Board Wrings Extra $8,000 Out Of We Energies Deals

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County Supervisors have successfully tripled the amount of money the county will receive for its piece of a We Energies project in South Milwaukee.

That said it only netted the county an additional $6,720 from a company that did $10 billion in revenue last year. But the company has been a partner to the county in a state-level lobbying effort to secure additional funding in the form of a sales tax before the county reaches a fiscal cliff and runs out of local revenue for the parks system and public transit.

In January the energy utility went to the county board seeking an easement allowing it to install a high-pressure gas main underground. Specifically, under a section of the eponymous Oak Creek that is county parkland. Easements are common legal agreements that allow utilities to install infrastructure, often underground, on county-owned land.

We Energies and Milwaukee County Parks had agreed on a payment of $4,480, which covered approximately 0.17 acres of land, all of it underground. But just a month prior, the City of Waukesha went before the board seeking a critical easement for a $300 million drinking water project. Waukesha was operating under a tight timeline, giving the board leverage, which supervisors applied, securing an extra $175,000 for the easement.

Supervisors on the board’s Committee on Parks and Culture sought to apply the same tactic to the comparatively small We Energies project in South Milwaukee a month later. Supervisors stalled the project and tossed out $10,000 as a payment that could secure the easement for the utility.

The parks department returned this month with a new deal that nearly tripled the price-per-square-foot for the project to $1.60, raising the payment from $4,480 to $11,200.

“We don’t want to be the easiest or the cheapest to come across,” said Erica Goblet, parks contracts manager, explaining that calculating the value of an easement like this is difficult because the value of parkland is not market driven the way surrounding private and commercial property is.

Sup. Sheldon Wasserman, who chairs the parks committee, authored an amendment reflecting the newly negotiated price. He said the new deal shows the board is “not going to do business as usual.”

“The time for giving it away for free is over,” he warned

The committee approved the new deal unanimously. It next goes to the full board for a final approval.

City Official Advocates For Another We Energies Easement

After the Waukesha deal and the stalling of the We Energies easement, word has gotten out that the county supervisors had decided they will go to the mat over utility easements.

A second easement for We Energies was before the committee Tuesday as the utility is seeking to remove a natural gas pipe from the Hampton Avenue Bridge and instead run it underground underneath parkland and Lincoln Creek. The impetus for the relocation of the pipe is a Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) project that is reconstructing Hampton Avenue between N. Teutonia Ave. and N. Sherman Blvd.

Anthony Kotecki, a construction management engineer with the City of Milwaukee, joined the meeting virtually to implore supervisors to approve the easement. “This is a reckless driving initiative that’s going to improve that street, the driving there, the safety,” he said.

Under WisDOT policy, utility lines should no longer be affixed to the sides or underneath bridges, Kotecki said. We Energies is choosing to put new infrastructure in the ground now so that it doesn’t disturb any of the newly reconstructed Hampton Avenue in the future. “Before the project starts, it makes sense to replace all the aging infrastructure,” Kotecki said.

Goblet told supervisors that delaying the easement could financially affect the road reconstruction project to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Sup. Steve Taylor wanted to know why a city engineer was advocating for a utility easement for a WisDOT road project.

Kotecki explained that the project is initiated and funded by the state. “And we’re just there to kind of help it with the construction and carrying out the construction,” he said. “And that’s where this gas main comes into play, because we can’t do our work in the roadway construction until the gas main gets moved.”

So a city engineer was sent to advocate for a We Energies easement — which have recently proven difficult to get through the county board — because it’s part of a state-funded reckless driving project that the city wants to see move forward.

Meanwhile, Parks and We Energies had agreed to the same rate on this project as the other: the higher rate of $1.60 a square foot. This makes the payment for the easement $6,558, which is approximately $1,300 more than the initial offer from We Energies for this project. After receiving committee approval it will next go to the full board for a final approval.