CIRCLEVILLE – Circleville City Council To put Energy Aggregation on the ballot was voted on tonight during a special Circleville Council Meeting.
Municipal aggregation is the process by which a municipality (meaning a town or city) purchases electricity in bulk from a competitive supplier on behalf of the residents and businesses within the community.
Basically, the agreement would opt-in everyone in Circleville and it would be up to the citizens to opt-out of the special energy deal. This has arguments on both sides of the fence.
Positives would be that the city of Circleville would be able to procure a competitive electric supply at a cheaper rate than what electricity is costing now.
The negatives would be that everyone opts in and you would have to opt-out or be automatically enrolled in the program.
Several people came to the council last week to voice to council people that they feel this limits choice, that they can already shop around and find the best electric deal, that there could be a cost to opting out with this program.
A lawyer representing the Aggregation told the council that the current legislation in front of the council is to ask the voters if they want an aggregation not the details of the aggregations that have not yet been negotiated. He said that aggregation could save everyone money on their electric bills and to consider the idea.
Council was not able to move on the legislation last week due to several members of the council being out, so the legislation was moved to tonight’s Special Meeting. The reason for this meeting was to make sure that if they were going to pass this ordinance under the emergency clause they could still get it on the ballot this election cycle.
The ordinance passed, but not under an emergency clause because there were several no votes. In order for an ordinance to pass under an emergency clause, you have to get 5 out of 7 Yes votes, but they only got 4 out of 7 with 3 people voting No.
This will make this ordinance dead in the water due to not having enough time to get it on the ballot for this election cycle. The ordinance could come back to Council for a third reading but probably will not.
