Kane County might redo electricty referendum in November

Just a couple percentage points blocked residents of unincorporated Kane County from possibly saving a couple bucks on their electric bills Tuesday night. But Kane County officials said Wednesday they’ll try to shed some light on why voters didn’t favor their electricity referendum and possibly try again in November.

Unincorporated Kane County residents cast 4,209 ballots against municipal electric aggregation compared to 4,006 votes in favor of the plan. The outcome put the county among only a few local governments to not win voter approval for permission to use its bulk purchasing power to try and negotiate lower rates from non-ComEd suppliers. Those suppliers would still use ComEd’s infrastructure to deliver the electricity.

Most Kane and DuPage County communities that asked residents for that permission received it Tuesday night.

Unincorporated Kane County was joined by McHenry County, Algonquin, Carpentersville and Lake in the Hills as the only locales to reject the proposal. Eleven local communities approved the plan.

The margins were even greater in DuPage County. Voters in 15 of 17 communities, including Aurora, approved the plan Tuesday. Bartlett and Villa Park voted “no.”

Members of the Kane County Board’s Energy and Environmental Committee met Wednesday to take stock of their failed bills for electricity aggregation. Committee chairman Barb Wojnicki said she wants to research how the communities that were successful with the referendum pitched the plan to their voters. Of particular interest, Wojnicki said, is whether those communities hired an outside consultant to market the referendum. Kane County originally wanted to use a consultant but went solo when the consultant it wanted left the market.

But not every county board member was quick to push for a November do-over. Bonnie Kunkel said it could be that Kane County residents just don’t want electric aggregation. Indeed, comments on local blogs indicate voters, particularly those who pulled Republican ballots, saw the plan as more government intervention into their lives. Kunkel said the next nine months will allow the county board to learn from other communities in more ways than one.

“We’ll have an opportunity to see other people’s experience with (electric aggregation),” Kunkel said. “Then we’ll have a little more information, and our voters will feel a bit more confident that they do or don’t want it.”