The City Council voted Wednesday to call a Feb. 8 citywide election on a new franchise fee agreement with Public Service Company of Oklahoma.
The proposed 15-year deal sets out the terms under which the company can use public rights of ways and associated fees. The city’s existing 25-year agreement ends in July 2022.
“The proposed franchise agreement will continue the long, collaborative relationship between the city of Tulsa and PSO,” said PSO spokesman Wayne Greene. “Renewing the franchise agreement allows PSO to continue to provide affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity to its customers in the city of Tulsa far into the future.”
The new agreement calls for keeping the annual fee the city charges PSO to use its rights of way the same — 2% of its gross receipts generated within the city limits. That money — approximately $9 million a year — would go into the city’s general fund to help pay for day-to-day operations.
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The new agreement would add a 1% charge to fund the maintenance and repair of public ways, such as streets, highways and rights of way. The fee is expected to raise an estimated $4.5 million a year, or $76 million over the life of the agreement.
The bulk of the maintenance funds would go toward a citywide utility line burial program and converting the city’s highway lighting to LED lights.
Two weeks ago, the City Council tabled its vote on the franchise agreement to give city officials more time to meet with residents who wanted the document to set out goals for addressing climate change.
Representatives of the Ready for 100 Tulsa Action Campaign said Wednesday that none of their suggested language made it into the final agreement.
“The Ready for 100 Tulsa Action Campaign is disappointed that the new franchise agreement will not contain any provisions about PSO transitioning to 100% clean renewable electricity, eliminating barriers to rooftop and community solar generation, and eliminating barriers impeding its ability to offer more ambitious energy efficiency programs,” said Gary Allison, an RF100 co-organizer.
“As a consequence, the new franchise agreement will not remove one molecule of greenhouse gases from the air or help any Tulsa family make its home more energy efficient.”
Allison said the group is now focusing its efforts on getting the City Council to pass a resolution committing the city to use its resources to achieve the goals it recommended be included in the franchise fee agreement.
Those include working with PSO to accomplish the following:
Ensuring that all electricity used in Tulsa will come from clean renewable sources on or before the end of 2035.
Removing barriers impeding PSO’s ability to offer more ambitious and wide-reaching energy efficiency programs.
Removing barriers impeding the ability of Tulsa residents, businesses and organizations to have opportunities to benefit from rooftop and community solar generation that are equal to or better than the opportunities enjoyed by residents, businesses and organizations located in states where rooftop and community solar are proliferating.
City Council resolutions are nonbinding.
PSO officials told councilors earlier this month that the company is committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions. Twenty-three percent of PSO’s resource mix is wind, and the percentage is expected to reach 40% soon.
In addition, the company is retiring its last coal plant in 2026, officials said.
“PSO will continue to collaborate with the city of Tulsa as it develops its energy policy resolution,” Greene said. “PSO supports a balanced transition of power generation resources to achieve aggressive carbon reduction goals, including net zero emissions by 2050.”
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