Brower Helps Get Milwaukee $1,000 From We Energies
At new alderman's first committee meeting the issue of city easement for utility arises.
Alex Brower (right) attends his first Common Council committee meeting. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
Newly-elected Alderman Alex Brower didn’t move any closer to his goal of turning We Energies into a publicly-owned utility during his first Common Council committee meeting, but he did likely score the city $1,000.
We Energies is requesting a permanent easement from the City of Milwaukee to replace the lighting in the Kilbourn Avenue tunneled ramps from Interstate 43 and the administration, if it got council approval, was poised to give the utility the access for free.
Then Brower, noting it was his first meeting and he might be missing it, asked what the payment was to be.
“We do at times request payments from utilities for such easements. In this case, the determination was that this was really helping and benefitting the city more than not,” said Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee deputy director Dave Misky to the Public Works Committee Wednesday morning. “It’s also an undevelopable parcel of land, it’s a triangular shape, has little value to the city of Milwaukee. That’s how we arrived at the decision not to change for this particular one.”
Brower appeared satisfied, but his question was jumped on by a colleague.
“I think the good alderman from the 3rd [District] raises an excellent point,” said Ald. Robert Bauman. “We’ve had this debate in this committee before about We Energies basically getting good deals from the city when it’s their cost, but bad deals when it’s our cost.” He raised the specter of holding the file.
The utility wants to run an electrical connection through the site, 841 N. James Lovell St. It would access electrical service from N. 6th Street to the east, said Misky, instead of from the west. A map of the easement shows a line running in the space between the two tunnel approaches.
“[The parcel] is about a $1,000 asset for the city. If the committee was okay with that, we could impose a $1,000 fee for this particular issue, allowing the file to continue to move forward,” said Misky. He said We Energies had even agreed “in the last couple days” to pay $1,000.
“Why wasn’t it in the original file?” asked new chair Milele A. Coggs
“Because of the timing of the file and when it was submitted to this particular committee,” said Misky.
“I think we should pursue more discussion with We Energies and hold the file,” said Brower.
Misky said We Energies is preparing to start the work soon. One of the tunnels is already closed. The tunnels run under the Milwaukee County Courthouse and through the city-owned MacArthur Square parking structure.
Bauman said the solution was for the committee to vote to hold the file and then approve an amendment before the full council on April 22, avoiding any delay. The downtown alderman, a longtime critic of We Energies, has previously led pushes to increase the easement payments. The council reviews a handful of easement requests each year.
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Quick question – won’t this $1000 just be added to our energy bills? Doesn’t necessarily seem like a win for consumers…
Standing on principle is meaningful. Good for both alderpersons Brower and Baumann to stick to them.
Like the principle but mwh is right, we energies will increase rates to whatever level is needed after all expenses and capital in payments are made to be around 10%, so we will pay this $1000. The only reason this might be not be true is that the utility serves more than Milwaukee so we may have finally milked a few dollars from the burbs.