Friday afternoon the mayor and city council met for a special session concerning litigation to finalize a settlement with SWEPCO. Earlier this year the city finalized an agreement to partner with LEPA to provide the city’s energy needs. With a new partnership starting, the city and SWEPCO had to find a means to bring their partnership to a close.
The special session that was held was the final step in that process. The council voted to give the mayor proper authority to see the settlement through. “The council gave me the authority to allocate the money to settle it,” said Mayor Nick Cox.
However, part of the agreement for the settlement was the mayor signing a non-disclosure agreement, limiting what could be said about the specifics of the settlement. “The amount I can’t disclose. I can tell you it’s an extremely fair deal for both parties, and I would say the burden on the citizens is going to be okay,” said Mayor Cox.
While the mayor and council couldn’t give specifics on the amount of the settlement, they did state that they were able to do it within the funds that were already budgeted for energy costs. “We were able to do this within already appropriated funds,” said Mayor Cox.
Even accounting for the portion of citizens’ utility bills that will be allocated to offset the costs of the settlement, Mayor Cox stated that for the utility bills after the transition, citizens will feel relief. This relief can be expected to start with July’s utility bills and get better moving into August.
“It’ll be a month or two before it gets good, but when it gets good it will get considerably good. For half of July and all of August, you’ll start feeling that relief. It will be significant,” said Mayor Cox.