A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, January 14, 2020, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Lori Wilshire presided; Deputy City Clerk Wendy Drouin recorded.
Prayer was offered by Deputy City Clerk Wendy Drouin; Alderwoman Elizabeth Lu led in the Pledge to the
Flag.
The roll call was taken with 15 members of the Board of Aldermen present; No one was recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
President Wilshire
Before | recognize the Mayor, I'd like to acknowledge the new aldermen on the Board and welcome them this
evening — Skip Cleaver and Elizabeth Lu. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Board.
Alderman Cleaver
Thank you.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
First of all Happy New Year to everybody. The first meeting of the new term 2020. I'll have to get used to this
new lineup and looking at different faces. | wanted Madam President to mention a few different items tonight.
First the community power proposal which is one of the resolutions being introduced tonight. This is an action
pursuant to enabling legislation at the State level which enables communities to purchase power on behalf of all
Eversource customers both residential and business customers.
Now there’s a procedure we have to go through to reach this community choice power. In the legislation they
call it “aggregation”. We need to form a study committee which will make a recommendation to the Board of
Aldermen and then the Board of Aldermen has to vote to proceed. The city of course is already purchasing and
selling energy. We purchase bulk for the city under a single contract and the School Department does the
same thing. We also sell power from our hydroelectric dams. We estimate that if we undertake this project, and
you will get many more details later, we can save about two cents a kilowatt on average on every Eversource
bill which for a residential consumer could mean about $150 a year depending upon their usage of course. It
could mean more for a small business or even a medium sized business. It’s everyone who is an Eversource
customer.
Now the customer does not see any difference in the way they are treated in the sense that they receive a bill
from Eversource. Eversource of course continues to distribute power. Eversource gets paid for the distribution
portion of the bill. Also the demand charge. The only thing that’s different is the charge for the kilowatt on the
bill is different and we’re saying could be on the average two cents a kilowatt less.
The word “choice” is there. Community choice power because anybody who wishes to opt out will have the
ability to do so. They can just opt to stay with Eversource. Anybody who does not make that choice would
become part of the community choice power project and this option exists not only at the beginning but at any
time during the future. A person can try it out, opt out. They can wait a year, ten years, whatever it is but
there’s always the option to leave or to come back if they want to do that. | think as we begin to get into the
