who should govern the conditions of life and in whose interests? We know one way that it can work because we're experiencing it. We're literally having a conversation about it because we're experiencing it. If it's in the interest of profit and private accumulation or perhaps we might do something else to guarantee the quality provision of permanently affordable. reliable, fossil-free energy. And they're doing it everywhere.

Thank you for your example.

So it turns out what we have learned the hard way, that these objectives are frequently in tension. You cannot identify maximum shareholder returns, or sorry, enjoy indefinitely maximized shareholder returns while simultaneously minimizing costs to households. You can't prioritize quarterly earnings while fully prioritizing affordability, and you cannot build a system around the extraction of value and expect it to consistently produce equity, resilience, and democratic accountability if, in fact, we care about those things. For investor-owned utilities, the answer is constantly constrained by their structure. No matter how dedicated their employees or how sincere their intentions, they remain obligated to generate returns for investors. That obligation shapes everything, priorities, incentives, decisions. So the question before Milwaukee is whether an essential service upon which every household, business, school, hospital, neighborhood depends on should be governed primarily by those incentives, or whether we should govern them by a different set of values altogether. There's a lot more, but I would say to sum up my experience with the Public Service Commission, the regulator of WeEnergies, is like, there's an Aaron Sorkin series called The Newsroom. Everybody should watch it. Jane Fonda's in it. She's great. Aaron Sorkin doesn't do great with the development or complexity of female characters, but that's his problem. That's not ours. But Jane Fonda, it runs a media conglomerate, right? And Jeff Daniels is this anchor who goes off on a student, a college student that is thinking about why is America the greatest country in the world? And it's not. And she tells a joke, and she says, it's about God and golf. I'm not gonna tell the joke because she tells it much better, and Aaron Sorkin wrote it. But the punchline is worth it because Moses is doing all, or I'm sorry, God is doing all these things and at one point Moses says to God, okay, are we gonna play golf or are you just gonna F around? And that's literally I feel like what we are doing here. None of this is difficult. This is not hard. I mean, I don't have to turn around and every hand in the room went up. Did every hand in the room go up?

Almost every hand in the room went up, yeah?

All right, so I'm going to rest my case with that visualization. There's so much more to say, but look at what's happening in the world. Can we insulate ourselves from it? Not entirely. Can we isolate ourselves from it? No. Are we affected by what happens in Iran and what happens in China and what happens in Venezuela? Yes. So what are we going to do about that? Are we just going to let people who want to make butt loads of money off our addictions and our attention deficit disorders and off our hatreds. We're going to let them do that to us? That's insane. So it's not difficult. It's not difficult. I appreciate the examples from other places. The labor question is so delicate. Because y'all have been abused. Abused. It's crazy to have a WeEnergies employee, a union dude, show up at a hearing when we're trying to say, like, don't build a gas plant. It's going to kill people. People don't want it. They don't even know what's happening. It's going to cost so much money, and then it's going to not be used anymore, and we're still going to pay for it. We can't afford anything else in our lives. And this brave man steps up because the utility said go, and he reads a statement about how he's so grateful that the utility gives his family health care so that his child or whoever loved one in his life can actually get health care to deal with the illness that they most likely got from the fact that they work at a coal plant. So it's just not hard, y'all. It's just not hard. And it's so clear that in 10 years, 20 years, 50 years from now, depending on how this goes, everybody's going to look back and say, well, what did y'all do? What did the nine people here do? What did y'all do about it? Because everybody was telling you what the F to do about it. Did you do it? Do it. Thank you.

I do have a technical question, and maybe Ursula can answer this one. What are the typical models that are used for municipalization? Because we have a large public shareholder owned utility that is regional, as is pointed out. There are no generating stations. Well, there's one generating station in the city of Milwaukee that's very small, primarily supplies steam. The major generating capacity is outside the city of Milwaukee, and in some cases outside the county of Milwaukee. There's transmission lines, which is the high voltage long distance transmission equipment their substations There's the distribution network, which is the poles and wires we see in our neighborhoods And then there's this vast array as mr. Rosenberg pointed out there's material yards There's inventories of poles and transformers and spare parts sitting in a yard waiting to be deployed in the case of renewal or repair And then the whole question of all their vehicles. I mean, they must have 1,000 line trucks or hundreds of line trucks. Do we get in a situation where, okay, you get three, we get one, you get three of these, we get one of these? I mean, how does this work in practice? What are the models for municipalization? Or is this more a financial exercise where we basically become just a reseller of power and leave the infrastructure under the ownership, most or all of it under the continued ownership of the shareholder-owned utility?

That would be where the feasibility study comes into play to look at all that. But generally, the public power utility, most public power utilities are distribution only utilities. So you would likely, one option would be to just purchase the distribution system, which would be the poles and the wires within the city of Milwaukee. And then you would get your power supply from somewhere else. you could if you wanted to generate it yourself you could but most public power utilities purchase power supply on the open market or they work with joint action agencies which are groups of public power utilities that come together for power supply so they'll so here in wisconsin wppi energy is a joint action agency that provides power to their members in Wisconsin, and I believe they have one or two in Michigan as well. So they purchase, the community will purchase power supply from those entities. In terms of trucks and those types of equipment, that could be negotiated, but likely the city would purchase their trucks their materials moving forward. You wouldn't purchase them from WE Energy most likely. You would purchase and have your own supply yard where you would have a supply of poles and wires and so forth. And I will say on the idea of when there's a storm or you need extra assistance, you know, public power utilities, if the city of Milwaukee were to form a public power utility, your crews would live and work in the community. The first priority in a storm would be to restore power here in Milwaukee. So you have people that understand the system. They live here. Their friends and family are here. They have a vested interest in restoring power quickly. Beyond that, there is a mutual aid network of public power utilities, investor-owned utilities, co-ops that come together a pk is the national convener of public power utilities that set whenever there is an expected storm we meet we have regional coordinators that meet throughout the u s and the stage crews to come in and help public power utilities, and then once they've restored power to those public power utilities, they help with co-op restoration and investor-owned utility restoration as well. So just because you have a public power utility doesn't mean you don't have broader access to crews across the country. And often it is across the country. You start regionally. But we've had crews from Washington State go to Florida to help with some of these storm restorations. So there is a network out there. But I would say it is extremely important to protect the employees and the union employees when you go through this. And there are ways to do that. That's extremely important. Thank you. And there are multiple ways to do that. But that goes without saying. Whether it's providing them the same package, whether it's outsourcing your operations and bringing them on as employees, there are different ways to do that, but that is extremely important.

Would this be a more efficient exercise if it was all in Milwaukee County? which is 245 square miles, Milwaukee's 96 square miles, Milwaukee County's 940,000 people, the city's 570 and dropping. I'm just curious, would that be a more efficient model to at least aspire to?

I believe so. I believe that that legally might be more efficient, but that would still run into the same legal complications of just how big the WeEnergy's infrastructure is and the realities. And I'm not an engineer. I went to law school. I'm bad at math. But, you know, that goes into the realities of just how big this infrastructure is and how intertwined it is throughout southeastern Wisconsin.

Okay.

Any other questions of the board? Yeah, I've got a few, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much. Yeah, so let's, just a couple things that popped up in here. I just want to make sure for everybody's listening audience and the folks here, we touched a little bit on revenue bonds versus general obligation to finance. And I just want to point out a couple things, Kat, that maybe you can confirm when your research is found. When the city issues a revenue bond to acquire income-producing assets, such as...

the infrastructure of a utility um that does not count against our um bonding cap um in the state's constitution is that correct as far as i'm aware i did not have the opportunity to do extensive research on that topic that was a little bit outside my original research uh parameters but to my knowledge that is correct

And that's stated in Article 6 of the state's constitution, that that cap has exceeded when it comes to... So the question... And then a revenue bond, by your research, is structured in a way that the city itself, our other assets besides the utility infrastructure, would not... And our treasury would not be on the hook when a revenue bond is issued. And maybe Ursula can provide some more details on that, too. So we issue a revenue bond to make the acquisition or to upgrade the infrastructure... That hasn't downgraded the credit of these other cities that do this, and it certainly hasn't put their treasuries in jeopardy or made the cities less financially viable. Could you talk about that, Ursula, if you've seen that with other municipalities? Sure.

Yeah, absolutely. And so with revenue bonds, obviously all the repayment comes from the revenue that is generated from the utility. And a utility is an essential service. It's not a risky – there will be revenue generated from that utility service. So that's what's used to pay back those revenue bonds. And so that's completely independent from the general obligation bonds. And you use those revenue bonds to acquire the system. Once you've acquired the system, all the improvements or other investments you make, tax-exempt bonds can be used for that. for any upgrades or anything after you've purchased the system. So that's a more financially feasible type of bond that you are saving money there by using those tax-exempt bonds. So I think there are two benefits there, both using the revenue bonds and then having access to tax-exempt bonds after you form the utility.

So I like to think of this, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I like to think of this as, you know, this is, I mean, it's not legally the same, but it's a kin or a cousin of a mortgage that we're taking out on this property. Just like when people decide to own their own home, I mean, very rarely does anybody have the cash in their bank account to purchase the house. They will use credit to purchase that, but then that builds equity, and you own an asset then and have more legal rights to it. And so, I mean, we've found benefit with that. I mean, it sounds like with this. I mean, it's not, you know, I just want to... Get from you or have you confirmed because some of the concern that I've heard when I've been out about has been, oh, well, this is going to wreck the city financially. But actually, you haven't found. Has there been any example that you're aware of across the United States where a municipal utility has caused the city to declare bankruptcy or been in financial ruin?

No. No.

Okay. There's none that you're aware of at all? No. Okay. In fact, it's actually been the opposite because sometimes these utilities can make a transfer to the general fund if they have excess revenue.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the primary benefits of public power, another benefit of public power. is you are any revenue that is generated from the utility stays in the community. It can go back into the system in terms of making system improvements or it can be used to reduce rates in the community And most, almost all, probably all public power utilities, with the exception of Oklahoma because they don't allow it, but public power utilities provide payments in lieu of taxes to the city. So extra revenue goes to the city to pay for other city needs, whether it be the police department, the fire department. Public schools, anything that is generated from the utility goes back into the city and stays here versus going to stockholders.

That's exactly what's true with our water department.

Exactly.

The city already has a publicly owned utility, and that is the water department.

And in the past, Mr. Chair, you can confirm we've received payments, maybe not every year, but we've received payments into our general fund. That's exactly what we do. I had some further questions, if you don't mind, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you clearing that up because that's a complicated issue, but I think I really appreciate what Brian brought to the table that in the end, there's complexities, but it's a simple concept that we want to own our own power. We want to own our own utility. And just for Attorney Grant here, when we talk about potentially bringing in a third party, because I was the president of my local, I completely stand with organized labor in everything that I do here, but I do see a... friction a little bit here where we have an entity. I think it is possible. I'll say this. I think it is possible for a good employer, which WeEnergies may be, I can't speak to that, but we have a possibility for a good employer to be a bad member of the community. I think that's what's going on here. And so, you know, those two truths. And so, you know, I mean, like... So we want to just honor that, and we want to honor what the workers have there. I haven't heard that from, I mean, there have been WeNergy's employees that have told me WeNergy is not a good employer. So I would challenge the union also to make sure that they're asking every single member what their thoughts are, too. the third party entity that we could bring in that is legally possible, as you've identified, for us to manage the data operations to avoid Act 10 concerns. And just for everybody in the audience and everybody listening, Act 10 is the law that strips Wisconsin's public sector workers from collective bargaining to have contracts similar to what IBEW has with WeEnergies. But there wouldn't be anything legally stopping these workers of WeEnergies from themselves forming a worker co-op to manage the day-to-day operations, cut out the boss entirely, legally forming a worker co-op that works with the union to have the same wages or better wages and benefits than We Energy currently has. Is there anything that you've found in the statutes that prohibits something like that as we move forward?

There's nothing that I have found in any statutes that prohibits that. The obligations of any third party management entity really depend, you know, their primary legal obligation as you know, if they are acquiring these employees and they intend to take on all of the currently unionized workforce that was within the acquisition, they have an obligation to at the very least come to the bargaining table with those workforces. Now, they are not legally obligated to honor the collective bargaining agreement as it currently stands, but they are obligated to go to the table with the union, which in any possible world could result in a better collective bargaining agreement. So there is really nothing legally that stops a third-party managing entity. It is a matter of the will of the third-party managing entity.

And we can build that will through worker power on the job site. I'll just comment that. I'm interested for a question for Ursula, because the issue has come up when I've talked to constituents and people about this issue of small towns. And the narrative being, oh, well, you know, this works for Lily White, rural Wisconsin, to have a, you know, Lily White, Jefferson, Wisconsin, to have a municipal utility. But, you know, big, scary Milwaukee, if this is going to be messed up here in Milwaukee, is the narrative that the right wing, and I'm sure talk radio is going to be, you know, going to probably take that and clip it and put it up on 1130 a.m. sometime soon, too. But so that's the narrative, right? Is it like, oh, this works in small towns. The biggest one we have in Wisconsin is Manitowoc, which I believe is just over 40,000 people, so barely a drop compared to what we have as far as population. But you made a comment to me one time that I'd be curious if you could elaborate more on, that some of the reasons that we don't have more of these big city utilities is because of the political will that the utility industry has to squash these things, specifically like in Cleveland when Dennis Kucinich was the mayor, how they actually tried to wrestle the Cleveland utility from the city and put it back in private hands. I'm not saying you need to be familiar with that situation, but can you just – is that what you're seeing? Is that what you guys are seeing, that there's a political – this is more of a political fight regarding with big cities?

Yes, absolutely. And I think part of the reason that big cities are often run by investor-owned utility or served by investor-owned utilities are that when electricity first began, I guess, the investor-owned utilities were willing to serve those large communities because they were profitable and they weren't willing to serve smaller communities. So that's why public power utilities started in small and rural electric cooperatives started in small communities because the investor-owned utilities weren't willing to serve them. That was the only way they could get power. So that's why you see a lot of large utilities are currently served by investor-owned utilities. We have seen a handful that have transitioned from investor-owned utilities to public power, but they don't because the incumbent utility will lose a lot of money if they were to form a public power utility. By Milwaukee forming a public power utility, they're losing a million customers. they're more willing to give up a community of 20,000 customers than they are a larger community. So they're going to fight it much harder. They're going to, there will be lawsuits, there will be PR campaigns, and you have to be prepared for that. But they're not going to give up easily because it's a lot of profit, a lot of customers, a lot of revenue that they're going to lose by losing these larger cities.

I would like to add to our experience in the Public Service Commission docket work the last four years has made it really, really clear and attempts to prohibit. WeEnergy's use of rate payer dollars to effectively lobby against public interest. So they're making campaign and political donations. They are slapping their name on any building, even if that building has to do with, I don't know, like climate science or public health, which is, again, insane. They're using our money, right, to do all their PR stuff. In some cases, we discovered that they're paying their attorneys over $3,000 an hour. Or $1,000 an hour. Regardless, it's insane, right? But that's not their money. That's our money. But I think it's really important, on the one hand, to note that that's a reckless use of public funds for private gain that also really warps and distorts our political system. So it becomes really difficult to find political solutions. In a situation where you have such thorough corporate capture of regulatory agencies and the legislature by extension.

Thank you so much for that Brian. So my question to the IBEW would be that we seem to have the bones of a path here to honor what you guys have with WeEnergies, if not improve it for the day to day worker. And so we have this path and If we are able to outline and find even more about this path and clarify it, will the IBEW publicly support this?

I can't really comment whether or not if they're going to support it or not. The IBEW's best interest is really just getting the best contract and benefits for its members. That's the only thing I can really say to that.

Does a community benefit come into your guys' considerations?

Again, that's not going to be a question for me. Sorry.

Okay. Okay. What I've seen with my brothers and sisters in the IBEW across this country is that they've politically joined the utilities to oppose these things. For example, in Maine, the question of public ownership was on the ballot in Maine. In addition to the utilities spending on a misleading ad campaign, the IBEW joined with millions of dollars expended out of its political action committee as far as the Vote No campaign in Maine. Are you aware of... Any place in the United States where the IBEW has supported public power, a public power endeavor?

I am not aware of that, no. Again, I'm a vice chair in the union, and I'm an operations dispatcher, so that's about the level I have.

I want to make sure these questions get put out there. We stand in solidarity with you, brother. We want every dispatcher to have a better job. We just want the CEO to not have a job. Thank you for that, you guys. That's literally what we're arguing for. Our case is not against any member of the IBW. I think a lot of the members of the committee are disappointed with IBW's continued support of WeEnergies publicly. It's lockstep support. And also, frankly, IBEW standing with the construction of data centers, its support for AI. I think a lot of people are disappointed in that because we want to be in solidarity with you all, but we're not seeing solidarity for the community from the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers at this time. We think there should be. That's how we build the worker-run economy that we want. I'm very frank about that. That's how we build it. When we all stand together and when one union says that my interests come before the rest of the community, everybody sees that. When one union says... AI data centers are so important that we have to have the political will to build them and construct them. And I don't begrudge anybody building the data centers right now. I do not begrudge the day-to-day worker at a data center because they have a job and they need to feed their families too. But as an institution, I would call on the IBEW to join the rest of communities to oppose data centers and join us in opposing WeEnergies. I will say, to the RBW's credit, the DSA has met with you guys. We've had conversation. There's not been a closed door. I can really appreciate that here. I just want to offer these things. We have a legal path. We have a legal path for the union to set up a worker co-op and get the best deal it can from that co-op. It is legal for worker-run co-ops to have union contracts, so that might Sound a little strange, but that is a legal arrangement that could be created under existing law where you guys could set the wages and benefits that you want, and then we could have a managing entity. And that's until we get Act 10 overturned, which I think may happen. So it, like, and then, you know, then we can have you join the, you know, and IBW can have a contract with the city. To the question of... The grid, because I do want to come back, and I think maybe Ursula can speak to this. The question of the grid, like, I mean, I really appreciate what WeEnergy has been saying, that they're more efficient, you know, grid-wide. I mean, that's the case for taking over the entire grid across this entire state or nation, frankly, and bringing all of it under public ownership. But, Ursula, like, maybe you can comment, like... For example, LA is the largest municipal utility in the country. They probably have a ring of suburbs that's with PG&E. I believe PG&E's service territory abuts LA. I'm forgetting the exact name of their utility, but abuts LA. And I think I know some people from the public comment are going to be sharing some stories about LA Power and Light as well. Like there's, you know, how has L.A. been as far as its ability to, the Palisades fire happened? I mean, how did the public power utility respond to that? And how does it respond on a day-to-day, even if it is an island amidst PG Pacific Gas and Electric's service territory?

Well, I mean, I would say, you know, once again, it comes down to that local oversight. And, you know, when there are issues within the community or the utility, the utility has to respond. Because customers are there demanding answers. And the CEO and all the employees live and work in the community. They can walk up to the CEO of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the grocery store. You know, they have immediate access to them. They can call the mayor. And that is... that encourage it forces the utilities to address the needs that that are of a concern and of course there are there are wildfires in la as well and they have to address them but they have done a really good job restoring and rebuilding their system since that last wildfire and we actually we have our conference and national conference coming up starting tomorrow and we have the interim general manager from los angeles department of water and power coming to talk about how they went through that restoration effort and what they've learned and how can other public power utilities learn from them so that's it the public power network is really strong they We learn from one another, they're willing to share best practices, and that's what APPA is there to do, is to make sure that public power utilities have an opportunity to learn from one another.

Thank you so much. And it seemed, I mean, there was mutual aid from what I had read from some of your materials that when the L.A. wildfires happened, there was mutual aid from other municipal utilities that came in. We have municipal utilities around the state of Wisconsin as well. We have WPPA. And I would appreciate you explaining a little bit more about that because that's, as a joint action agency, they build generation, work with municipal utilities. Like, so there's already, I mean, please confirm this, there's an entity right now in Wisconsin that exists today that a municipal utility in Milwaukee could link into for support and generation facilities and other, could you please just elaborate more on WPPA?

Yeah, so joint action agencies are essentially they're groups of public power utilities that come together for power supply. So WPPI Energy is a joint action agency that has members. I believe they have 50 or more members in Wisconsin and surrounding states. But there are joint action agencies all across the country. There are some in And whether you were served by WPPI Energy, there is American Municipal Power in Ohio. There are several in Minnesota. And so those are opportunities. So you don't have to build your own power supply. And joint action agencies can serve small communities, but they also serve Los Angeles Department of Water Power, Pasadena. A lot of those larger California utilities are served by the Southern California Public Power Authority. So it's not a unique community. situation. It's all across the country, and they provide both power supply, but many of them provide additional services, whether it be energy efficiency programs, it may be safety training. They've They provide a number of resources to help public power utilities provide better service to their customers.

So this wouldn't be Milwaukee just going it alone. You have like 80 staff and your offices in Washington area that service public power utilities. And so I just want to confirm that the level of expertise that WE Energies may have because of their larger size can be... We can provide an equal support for a public power entity in Milwaukee as well.

Absolutely. And public power utilities hire from the same pool of employees and individuals that investor-owned utilities hire from. Many of the general managers or CEOs of our utilities come from investor-owned utilities and vice versa. So it's not like there's just an employee pool for investor-owned utilities and co-ops and public power utilities. It's everybody. So you're pulling from the same workforce that WE Energies is pulling from. And then, like I said before, the public power community, there are 2,000 public power utilities in the U.S. They have over... probably over a million, I don't know how many employees I have off the top of my head, but hundreds of thousands, if not more, employees. They come together. They support one another through mutual aid. We have events where they come together. We have our national conference where we have almost 2,000 people coming this weekend to hear from other public power utilities, network, make connections so they can call each other when there is a crisis. Or they just need... help they have questions and appa can can be a convener for that but you also have the municipal electric utilities of wisconsin they're in a state association here in wisconsin that represents the wisconsin utilities you have the joint action agency so there's a really strong network within public power for support and resources to assist thank you so much

I may have further questions that come up, but I know, Mr.

Chair, I want to let other people ask questions.

Any further questions from members of the board before we go to public commentary? Just a quick question here. So if we go to this model of publicly owned utility in Milwaukee, it doesn't mean Milwaukee has to build its own power plant, right? They can buy on the open market. So can you elaborate on that? Because some people may be scared, oh, we have to build our own power plant now.

Yeah, absolutely. The vast majority of public power utilities do not own generation. Some of them own small peaking units, but very few own generation themselves. They buy it on the open market or they work through joint action agencies or partner with other public power utilities even. So definitely... you can own some generation and sometimes public power utilities are more inclined to maybe have solar generation or wind generation or renewable generation locally. But it's really the decision that the community makes on whether you have that or whether you purchase it on the open market. And that's where the feasibility study is an important part of that. It can look at what the options are and what is important to you as a community and work that into the feasibility analysis and determine what the costs would be if you chose to invest in whatever you would like to invest in.

Yeah, and we energies have been particularly bad, I understand, in buying renewable energy from individuals who've put solar panels under a roof. And so with this model, it may be easier to have solar panels on housing where this new entity would buy it.

That's definitely a possibility once again if the community wants that that's what they keep the utility can do if they choose to And and I believe all mr.

Chair, I believe all the woman Taylor is on the board I also have her question in my text messages. I could ask as well. Um She had a shit a question about um, or does she want to Yeah Thank you so much

for letting me ask this question. I guess I am excited about the idea of possibility of possibly having a public power utility company, but My main concern would be not with that, but with the everyday citizen who has high bills. So that's why this topic would be of importance to me, because there are houses that have outdated, inefficient run, furnaces and things like that. And so you have high bills because of that. And so how does having a public power utility company help to make that better for the everyday citizen that has a high bill? Basically because they're renting. How does that help them? Or how would that affect them?

I mean, once again, it really comes down to if that's an issue that's important to the community, then public power utilities all across the country offer different services. Every community is different. They may have low-income programs. They may have programs where they go in and renovate buildings. renovate the HVAC or have contracts with companies that can go in to do that. That's where each community is able to make the decision themselves. Obviously, a large investor-owned utility can't customize the services for every single community they serve when they serve multiple communities across many states often. So that's where public power really, it allows you to decide what you want to focus on. And if that's important to the community, then you can develop those services to offer them to your community. That's exactly what public power is. You can customize your services to meet the needs of your customers.

Thank you. And to piggyback on that, Mr. Chair, if I may, for Brian, you've participated a lot in these dockets before Public Service Commission. Can you confirm for me kind of the mechanism here? Like, the utility makes proposals to the PSC, and then the PSC adjudicates those proposals. So... I'm imagining that we could make a proposal to the PSC to make it easier and better for low-income customers to keep the lights on here in Milwaukee or potentially even have a shut-off moratorium like I believe is being practiced in L.A. right now with their municipal utility. I mean, you've seen different proposals. What have you seen as far as the gamut and the possibility that we have for proposals to the PSC? I believe we'd still have to go through them as a municipal utility.

Yeah, I mean, I think... To some of what we were talking about earlier, the regulatory capture by the investor-owned utility of the entity that is supposed to regulate it is a structural problem, right? And so you have, and the Department of Natural Resources is implicated in this as well. And of course, the legislature, because they all kind of pass the buck, right? They say, well- You know, I can't really do that or if we do do that vote with our like with the data and with community concern and with etc They will get fired because the legislation the legislature confirms Appointments to the Public Service Commission. So that's one problem, right? There's a structural issue about the regulatory system that just confers advantage to people who already have power and access so that's a big problem specifically to your point around like so what is our experience in the dockets been well that's that's resist like that's resistance right we do not want things to happen like rate increases so we'll go argue against that i would say pretty compellingly the outcome of that first rate case in 22 22 when walnut way held its ground forced the Public Service Commission to mandate the utility, WeEnergies, and some other intervening parties, including Wallet Way, to enter what became a three year Conversation, I shouldn't downplay it. It was an investigative docket around affordability. How are we going to collectively negotiate the terms of a low income affordability program that actually addresses the scale of the need of the utilities captive customers? It's a ridiculous sentence that I just said, right? Yeah. Okay, so making sure people are clocking that. Because that then falls back to, okay, so if resistance is really hard, if what culminates from that three year, nearly three year process is a series of recommendations that PSC staff makes to the commissioners, then we're not there. Because people's bills aren't getting any less. Right? People's bills aren't going down, they're only going up. So we actually haven't accomplished anything in that arena except for the realization that we need to do more than resist. We have to build. Right? So that we're, and the PSC is proactive in offering grants for feasibility studies around solar generation. Right? So Walnut Way is going to build at some point in the short order a megawatt of solar in Lindsay Heights. But how does that translate into immediate relief for residents of Lindsay Heights? Well, that's really complicated legally. The ownership structures are complicated. Why? Well, again, because our political system has been held hostage by the dictates of private capital and Gail Clapper.

And so I guess what I'm positing to you is that we could, as a municipal utility, then make our own positive proposals to the PSC. You haven't seen anything that's blocked a good idea from being proposed by a utility, except the utility investors not wanting to make good proposals. Right.

Well, I mean, because, and as they say, the system is so ridiculous, it's actually very, very brittle. It's actually not all that resilient if the public knows the pressure points. This is a really good pressure point. Now some people will say this doesn't make any sense because if we do this, then that means, despite everything in your presentation, they'll assume, conclude prematurely, that then that means, well, we're just going to have to contract re-energies to operate the whole thing, and then they can charge us whatever they want, and then we're going to lose money. And some people are running that argument, right?

Yeah, that's correct.

No, it lacks imagination. It also lacks facts. So we can't listen to those people, right? We can't listen to people who are saying, I don't know, we haven't done this before, when down the block they've done it successfully for decades. We can't listen to those people who say, well, let's not use our imagination, or let's not believe in the people to think together to solve their own problems. We're going to build a megawatt of solar in Lindsay Heights, and we're going to figure out a way, again, this is your point, to the Public Service Commission. We've got a really good idea on how to connect that into The current energy grid, and then because we don't have community solar enabling legislation, right? Because we can't, we have to figure out another way to channel a bill credit to people who live in the Lindsay Heights neighborhood improvement district. But that's what it'll be, right? We'll generate this power, we'll store some. We'll sell what we can back, and what we make, we then distribute as a bill of credit to the residents living there, bringing down people's energy, right? Also, let's talk about comprehensive solutions, because we can't think about this in isolation. The energy system dictates, I mean, a friend of mine is writing a book about energy policy, and you can tell the history of the world just through looking at the oil tankers, right? Mm-hm. Or Abby Martin just released an incredible documentary about the United States military complex is the largest consumer of fossil fuels. Watch that. But the comprehensive. If this is not a comprehensive approach, it is going to not be as effective as it could be otherwise.

That's why we would want to have a citywide discussion about this and a citywide utility. And I invite the countywide discussion, too. Alderman Baumann's point, I think, is really salient. We may be constructed by statutes on that because 197 is only for municipalities. But I believe 198, which we haven't fully explored, but Chapter 198 provides for multiple municipalities to join together. Is that correct?

That is my understanding, yes.

Okay, so there are possibilities there as well. And I, yeah, sorry, Mr. Sheriff. No, no, you're doing fine.

I'm just saying, like, if we're having this discussion because an evil corporate actor is making lives difficult for everybody, workers, everybody, remember the hands that raise? Yes. on an unexpected expense, then it makes sense that we would be having this same conversation about any other system that delivers necessary benefit to the public, right? So if we're talking about it in terms of energy and we energies, why would we not also be talking about it, right? So I just, we've got to stress that all of this is connected and the problems are systemic and we have the power to figure out and advance solutions and I applaud this effort as a really encouraging step in that direction. Thank you so much.

I have two questions. Does establishing a municipal public utility take you out from under the Public Service Commission regulation?

No, it does not. It is still under the PSC.

And does that happen in some states?

There are only 12 states that public power utilities are regulated by the Public Service Commission, so it's unique, but there are 11 other states that do that as well.

Okay, thank you. And my other question, just out of curiosity, have there been any municipalities that had public utilities that have gone the other direction, that had privatized?

They're half, yeah. And once again, there's ownership changes in either direction are rare. They're pretty even. And it's also very small communities that typically have not been maintaining their system. They usually sell to a rural electric cooperative, actually. They very rarely sell to an investor-owned utility. It's almost always a rural electric cooperative that surrounds them, and they're those small communities that it's easier for them to sell to the co-op. So that does have, changes happen in both directions, but there's no huge movement in either direction, to be honest.

And that did, I'll just offer that that did happen in Wisconsin when we had 82 municipal utilities. We went down to 81. It was a rural community. I'm forgetting the name right now, but there was a rural community that decided it was a town of 600 people, and they decided, why are we doing this separately when we have a, and so they made a decision democratically to dissolve that and join, I believe, the rural cooperative. I believe it was Dairyland that they joined up with. Yep.

Can I also add, the existence of the Public Service Commission and the sort of uniqueness of their regulating public power, it could actually be a real advantage too. As much as I complain about the Public Service Commission, and they're valid complaints, they know it. They're brilliant, you know what I mean? They're really, really smart, dedicated people, public servants that are committed to doing things correctly, right? So they are rigorous and they will accept good ideas, right? I think it's, again, not about individuals working in institutions, but rather the institutions themselves just structurally don't allow for the best ideas, the best methods, the best data to prevail, so. I think under different circumstances, under different structural arrangements, that regulatory relationship would actually be extremely beneficial as another layer of oversight and regulation on top of the local institutions.

Okay, I think we can go to public comment. We're almost on schedule.

And Mr. Chair, I believe a few of our experts do need to leave at some point.

Well, the experts are welcome to stay or go, whatever your schedules require, because we will use the standing mic for public comments, so the folks at the table can stay at the table if they wish to. So we're trying to close this off at noon, so that gives us 65 minutes to hear public testimony. I'm going to try to restrict, but we have 46 minutes. form is filled out for public testimony. If folks have the same basic message for us, you're entitled to be brief. There's no requirement that we reinvent the wheel every 46 times that we testify here. And so we will go in the order that they were collected, and please use the standing mic, and we will jump right into it. Again, do we have the timer? We're going to try to put folks on a two-minute time sequence here out of respect for everybody. So for everybody, almost everybody can be heard. But we're trying to get 42 in in 65 minutes, so that's a little under two minutes average.

Okay, let me get the old glasses out here.

Okay, first up is Marlo Aaron. Okay. And Mr. Chair, if you read the second or third name too, then they can line up. Okay, yeah, people can line up. And John McIntyre after that, and Lisa Cottrell after that.

Hello. I live in River West. I'm a tutor. I work for a historic theater. I have a degree in media studies. I am not here with a group, unless you consider my neighbors or friends who can't be here because they work a nine-to-five. It has been a long time since I could afford to work one job. And one of the things that I really struggle with is with our bills. With we energies, we've seen constant rate hikes despite $1.6 billion in profit last I heard for we energies. I know the CEO has also talked about the $0 paid in taxes. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that. And thinking about the future, I don't want to beg for mercy from WE Energies when it comes to deciding rates. We have constant outages, constant gas leaks. I've survived three gas leaks at home now. One of the things we know that's happening due to climate change, Tornado Alley is shifting further east. Even in Milwaukee, which normally has been well protected by the lake, we are seeing much more common, like large storms damaging trees and infrastructure. and i do think it's ironic that the we energies representative talks about the city taking a gamble when we energies is insisting that we as a city allowed data centers to foist the risks of data center center credit requirements onto regular rate payers as reported by wisconsin watch My background in media studies, one of the things that I really want to be able to communicate, I know I have a short amount of time, is to speak about the tech bubble. Obviously, technology is sort of a hot moment right now. Commerce is flowing quickly and intensely, but it is a volatile market. And everybody right now is trying to get theirs before this bubble bursts. The tech comes on quick, is funded frequently by actors in the defense sector, rarely sees widespread adoption, but is propped up by the private interests. And I just want to ask how it can be that we live in a time where it's treated as an inevitability that the infrastructure for data centers will be built, but we can't imagine building an infrastructure for publicly owned utilities. What I hope for... What I hope for is a stronger and more resilient community in Milwaukee. I love my neighbors. I love this city. I love living here and I would love to see the wealth and the extraction. I don't want this wealth from the city to continue to be extracted to we energy shareholders. There's an obvious economic benefit to keeping money in the city and public goods have value far beyond their economic value. There's a reason that we value public public transit, public education, public utilities should fall under that same value for what they provide to us as a society. I thank you so much for your time.

Hi, thanks for the time. My name's John McIntyre. I'm proud to say that I live in the city of Milwaukee. I reside at 3941 South 68th Street. I'm also really proud to say that I'm a licensed electrician in the IBEW. My state license number is 128-5278-JE, and my union card number is 7438735. But I'm here speaking just as myself, as a resident, a taxpayer, and as a member of the Milwaukee DSA, and as a canvasser for the Power of the People campaign. I'm here to support, I'm here to voice my support and dare I say to demand public power for the city of Milwaukee. I believe the choice for the consumer is clear, but let's talk a little bit more about the impact on the workers. I would like to invite my union brothers and sisters represented by Local 2150 in both the outside line work and P&I sectors, the professional and industrial sectors to review our plan. And to remain open to the opportunity to negotiate their well-earned and well-deserved improvements in wages, benefits, and working conditions with the city rather than sitting across the bargaining table from a massive for-profit corporate entity. I suspect that the bargaining position and the contractual options available improve for workers under our plan while keeping costs low and improving service quality, including shortening the duration of service outages. i think this makes it a win-win situation for both uh our aries workers and our residents i think the only losers in this proposition are the executives and the shareholders i don't see them in this room so i take seriously this is a little bit of a shibboleth for my brother who decided to not stay but i take seriously my obligation my promise my agreement to further the purposes for which the ibew is instituted my promise to bear true allegiance to it And to never sacrifice its interests in any manner. And I see no reason to believe that our public power plan for the city of Milwaukee is contrary to that solemn promise. I would not be fighting for a plan that sells out or sells short by outside and PNI brothers and sisters of the IBEW, nor the inside wiremen of local 494 who are employed in ongoing generation upgrades, projects at WeEnergy's facilities. Continuing to allow WeEnergies to extract profits from city residents sells us all out. For me, the choice is clear. The Common Council should move urgently towards replacing WeEnergies with a publicly owned utility provider in solidarity.

Thank you for that. We can have a couple of folks line up. Andy Barber, Ann Steinberg, and Amy Donahue.

Hi, good morning. My name is Dr. Lisa Cottrell. I'm a Milwaukee resident and a clinical health psychologist. You've heard today about the greed of WE Energies and the economic and service benefits of publicly owned utilities. Those include more rapid transition to renewables, a benefit to public health. Consider, then, the grievous and even fatal human cost of profit-driven energy. Think of my patient, Cora. Cora had several medical conditions she worked very hard to manage. She came to me because she still struggled with chronic pain and sleep problems. As we worked to improve her sleep, I learned that the nighttime temperature in her Milwaukee home was reaching 90 degrees many nights, well above the safe temperature for healthy adults. She had air conditioning, but she would not use it because the cost of running it had become too high. But the cost to health and well-being from sleep deprivation that results from high nighttime temperatures is even greater. I've seen many patients whose health is damaged as a consequence of bills so high that a healthy home environment cannot be maintained. This incalculable human cost compels us to replace the profit-driven we energies with a public utility and truly serve the public good.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Andy Barber. I'm co-chair of the Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America. I just want to share some more facts and figures from our research that we've conducted in our campaign. Most of us are familiar with these as rate payers, but WE Energies was granted in late 2024 a 6.9% rate increase that affected all customers in 2025 and an additional 4.8% increase for the year 2026, which is a total of 12% in these two years. And these rate increases, as well as the year prior, unsurprisingly helped to make Milwaukee the second most expensive major U.S. city for utilities, with average monthly bills of more than $580 a month and over $4,350 a year per household. For the past several years, WE Energy's rates per kilowatt hour have been 30% to 40% higher than public power rates from Wisconsin public power utilities. And the PSC that we've been talking about does guarantee WE Energy's a profit rate of 9.8%. And this limit doesn't even in practice mean that WE Energy's is capped at this rate of 9.8%. The utility provides a yearly estimate, which the PSC reviews and approves. And then WE Energy then sets the rates accordingly However, of course, in the event that costs are lower or revenue is higher than anticipated, the actual rate of return is going to be higher than that actual target rate of 9.8%. So the decision makers at companies such as WE Energies are still very much incentivized to engage in profit-maximizing behaviors despite this quote-unquote profit limit. And in Wisconsin, residents with private utilities experience 108 minutes of downtime in a typical year versus 48 minutes a year for those served by public utilities in the state. Last but not least, I do want to say that WE Energies has committed to eliminating coal usage by 2032. is striving to reach a carbon neutrality by the year 2050, which these commitments fail to meet even the more modest targets set by the state of Wisconsin, which has a goal of carbon-free electricity by 2050, and of course are still far below the limits that we need in order to actually meaningfully fight climate change in this community. So all this to conclude that we need democratic control over our utility here in Milwaukee and our economy as a whole, I would argue. Thanks so much.

My name is Ann Steinberg. I live in Milwaukee. I didn't prepare remarks, but one thing I wanted to add that I haven't heard is that WeEnergies is guaranteed profits for making decisions that are bad. I watched them build a power plant that was coal-powered when the community said they didn't want it. It was a bad economic decision. Now that plant is no longer needed. It's way too expensive to use coal. And the ratepayers have to pay... keep for their mistakes so over and over they've made decisions that were bad for our community and they've profited from it and I think that's one of the reasons we need public control and also the PSC doesn't listen to environmental or health concerns and I think municipal owned utility would put our interests first so thank you thank you

Ava Danzer and Brian Tinsky and... Did you say Amy Donahue before? Yes, yes.

You're reading the next folks. Got it. Thanks. So yeah, I'm Amy Donahue. My pronouns are they, she, he, Rowling. I live in the River West neighborhood. I'm a candidate for public office and a member of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, the Green Party, the Healthcare Workers Organization, Healthy Climate Wisconsin, and the Milwaukee DSA. Today, I'm speaking in absolute support of the creation of a municipal public energy utility. I'm speaking as a clinical healthcare worker and as a librarian grounded in evidence-based practice. What that means is working at the intersection of knowledge gained through research, expert opinion, and communities and individuals with lived experience. Professionally and politically, I am an advocate for true informed consent, which includes having choices, knowing what each choice means, and having the resources to make choices responsibly. Everything I've read and learned and talked with people about tells me that a public power utility is the evidence-based solution we need and has my informed consent, along with that of the thousands of Milwaukeeans who have been working for this for years. Thanks for the PTTP campaign. And rest assured, we'll keep that up and we'll keep working to bring more folks in. In addition to my healthcare background as a person with asthma, a parent, and a community organizer, I also bring my personal perspective and argument that a public power utility is what we need to democratically and directly build clean energy in support of public health, emergency preparedness and response that is knowledgeable and responsible to our community, and keep costs affordable and transparent. Change can be hard and even scary, but the people of this community, as was being brought up after I wrote these words, are ready to support each other, including the We Energy's workers who could be impacted and the democratically elected leaders who are from our communities and accountable to us. So thank you to the many people who worked to get us in this room together, to the members of this board, to the experts who showed up today, and to all the working class people who are here in person and in spirit. The power of the people won't stop, and I'm so grateful to be a tiny part of this work that demonstrates what that phrase means, and proud to commit to continuing whatever comes next.

Very good, thank you. Give a dancer.

Okay.

Who's up next after that? Brian Atinsky. Okay. Please.

All right.

You're going to get blinded right behind me.

I'm looking at you.

Hi, my name is Ava. I'm a UWM student and I wanted to talk about my experience with WE Energies as a college student. When I was in my old apartment, I had four other roommates And during the winter time, I was wearing sweaters and multiple layers of sweatpants every night because it was freezing in my apartment. We found out that my landlord had let a broken window stay open throughout the duration of winter. And our electric bill, because of this broken window, was $600 a month split between us. This is more so a matter of bringing up the point of autonomy in our ability to live. My landlord told us to stay warm when we tried to address it, and we didn't have a pathway to actually bring up the problem again or to lower the price of electricity. So I guess The point I'm trying to make is that this is autonomy that all of us in this room want to gain, and this is the pathway of doing it. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. So after Mr. Otinsky, we'll have Samid Mendoza. The handwriting is not completely clear to me, but thank you. All right, he knows who he is. All right. And then Autumn Pickett. And after that, Quim Gordon. Quinn Gordon.

Okay, yeah. President and members of the council, my name is Brian Atinsky. I'm a Milwaukee homeowner and WeEnergy's customer. And I want to give you a personal account of what happens when you try to move to renewable resources and extricate yourself from the WeEnergy's monopoly. So seven months ago in December, I had solar panels professionally installed on my roof by a licensed company. The work was done correctly. The panels are installed safe and ready. And they've produced nothing. So not one kilowatt hour. The only thing between me and my own getting energy from my solar panels is WeEnergy's approval queue. My meter sat in the same spot for years. The moment I tried to generate my own power, though, We Energies decided that that location wasn't acceptable and demanded I move it, which triggered a new poll, a new line, a fresh round of approvals. The obstacle appeared exactly when I stopped being a pure customer and started competing with their sales. My installer could do the physical work in three days, they told me. The other seven months sits on the desk of We Energies with no deadline, no consequences. They burned my entire peak season and have given me nothing. And when they finally pay me for my excess power, it'll be 4 cents a kilowatt hour. I've heard now 3 cents it's moving down to, while they sell it to my neighbors for 17 and or 18 cents a kilowatt hour. And not only that, but if you know anything about solar panels and efficiency degradation over its time period, that's seven months that my panels have been sitting there up in the sunlight degrading their power efficiency, and I haven't even yet been able to start using it. So this is what a monopoly with no reason to hurry looks like. And Chapter 197 is how we take that timeline back. Please support it. Thank you.

good morning my name is samuel mendoza me and my spouse just recently moved to the city of milwaukee about a year and a half but before that i was living in the city of los angeles i have nine years of experience working for the city of public works five of them specifically for construction inspection but the rest of that with street lighting and also street tree maintenance So I am pretty familiar with the way that Los Angeles Department of Water and Power work. Basically, they are about 12,000 employees in that department, which is about 20% of the entire city employee departments. And basically, their whole... model of working is basically they work everything in-house they have their very specific tree trimmers their specific maintenance workers uh... equipment operators equipment maintenance operators steel workers welders cement finishers basically everything that they do is in-house so they're completely responsible with what they do and they're paid very well because a lot of that comes with the risk of working around high voltage lines and just other hazardous issues. And also they provide a lot of training for people who have enough experience to get started but not enough to work on their own. The issue of it affecting the employees from we energies is basically non existence. The most the most paid employees for the city are people who worked at L. A. D. W. P. I've had the opportunity to work for them, but I knew that if I did end up taking a job with L. A. D. W. P. I probably wouldn't have moved, moved out of that department and not came up to be a city inspector. So, um, Basically, the employees are pretty much safe to be working in-house and also improving their skills and also bring in more people who can share with their, who can increase their experiences. Thank you. Yes, they are. Actually, no, we work with the MOU, Memorandum of Understanding, that do have kind of like a group of members who negotiate with the city departments. But basically there are chances where if the MOU does not meet the standards of what the employee reps are asking for, there have been times where there have been a strike and that has led to very contentious problems with the city. So usually those get resolved very quickly. Yeah, thank you.

And Mr. Chair, just to clarify, we do have, I mean, I'm seeing that there's multiple locals that represent, including IBW Local 11 that represents thousands of civil service workers in L.A. as part of their Department of, what was the name of it again? The Department of Water and Power? Yeah. Okay, yeah, so there are union locals that represent the multiple city departments.

Thank you for the correction. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Hey, y'all. Name's Autumn Pickett. I am one of the other co-chairs of DSA. I'm also a union organizer. So quick raise of hands if you are a DSA member in this room. Take a look around. Thank you. Thank you all for showing out. The real issue here that I think is kind of fundamental is democracy has eroded across this country. We feel it in our everyday life. And when we're talking about a public, you know, municipalization here, it's just proven across the board that you get lower rates, you get better uptime, we're actually able to take care of our workers, right? And so why aren't we doing this? Why has this not happened? We have 15,000 people who have signed on to petitions across the city. And then another quick check, do we have anybody from WE Energies in this room right now? Anybody who plans on testifying? They don't believe that they need to be in the room with us. They can buy the politicians on their own time like they've done with Sarah Rodriguez, like they've done with David Crowley, like they've done with Kelda Roys, who have all received money from WeEnergies. They don't believe they need to be here in the room where democracy actually happens, because they don't believe in democracy. They have a board of directors that is not elected with guaranteed profits, right? So it's a monopoly without say. And we're, what, like 10 days away or so from America's 250th birthday? Talk about taxation without representation. So we're here on this core principle of democracy, trying to rebuild something in this country here locally and from the ground up across the country. If you saw the news this morning, our electeds in New York won across the board. Democratic Socialists. Democratic Socialists are winning across this country. And it's not just this pop-up movement. It's because people realize that something fundamentally has to change. We're feeling it in our bones and we're organizing it day to day. The petrodollar is dying. Climate refugees are happening. We've talked about folks from LA having to move out in the midst of fires started by other utility companies. And meanwhile, WeEnergies is building more natural gas plants. They have two more on the slate right now. And they're trying to have us pay for their increased rates with the data centers. And so we have a limited amount of direct oversight that we can get with the PSC. But ultimately, we need to take it back. We need to rebuild democracy in this country. And this is how we start today. Thank you.

Once again to everybody, there's no requirement that you use all two minutes. We're trying to get everybody in by noon, and that's 40 minutes from now. All right.

Hello, good morning. I'm Quinn, and I am a MSOE student and member of DSA and YDSA. DSA is Youth Wing. Excuse me, sorry. A little bit worse. I live off campus, not too far from here. I rode my bike here this morning. In January, as I'm sure you all remember, Milwaukee faced an arctic blast that dropped temps down to a minimum of negative 13 degrees, negative 42 with wind chill. This blast was so bad that MSOE's campus shut down for several days. If you know MSOE, that doesn't happen very often. My roommate and I bundled up and mostly stuck to our rooms on the second floor. Heat rises, after all. Still, it came to thermostat around 68 degrees. Our electric bill for that month was $350. I thought, surely that can't be right. I was concerned my roommate was running a server in their bedroom or something. They're a computer engineer. They do stuff like that. But I asked, and nope. Then I emailed WeEnergy, thinking that there was a meter issue. And the support tech said that there was no way that could be the issue. Their meters are remotely reported. That can't be a problem. They offered to send me a energy efficiency kit, and I said, sure, sounds great. In the kit were two LED light bulbs, smart plugs, some window film, and a WeEnergies branded nightlight. How is a nightlight supposed to help me with my high heating bills? We have faced extravagant Keating bills, and I'm sure everyone in this room has. And what is WeEnergies doing with that money? Bribing our elected officials, apparently. According to the Milwaukee Courier, Lieutenant Governor and Governor candidate Sarah Rodriguez was one of four Democrats to vote yes on AB 191, a bill to repeal personal property taxes. That was later blocked by Governor Evers in part because it could exempt utility companies from millions of dollars in taxes on their infrastructure. After the vote, Rodriguez received a donation of almost $1,300, no, sorry, not $1,300, $13,000 from WEC Energies. WEC reported income of over a billion dollars last year and currently pays their executives over $32 million total. Okay, wrap it up quickly. Yep. As a ratepaying citizen, I urge the Common Council to replace them with a public utility that operates for the good of the people, not for profits. Thank you.

Next up is Representative Ryan Clancy. Following him is Tim Schafer from Gary and Madison's office. And following that is Brian Zacharis. Bryce Zacharis. All right. Come on up right. Yeah.

I'm Ryan Clancy, representative to Wisconsin's 19th Assembly District. I'm here to call for a publicly owned, democratically run utility in Milwaukee and an end to WeEnergies. And I am beyond grateful to see so many people show up in favor of this today. I was looking through my pictures this morning and I found one of my then seven-year-old and I surveying our neighbors back in 2021 for the Power of the People campaign. A lot has changed since then. My child is now 12 years old. They're in a different school. They have a much different fashion sense than they did several years ago. But a lot has not. They're still in favor of public power. And we're both very excited to see public power gain traction with this hearing here today. The clipboard they were holding in that picture five years ago noted that the person that we talked to had a, quote, very negative view of WeEnergies. That has certainly not changed in the last half decade because WeEnergies is built to fail the people of Milwaukee. We can reform it. We could force it to do its job a little bit better. But it is still an investor-owned utility designed not to deliver power to the people but profits to investors. Investor owned utilities have a built in profit motive and are driven to maximize profits for their shareholders over affordability, sustainability, and the actual urgent needs of people. That makes them as bad as any monopolistic corporation, but even worse, they do have a guaranteed nearly 10% rate of return on what they build. That's why they want more data centers and more giant gas plants to power them. That's why they'll never invest in their own infrastructure to increase uptime and keep many neighborhoods from having constant power outages. That's why they'll never make decisions that prioritize the environment over dollars. The profit motive is why they don't care if the decisions they make are in our long-term interest. That's why every few years they push for disproportionate increases to residential rates, because right now you and me and every other WeEnergy's customer pays for their perpetual expansion and inefficiency, whether it's needed or not. Public ownership would replace the pursuit of profits with democratic oversight, reliability, and affordability. This isn't hypothetical. 81 municipalities in Wisconsin already use this model. They see lower bills and enjoy better, more reliable service. We have the tools to do this. We know how it works. And we know it works in places with even fewer resources than here in Milwaukee. And the good news is this, WE Energies does not have the legal power to stay a damaging private entity forever. Chapter 197 in existing Wisconsin state law allows the municipality to buy and operate their local utilities. We just need the courage and action from people with the power to do it. That's all of you. For our part at the state, we're committed to codifying the end of Act 10 and ensuring that a public utility can employ... can employ and fairly compensate public union employees that could certainly happen after the creation of a co-op or third party entity. I'm a democratic socialist, though I know that at least some people in this room aren't. Public ownership and control of public goods is core to socialism, but it's also core to Milwaukee's history. And it, like democratic socialism, is an increasingly popular and powerful alternative to the obvious failures of the status quo like we energies. I welcome you to be our ally on this critical and clearly popular issue. I ask you to listen to the overwhelming testimony in favor of the public utility today and to give honest consideration to this practical and efficient idea. I'm very happy to stand with the Milwaukee DSA, their dedicated organizers for Power to the People, and everyone else stepping up for public power today. Thank you.

Thanks, Rep. Clancy. My name's Tim Schafer. I'm the Director of Communications and Constituent Services for Representative Darren Madison and the 10th Assembly District, including parts of Milwaukee already suffering under increasingly high energy costs, often unaffordably high energy costs, and unreliable service. I'm excited and honored to share this testimony on behalf of Representative Madison. Milwaukee and the entire state of Wisconsin are facing a clear, present, and mounting energy crisis. Many of my constituents are severely energy burdened, which means they're paying at least 10%, but up to 20% or even more of their income for utilities alone. With many others forced to survive on lower utility usage because they cannot afford to safely, comfortably heat or cool their homes. Even worse, there are constituents of mine that had their energy shut off entirely, and some who experienced long and frequent blackouts in their neighborhoods through no fault of their own. Meanwhile, WeEnergies refuses to transition to renewable clean energy at the pace and scale our climate crisis demands. This is deepening our energy crisis and entrenching our commitment to dirty energy sources. None of my constituents or yours can afford to lose the environment where they work, live, and play. And these are the stakes we're talking about today. So let me be very clear, every resident of Milwaukee deserves guaranteed access to a democratically controlled, affordable, reliable, and clean energy system. But as a for-profit investor on utility, WeEnergy is incompatible with that vision. We energies has failed to deliver on its promises of clean affordable energy and it will continue to fail because it is simply not built to meet those needs. It is instead an undemocratic monopoly, a for profit model that still incentivizes mass scale fossil fuel energy generation and distribution as others have noted. It currently provides only 6% of its energy for renewables while charging rates that are 30 to 40% more than utilities already working for Wisconsin, public utilities already working for Wisconsin. So while WeEnergies gets an almost 10% profit guarantee on most of its new infrastructure, as others have noted, to its shareholders' sole benefit, the residents of Milwaukee are left paying the financial, health, and environmental costs, and will be paying for outdated, dirty, new fossil fuel infrastructure for decades, with that cost felt for centuries. Our energy system does not have to work this way. 81 municipalities all across Wisconsin already have public power, and that already leads to cheaper energy rates and more reliable service. Okay, cool. These public power utilities right now provide 11% of Wisconsin's energy, powering over 300,000 homes and businesses. Milwaukee can prioritize our workers, community, and environment over corporate profits by embracing public power. And I look forward to working with the city of Milwaukee to make this idea a reality. Thank you all.

And if we could line up the next group, Cleopatra White and Lydia McDowell.

Thank you so much, members of the review board, as well as everyone else for being here today. My name is Bryce Zacharias. I'm a DSA member and the secretary of the Power to the People campaign. I am a teacher, and most importantly, I am also a concerned resident of this community. Oh, one thing that's been rolling around in my head as we've been hearing a lot of really wonderful, both professional and public testimony about why Chapter 197 needs to be used to replace we energies with a public utility. It's been a quote from one of our most prominent public figures in the city's history, which is Mayor Daniel Hone. When faced with the Great Depression, stock market failing, people losing jobs, businesses going simply under, Daniel Hone issued one main quote that's been sticking with me and I think is more pertinent today than it ever has been. It's that businesses may quit. Your government can't. So with that, I'm here to tell you that a business has already quit, and that is WE Energies and the people who make decisions for WE Energies, because they have quit caring about the people of Milwaukee. So I don't need to go too further into the profit motive of the 9.8% minimum guaranteed profit for this company, but I do want to incentivize that 9.8% of your bill, my bill, hell, our bills is guaranteed to not go to infrastructure improvements. It's guaranteed to not go to renewable energy programs. It is guaranteed not to go to the workers that are actually out there and doing all of these line improvements or keeping the lights on because that 9.8% is guaranteed, and this is a minimum guarantee, is guaranteed to line the pockets of some boardroom that is not even caring about us in this room. They don't see you, me, or any of us as anything other than a simply account number. Therefore, I am simply asking that we use Chapter 197. Once again, thank you for your time, and it is time for WE Energies to go.

Hello, my name is Cleopatra White. I'm just a regular middle class homeowner of the Milwaukee resident representing the Southgate side. I am here to just show my full support to a new energy infrastructure, its power, community support, accountability, and profits to be approved and managed by the people. I believe this is not a political party request or a movement, it's simply humanity. Every family and taxpayer deserves the right to have options, the control of their utilities, and to put the best interests, savings, programs, all infrastructures to the people over instead of the annual increase guaranteed profits of WE Energy's investors. I live on a block where our streetlights are almost out on a daily. I have been in my neighborhood Now for six years and I've seen and felt the financial squeeze and pressure burden as well as I'm sure everyone else here has. I am just a working class single mother, and with trying to juggle all my monthly expenses, I shouldn't have to choose between putting food on the table for my family or keeping the lights on. It's becoming more and more of a financial burden, so at this point, this is needed in the city of Milwaukee, and this is needed to be ran by the public. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Lydia McDowell, and I am a resident of Milwaukee's East Side. I have lived here now for six years, and I adore the city of Milwaukee, and that is exactly why I am here today. So it was referenced earlier, but when we faced serious cold fronts this past January, my home, which I do not own, I rent, I don't have control over the insulation, got so cold that my damp laundry froze to the floor. I had to pry it off of my floor. And when I call We Energies about the astronomical bill I got shortly after losing my job, their solution is, well, put some cling wrap over your windows. I need a system that protects me, my own, and that cares for my community. I am calling for transparency in prices because I am tired of paying over what money my husband and I can scrounge together every month towards a corporation that does not care for me and has multiple times in my life turned off my lights. I am tired. just ready for better representation from the government. And I call on you to do your job and to be bold.

Okay, next up is Octavio Leone.

I got Octavio Leone.

Okay, and after that is Katie Leone. Katie Titillard, and then after that is Blue Pelican. Have I got that correct? Okay.

Hi, my name is Luke W. Leon. I'm a student at UWM, and I'm also the co-chair of the Young Democrats of Socialist America at UWM. I mean, I've lived in college housing in apartments that have not good insulation, and I've also had to be the one who has their name down for the WeEnergies account. And monthly, it was not fun to get that in. I think that for so many of my peers who are struggling, who have to worry about being able to pay loans after they get out of school, I think it's disgusting for we energies to profit off of us as we're just trying to further our lives and improve ourselves and our future prospects. I also think that coming from A young generation who is going to have to face the effects of the climate crisis in full that we need to move to renewable energy and we energies is not going to do that for us. They have their goal set for 2050, which is much too late. We need to move now so that people of my generation have homes comfortable homes to live in in the future. Thank you very much.

Excuse me. My name's Katie Tallard. I used to live in Madison, and I moved here about three years ago. After moving here, I found the wages were much lower, yet the rent is higher, prices are higher, and my energy bill is going up every year. My energy bill is already uncomfortably high, and I think most Milwaukee residents agree that we don't need higher utility bills. Well, shareholders strip our natural resources and line their pockets. WeEnergies is known for making the wrong decisions in our community and then has us pay for their failures. It should be our right to choose what our utilities spend our money on. I strongly urge you to fight for a public utility in Milwaukee. Don't let WeEnergies leave us in the dark. Find the courage to do it.

Hi, my name is Blue Pelican. I am a DSA member and volunteer with Alex Brower's office, as well as a currently laid off electrician. So I want to talk to you about what our money's actually going towards. Because right now, We Energy's CEO on his own is making over $11 million. Meanwhile, there are multiple neighborhoods within this city that experience regular blackouts, especially during storms. We have no infrastructure that can withstand a basic Midwestern storm in many different neighborhoods. The fact that their CEO is making that much money, but they can't invest the money to make sure that our people have stable, strong, reliable service, it's a travesty and we all know at least me and my comrades know that the reason for that is because it is based on a profit motive it is a for-profit organization managing our utilities and that you can't have sorry I got tripped up there a little bit you can't have a profit motive company that's also working for the actual interests of the people. Because they're just not compatible. We need to take control of our public utilities and not just power, but water, internet, sewer systems, trash, all of it. This is just the first step. So I urge you today to build an organization that actually works on our infrastructure and actually builds a system that works.

Okay, next up is Ophelia Lange. Okay after that would be Jason Dernay And after that would be Sarah Zarling that possible, okay Of Sarah Zarling Ophelia Lehman. 2505 North Frederick. Again, no requirement that you use two minutes. We're trying to get everybody accommodated here.

Hello, hello. My name is Ophelia. I'm a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and also a proud member of the youth wing of the Milwaukee Democratic Socialist America. Clapping not required, but you can. I wanted to talk a little bit more about the student impacts of WE Energy's monopoly over the power in the city of Milwaukee. The enrollment rates at UWM are continuously and currently plummeting. And more importantly and more rapidly, the rates of black and brown enrollment are plummeting as well. UWM is a very important pillar of the Milwaukee community. That's where we get a lot of our teachers for MPS, for instance. or our doctors, or many other jobs that you see in the city of Milwaukee. Milwaukee needs UW-Milwaukee, and UWM needs Milwaukee. With the increasing, greatly increasing, WE Energy power bills that have been increasing over the years, and as I've experienced while working on the Power to the People campaign, have priced a lot of students out of going to school at UW-Milwaukee, which is supposed to be one of the more affordable schools in the UW system, contributing to this greatly decreasing enrollment rate. And I think now more than ever, it's way past the time to institute a public utility to lower those rates for not just UWM students, Citizens all across the city of Milwaukee as they, you know, fight to live affordably. This is not even to mention the climate crisis that WeEnergies is not taking appropriate action to. Thank you. Hot turn.

Hello, I'm Sarah Zarling. I am here as a WeEnergy's customer, single mother, and community advocate, and someone who aspires to live in Milwaukee. The reason why I can't is because of high rent, which is a whole other discussion. But I want to just say that I'm very thankful to you for... having this discussion and considering this because it's really very important and long overdue. I'm also happy to see your continued commitment to safety and protection for your community. The first time I spoke here was in 2015 about the oil trains with you. Yep, so keep her moving. I just want to say a few things. I think it's two plus two equals four that the only reason why renewable energy isn't further advanced is because simply oil and gas and utility companies don't want it. I work with a woman from Third Act, Wisconsin, who does solar tours of her home in Madison, and she said that one summer in July, her utility bill was minus $13. So community solar programs, public power programs, they do rooftop solar. It does work. The utility companies just simply don't want that because it doesn't align with their profit-driven incentives. So now that we have that out of the way, I have also spoken at recent PSC hearings about WeEnergy's rate increase cases. It's very easy if you just want to do the math over what you've been paying in your bills over the last few years. They have done three rate increases in three years in a row. And then you look at the profits of WeEnergy's and their executives in tandem and you can see Clearly, you know, do the math. And it's just obvious that they aren't looking out for us and that they really don't care about powering our world. Shutting off people's power is inhumane. And I've, yes, thank you. And I've helped to support. The energy burden movement here. I want to thank Brian with the web, if you notice my fantastic web notebook here. They're doing really wonderful work. I urge all of you to continue supporting them. And please, let's do the right thing and keep this moving. Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah. Next up is Audra Hale. After that, Allison Hockmuth. And after that, Ian Gunthe.

Hey, everybody.

My name is Audra Hale. I am or was one of the lead canvassers, lead field organizers for the Power of the People campaign. I've led a ton of the canvases. A lot of people in this room have come to a canvas that I have led, and I really appreciate all of the work and support that y'all have been doing for this campaign. Now I am the communications officer for Milwaukee DSA, but I just kind of want to talk about before all of that. I moved here with my wife and my son like three years ago, and one of the things we first noticed was how high the bills were. In Arkansas, where I'm from, we had everything bundled together, sewer, water, electricity, internet, all of that together. That cost me about $1,000 a month. For WeEnergies alone, my bill usually comes out to about $1,000 or $1,100 a month. And that's just for my tiny little house in Greenfield. So this campaign is one of the first things that I latched onto immediately when moving here. And I just want to say that the ability to get this done is there. We have the... Legal work all outlined with Chapter 197. There's a huge amount of people here who support this campaign. And honestly, we just need the willpower to do it. Similarly to in New York City with Zahra Mamdani, he was able to pass free childcare for two year olds as well as completely balance the budget without raising any property taxes or digging into any rainy day funds. The money is there. The model is there for how to do this. We just have to have the willpower to do it. And I just want to say the people united will never be defeated. Let's do this.

Good morning or good afternoon My name is Allison hook food. I'm an organizer I was an organizer with aft local 223 in Madison go unions But now I move back to Milwaukee I'm a educator in Milwaukee Public Schools and a member of MTEA now that I am eligible, so yay unions. But I'm here as an educator with many years of experience in an advanced degree in leadership. Just to remind everybody about the importance of buy-in and stakeholder relations and To some, this might seem like this is a harebrained idea. What are these crazy kids and their socialism? But this is a good idea. The future is now. The climate crisis is already happening right now. We have refugees from the West Coast and the East Coast coming to freshwater Great Lakes regions for a reason. And we should protect that. So just... From my perspective, from the perspective of strategic thinking and systems thinking, think about it. It makes sense. It's not crazy. It's logical, and it's needed, and it's the right thing to do. So follow your hearts, but think about why this is a good idea, because it truly, truly is.

Thank you, Allison. Thank you.

My name is Ian Gunther. I'm a resident of the River West neighborhood, an officer with Milwaukee DSA Labor Working Group, and today, as president of my union, I'm speaking on behalf of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Local 47. We represent the City of Milwaukee workers in the Departments of Neighborhood Services, City Development, the Assessor's Office, and the Milwaukee Water Works, our publicly owned water utility where I work as an electrical engineer. Last month, our union membership, after heavy consideration, decided unanimously to endorse the Power of the People campaign. Our members want a public energy utility because as public utility workers, we carry our love for the city every day and are more than capable of handling the task competently, efficiently, sustainably, and reliably. I want to highlight that there was a time when the labor movement stood united for what's best in our city. They formed a political movement that we now know of as the Sewer Socialists. The Sewer Socialists turned our government into a lean, powerful operation that deeply considered the weight of every single tax dollar to get the most for our residents. The transformational change that they made for our city is seen in our parks and infrastructure. That infrastructure may be in a rough state today due to the neoliberal and Republican cutbacks, but the fact that it has lasted over 100 years is a testament to the ambition of their vision for Milwaukee. We can, and I believe we will, rise again to make that happen so that every person prospers, including all of our IBEW Union siblings. who deserve a just and equitable transition to keep all they fought for in their contracts and more, including their status in their union. That is possible because, as a democracy, we can make it happen. We want what's best for all workers and not one step back. And I reclaim the word we from We Energies because it will take all of us to stand up against this injustice. We need every person viewing this to talk to your coworkers about forming or joining a union. Use your labor power to stand up for what's right in our politics and our economy. That is where our people's power truly fights and wins. Thank you and solidarity.

Rika Vanamotis. Excellent. And after that, Joel Cole, I believe. 1124 East Chambers. And after that, Amanda Isler.

Hi, my name is Rita Maniotis. I'm a Milwaukee resident, and also I'm with the Greater Milwaukee Green Party, which is a coalition partner of the Power to the People campaign, and we've helped gather the petitions, the thousands of petitions that have been delivered to the Common Council. And I'm so excited that this is happening today. I wanted to say that one of our late members, Bruce Hinkforth, lived in Oconomowoc, which has a public utility. And they are members of WPPI, which buys power through competitive pricing. And his wife, Karen, who was an engineer, she's a retired engineer from Weed Energies, she said that Oconomowoc gets better rates than residents of the city of Milwaukee. just being part of that public utility collaborative. Also, I wanted to say that when I woke up this morning and turned on the radio, WTMJ was laughing about this very hearing, making jokes about it, how silly this is, and how it'll never work and it's just gonna be too expensive. They didn't mention that when they're rolling blackouts in California, guess what city didn't have any problem? LA, because they had a public utility. So there are 2,200 public utilities in communities around this country, and I hope that Milwaukee will be next. Thank you.

Hello to everyone on this board. My name is Joe Cole, and I live here in Milwaukee. I'm a climate activist and artist. I also have a history degree. Public utilities were invented in this country nearly 150 years ago to bring reliable, affordable services to the people in their community. A key provision was to prevent price gouging. At its best, public power is not for profit. At its best, it's local people working together to meet local needs. We are not at our best with we energies. They have shown that they are motivated by profit, not by their customers, and certainly not their customers' financial health or physical health. And that is because they are for profit, motivated by creating value for their shareholders. They are no longer the public utility they were founded as in 1896. People across this city are struggling. Everything is more expensive. This is a big opportunity to bring some needed relief to everyone. Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Amanda Eisler. I bought a duplex in River West eight years ago, and at that time I could afford all of my bills on my own without a tenant. I live in one unit and rent the other. As a landlord, I am now forced to raise the rent substantially to be able to cover all my bills. I cannot afford my bills anymore otherwise. Reason being is when I moved in eight years ago, my WeEnergies bill was $200 to $250 per month, and water was $30 a month. Now WeEnergies is over $400 a month, and water is $100 a month. I've confirmed multiple times with WeEnergies that my usage is accurate with inspections. If I'm in the middle class struggling, I can't imagine how much lower classes are struggling, especially disenfranchised communities. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next up is David Charney. After David, it'll be Jim Harris. And after that, Tom Hasberger. David? Go ahead.

David may have left. Good afternoon. I think it is about what time it is to take and switch wheat energy back to Wisconsin electric. We need to teach our kids in high school to take over energy efficiency of Wisconsin. Number one, this is a park climate like Alaska and Canada, which we energy overlooked by being pirates for energy. They took away two bills that was separate and put them together to make more of suffering for your energy. You used to be able to pick to leave your lights on or your heat. They took that away. They've been practicing on climate areas that need substantial energy and prey on them. We should be owned by the public, okay? And we should have more than one efficiency provider for backup. And also, There should be a task that look into research by this being a cold climate that each home should have a generator by this climate being as it is. Because if the energy shuts down, how many people are being counted as becoming sick or die from these issues here in Wisconsin? In Alaska, they pay all the residents $1,000 or $2,000 just because they respect that they have an economy that's trying to grow in a cold climate. We have let pirates come here and take elders home where their utilities are way higher than their home note. There should not be no way in the world that your utility should be costing thousands of dollars over the wintertime and looking for it to happen every season. No. And this give out of credit for energy is hogwash with energy assistance. Now it's only one payout. For the winter, that's hogwash. We have to get our own energy facilities back in control where we teach our kids about this climatory up northern life where we don't have predator people coming from down south to Wisconsin. Thank you.

At this time, we'll have Matt Barshefsky, I believe.

After that, Tyler. Coachman?

Coachman.

Coachman, and after that, Shua Sanchez.

Hello, my name is Tom Hansberger. I'm a proud resident of Milwaukee, live down in Bayview. I also am a proud member of the Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America, and I have the privilege to serve DSA as an organizer working with many chapters across the Midwest to expand on Zoran Mamdani's movement. And one thing I wanted to add here, in addition to everything else that's been said, is the context in this moment across the country. We're seeing new technology developing around AI, electric cars. We're seeing data storage, flock cameras. All of these new technologies, the way that they're being implemented, are currently being used to automate workers' jobs, leading to mass layoffs. They're being used to collect surveillance data on poor communities and marginalized communities. They are being used to promote profit and against the interests of ordinary citizens, of ordinary working people. What this proposal would do to invoke Charter 197 and to replace WE Energies with a public utility is to give you all the power to push back on those bad incentives. What it does is it gives us the ability. the people of Milwaukee to govern ourselves and to prevent a lot of those incentives which are also contributing to democratic backsliding that we've seen with the current authoritarian movement in Washington DC so it's very important for the people of Milwaukee and for our ability to govern ourselves that we make sure these new technologies are implemented for the people not-for-profit and to protect our democracy thank you

My name is Tyler Coachman. I am a Wisconsin bar licensed for practice as an attorney, and I'm a resident of the Kilbourne Town neighborhood of Milwaukee. I'm a member of the Milwaukee County Young Democrats, a group which supports the Power to the People campaign, and I'm speaking today in my personal capacity as an individual. As a previous speaker noted, while many here today are YDSA members, there are also individuals here to support this who are not socialists. I would like to lend myself as a face to that claim. I'm not a socialist, and I stand shoulder to shoulder in support of this reform. Making our power a public utility is a reform well in line with the greatest utility reforms that were championed by 20th century progressives. It is that progressive era in which Wisconsin most boldly lived up to our great state's motto, forward. It is time for Milwaukee to reclaim our city's tradition as a national leader in resident-first policy. Public control over our utility provides a vehicle for our government and our citizens to address many of the local quality of life issues impacted by our power utility. I urge Alders, when a finalized version of this appears for a vote before you, defer to the people. Allow us our vote in a referendum requisite to enable this. Trust us, we the people of Milwaukee.

Thank you. We do have an individual on the big board, Matt Marcheski. We didn't forget you. You've been patiently waiting for the better part of the whole meeting. So please, Matt, the floor is yours.

Please unmute yourself.

We'll get back to Matt. Let's go on to Shua Sanchez.

Yeah, hi, thank you. So I'm Shua Sanchez. I live in Walker's Point and I am a member of Milwaukee DSA. I want to talk about energy sources. So we all know that fossil fuels poison the water and the air. A study from last year says that burning fossil fuels leads to 91,000 additional premature deaths in the U.S. every year, over 200,000 additional cases of childhood asthma every year in the country. There's one study that says, actually multiple studies that say that burning coal releases 100 times more radioactivity than nuclear power plants because you're digging radioactive material out of the earth and then you just throw it into the air and the water. You don't, you know, contain it. And that's not to mention the catastrophic impacts of climate change caused by greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. So thankfully in the past few decades, there's been really enormous advances in clean energy technology. In 2011, for the first time, new wind farms were cheaper to construct than new coal-fired power plants. In 2013, new solar plants were cheaper than coal. In 2016, both became cheaper than new natural gas plants. So we have the technology, we've had it for more than a decade now to switch to clean energy, but private energy companies have not been pursuing this at the rate that they should be. So if we look at WeEnergies, in 2011, WeEnergies announced a 30-year extension to their Oak Creek coal-fired plant. It was already clear in 2011 that coal was not going to be an economically viable energy source for 30 years, but they spent that money keeping coal running. In 2020, they announced they would start shutting down some of their coal-fired plants. But they have done several lifetime extensions on their plants. So they've pushed back the shutdown date from 2024 to 2025 to 2026. Now they're saying 2027. We'll see. They've announced that 2032, they're going to completely end using coal. We'll see if they commit to that. 2025, they announced that they're building a $1.5 billion new natural gas plant. when they could have been spending that money on solar and on wind. And the biggest motivator for these fossil fuel plants is that they get to charge us, the rate payers, for the construction costs, and they get guaranteed profits from that. So the more money they spend on fossil fuel plants, the more money they make, right? So the alternative is solar. And WE Energies, regrettably, they've been fighting solar every chance that they get. It's more than a decade now that they have been fighting residential solar, rooftop solar, where the panels are paid for by people who own the panels, regular people. But they are, you know, WE Energies is trying to block that energy getting back on the grid. I think we had a previous speaker mention that, right, what was it? They're paying you three cents per-

I have had my panels for seven months that I'm not even able to use them. Right.

So it's $0.03 that the individual customer would be paid for that solar energy, and then they charge $0.17 to give it to someone else, right? 2019, WeEnergy has fought the city on trying to put a few solar panels up on libraries, right? So they've been fighting solar for over a decade, right? If we had a publicly owned power utility with zero profit motive, then we wouldn't be worried about how much money we can make on building new fossil fuel plants. We'd be building as much solar and wind as we could. And we would be able to do what cities all over the world are doing right now, which is putting solar panels on top of homes, on top of warehouses, on top of factories, on city buildings, and over parking lots. And we would finally be able to generate clean energy for the people of Milwaukee. So I encourage you to support this reform. Thank you.

One more call out to Matt. If Matt's available, this is your shot. Oh, go. All right, Matt, you're on.

All right. Matt, if you're speaking, we're not able to hear you right now. Microphone looks on.

On your end, your audio and mic setting might not be properly set. It's the spool wheel on the right upper-hand corner. You have to go in and select the right microphone setting.

okay well sorry matt we've got to move on to the next and last speaker sam michael hi thank you very much uh... i am a teacher and a member of the dsa

Now, given that we've had unanimous agreements, pretty much unanimous agreement on the WE Energies, if there's any semblance of democracy left, then the Common Council will do the right thing. I hope they do. But one thing I want to talk about is I want to make sure that... I would like to ask the Common Council to add a provision to ensure that private corporations like WE Energies cannot crawl back after this WE Energies is public. So, for example, if the Common Council buys out WE Energies, I want to make sure that another corporation doesn't sprawl along and screw over workers and destroy the environment and everything like that. So that's just one concern that I have. I think that this measure should definitely pass, and we should look at other ways that we can actually make this stronger and make sure that these corporations don't find a way to screw over everyone. So I'll just end with that little piece of advice.

Thank you, Sam.

Thank you.

Public testimony, any closing comments by any members of the panel up here? Alderman Dimitrievich.

Thank you. I'm not on the panel, but I'm Alderman Marina Dimitrievich. I see a lot of friendly faces and neighbors from my district. Just wanted to make sure I said hello and let you know that we're listening, we hear you. Again, I'm not on the panel, but wanted to listen to your testimony. And it was quite powerful. So thank you. We love having you at City Hall. This is the people's house. So thank you for being here. And your testimony is noted. Thank you.

And I'll just conclude by saying this has been a very informative public hearing. Your witness testimony was very concise, very moving, very persuasive. I appreciate you all being very organized and sticking more to the time. And I just want the record to reflect that Alderman Brower had a suggested schedule that we would end at 12.08 p.m., and it is now 12.09 p.m.

Well, Mr. Chair, may I say a few more words? Yeah, thank you so much. And I just want to thank the other alders for being here. And Alderman Taylor is on the board. And Alderman Spiker, thank you so much for hearing everything as well. Alderman Dimitrievich, thank you all. And thanks to everybody who came out here today. You know, we are on. We're in such trying times. And so it's so with everything going on. and everybody on the panel too. I mean, you guys all have either different roles in the city that are extremely demanding of your time or in other units of government. And so just really appreciate all of you taking the time, you know, the more than three hours now to hear from the public and hear these experts that we brought here today. This is the start of what I believe will be a serious conversation about how we can transform this city, right? And we can use this campaign and this effort as a way to, you know, transform every part of city government. I do want to just note really quickly that There's going to be out there this piece of, well, the city can't even insert problem here. Why can we expect them to operate the power company? The city can't rake my leaves. How can we expect them to operate the power company? I really think that that is a very reductionist view of what is possible here. But to directly address that, I think it should be addressed, is that the city... Right now, we're under a lot of constraints with funding from the state. Our roads, we don't charge user fees for the roads, so that's not a self-funding apparatus like our waterworks is or like this utility would be. We would charge rates that would maintain the infrastructure, so there is a possibility both to have this conundrum that we're in with state funding. and a well-operated utility as well. But I really appreciate the moment here to have us have the vision of expanding the democracy and the well-being of every single person here in Milwaukee by doing this, and frankly, to challenge the power and authority, which we haven't done in this building since the Socialists were here, to challenge the power and authority of one of the worst corporate actors in this city. One of the things that was criticized about this event today was that we didn't have WeEnergies here, but this is the start of the conversation. I would invite WeEnergies to come to this committee or Public Works or set up a meeting with any of us to make their case about why they think they should be here and make your case to the public. Please, I challenge WeEnergies. But, of course, they're a company that is exercising so much hubris right now that I don't even think they can step down to our level to explain why they should still even be our utility provider. But I just really want to sincerely thank everyone and Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much for holding this hearing today. No, it was very interesting discussion. And the question I have now is, what are the next steps? Where does this proposal go from here?

Well, as I mentioned at the outset, I think the next steps would be the formation of a more formalized task force involving members of the council and members of the administration, certainly Department of Public Works, Comptroller's Office perhaps, and with a view toward putting together a perhaps request for qualifications for a feasibility study, get proposals from qualified firms, as was indicated by Ursula earlier, and then the council would have to make the hard choice as to how to fund that feasibility study, which could be in the several hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I think that would be the next step.

I'll also add, Mr. Chair, that the next steps, too, are to continue for people to mobilize and have conversations and to be a part of the public conversation that's going on. I think one of the things that Ursula mentioned to me, but I don't believe she got a chance to mention today, was that these fights are – there is a technical piece with the revenue bonds and the infrastructure. There's very much a technical concern. But the bigger concern, 90 percent of the concern, is the political will. So I would just also offer a thought to your question. We have to build the political will to make this happen here in Milwaukee. I mean, there is some technical pieces. I want to get on board with the idea of a task force or a feasibility study be conducted. But we have to build the political will. No matter what the feasibility study says, WeEnergy's will has the legal right, unfortunately, under our campaign finance laws, when the referendum hits the voters to spend almost an unlimited amount from their treasury on the Vote No campaign. So we have to be well-informed and fortified as a public to be able to withstand them with every other commercial being about why We Energy is the greatest thing in the history of the world when that does happen. So I think that's another piece of it as well, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

With that being no other business before us, we stand adjourned.