Florence City Administrator Joshua Hunt briefed the City Council on a proposed electric franchise agreement that would set the rules for how electric utilities operate within city rights-of-way on Tuesday.
Florence has two electric utilities, Duke Energy and Owen Electric Cooperative.
“It ensures that they restore any kind of sidewalks or streets that they tear out when they’re doing new installs or going to any kind of repairs to the utility,” Hunt explained in the Aug. 19 special council meeting.
Hunt used a PowerPoint to illustrate what rights-of-way are and how utilities work within them. “Right-of-way is a cross section of street that the city owns and maintains,” Hunt said.
The slides included annotated aerial photographs showing property lines, water and sewer lines, electric lines and city rights-of-way.
Hunt explained that the limited widths of rights-of-way make it challenging to perform major upgrades to utilities.
“Even though there is sometimes large right-of-ways, it gets crammed,” said Hunt. “Especially when it comes time to do replacements or work within that right-of-way. It can be we’re trying to do a sidewalk project, or what we run into all the time is that when it’s time to replace a water main, you cannot replace a water main in the same trench.”
Water service cannot be disrupted, he said. Existing water mains must remain open while new ones are installed.
“In the ideal world, you would skip over to where the electric line is,” said Hunt. “If there was no other utilities in there right-of-way, you would put the water main down in.”
When there’s no more roadside room, the city is forced to bury water mains beneath the center of the street. That adds significant costs to any project, Hunt said.
The electric franchise agreements would allow Florence to impose franchise fees, which would be imposed on the providers and would not change residents’ bills, according to the city.
“The reason many cities impose franchise fees is to help offset the cost of construction,” Hunt said. And, he said, the utility companies pass along the extra fees to customers. “The Public Service Commission allows them to do so.”
Hunt explained that the next steps would be for the council to adopt an ordinance authorizing the publication of a nonexclusive franchise agreement and to solicit bids.
Florence does not currently have a franchise fee.
“City Council remains committed to keeping costs low for our residents by not charging such a fee” to residents, the city said in a statement.