Green Party Candidate
for Mayor of St. Paul
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Green Party Candidate |
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Press Conference Address by Elizabeth Dickinson August 15, 2005 Today I want to offer key elements of a plan for keeping the city of St. Paul financially stable and restoring core city services including police, fire, public works and parks and recreation, while reducing pollution, and improving public health. I'm here to draw attention to some ways to improve St. Paul and St. Paul's revenue stream that have not been brought up by the other candidates. Mayor Kelly has proposed a budget that doesn't fully respond to years of decline in city services. That decline is largely because of reductions in local government aid. Ironically, tonight Governor Pawlenty — the man largely responsible for those reductions in LGA — will be at a fundraiser for Mayor Kelly's campaign. It's clear that the city needs the additional police and firefighters added in the Kelly plan. It is not so clear that the threats described at some length by the mayor, in the form of the MS-13 or Mara Salvatrucha gang and its possible link to Al Qaeda, deserve to be highlighted. MS-13 has yet to make an appearance in St. Paul. The plan I propose goes beyond the Kelly 3% property tax increase — yes, it's necessary, and in fact it had become inevitable. However, alone it does not provide enough revenue for the city's long-term needs. Today I'd like to focus on the Xcel Energy Franchise agreement, set to expire in mid-2006. This is an important agreement, not just for Xcel but for all St. Paulites. Essentially, in return for granting Xcel a virtual monopoly to provide our heat/cooling and electricity and for allowing them to use the city streets and property to do so, we receive a franchise fee roughly equivalent to 5% of Xcel's gross earnings. This fee comes to slightly over $17 million dollars a year and is the third largest source of revenue for the city, at nearly 11% of the city's budget.
With the additional $1–2 million dollars I propose that we more evenly spend it on the core city services: fire, police, public works and parks and recreation. With the active advice and help of the community, the city council and police, fire, public works, parks and recreation, we can decide where the money is most needed. To offset this increased charge on citizens, I propose that we also ask Xcel Energy to exempt low income citizens from the increased franchise fee, and to make their energy audits free to everyone, not just low income citizens. We might pro-rate electricity rates, so the less you use, the less you pay. We should be asking Xcel to aggressively market conservation programs, like their conservation improvement plan where any building designed more than 50,000 square feet given a free consultant to provide suggestions to make it the most energy efficient possible. Green architects tell me it's completely possible to achieve 15–20% better energy efficiency than current code and the payback is often only 1–2 years. Every single new building in St. Paul should be required to analyze and reduce its potential energy use.
However, there is additional value we can promote through creative use of the franchise agreement by creating a Community Benefit Agreement, with Xcel that helps them become true partners in the community. Currently, we are assessed for street lighting. According to ACORN, there are even high crime neighborhoods where residents are assessed for street lighting they don't even have. We know the use of lights can deter crime. The cost to St. Paul citizens of street lighting is $70,000 dollars per month. Other cities have given that responsibility back to the investor-owned utility. Why shouldn't we ask Xcel to take over the costs of maintaining the current street lights AND extend lighting into the neighborhoods which are going without? Or why can't we ask for Xcel to pay for alley lighting, which neighbors currently have to fund privately? I also propose during the renegotiation of this franchise agreement that we require Xcel Energy to provide 25% of St. Paul's energy usage from clean renewable sources like wind power and solar power, and create a renewable energy standard for St. Paul. Minnesota has promised to get 19% of its energy from clean, renewable sources by 2015. Xcel offers a WindSource program which charges customers an additional fee to get some or all of their power from wind. Wind power is now competitive in price with more polluting fuels. Why should individuals be paying more for wind towards Xcel's profits when we could have all of St. Paul get a portion of its energy from wind power without additional charges?
Other cities like Chula Vista in California have asked their utilities during franchise agreements to fund new public parks with price tags of $350,000. The point of all these suggestions is that we can create the most visionary and far-reaching agreement and partnership with Xcel through the franchise agreement. Finally, I believe Saint Paul needs to create a Sustainability Programs director position from the increased franchise fees as Seattle, Chicago, Portland and Cleveland have recently done to implement the goals of the city sustainability plan, to work with the Neighborhood Energy Consortium and other non-profit environmental groups and to make St. Paul the greenest and most energy-efficient — and the cheapest city in which to do business relative to energy costs. Property taxes are essentially regressive, hurting those on fixed and low incomes. I propose we look carefully at this other ignored source of revenue, because it is less regressive and its costs can be offset by building in conservation measures.
There is simply no greater challenge to this country, this state, and this city in the 21st Century than energy policy. It affects our security — far more than MS-13 — it affects our health, and it threatens to affect our very existence on this planet. So I leave you with a question: Why am I the only candidate for mayor of St. Paul talking about these critical connections, and this pivotal issue? Thank you. Contact Elizabeth Dickinson, (651) 235-1208 (cell) Mary Petrie, Campaign Manager, (651) 226-3527 (cell) Christopher Childs, Communications Coordinator, (651) 312-1216 Elizabeth Dickinson for Mayor 384 Hall Avenue St. Paul, MN 55107
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Click here to read the press release about this event. Click here to listen to Elizabeth's speech (RealPlayer) courtesy of the St. Paul Pioneer Press!
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Elizabeth
Dickinson's Speech on the 2006 St. Paul Budget and Renegotiation of the
City's Franchise Agreement with Xcel Energy
Utility
companies take these documents VERY seriously, and so should we. We are
their valuable customers and we should expect value in return. I propose
that we increase the franchise fees on Xcel from the current average of
5% of their gross earnings to at least 6%, as some other cities in Florida
have done. This could bring increased revenue to the city of conservatively
$1–2 million dollars. I am not being coy about what I call any attempt
to raise revenue — whether you call something a tax, a user fee, or an
assessment, it does mean money is coming out of someone's pocket. Xcel
is given the authority through the Public Utilities Commission to pass
along those costs to the customer. So in my proposal for instance, if
your electric bill is $100 per month, you might pay an additional $1 per
month, which would go into the general fund. 
As
an example of conservation, the School Energy Efficiency program in St.
Paul will save $100,000 this year through their conservation programs
— with the future potential to save at least 10% of their annual $7 million
in energy costs. $700,000 can provide a lot of needed teachers. And this
program should be extended through all city buildings, freeing up revenue
for other things our city needs. 
What
else could we ask for?
Why
do I and many other St. Paulites care about this? Because our use and
mis-use of energy affects absolutely every area of our lives. Whether
we talk about the consequences of an unjust war in Iraq to feed our foreign
oil addiction which is draining our country of money and squandering the
lives of our brave young people, or whether we talk about the polluting
energy we use that poisons the air our children breathe and the fish they
eat, or whether we just talk about the increased energy costs absolutely
every citizen has to pay, there is no excuse for St. Paul to avoid taking
a more proactive stance. We simply cannot wait for national or state leadership
on this issue. This isn't about cutting fat, it is about cutting waste
— wasted energy, wasted money and wasted lives. It is mayors in
other cities that are leading the way on energy conservation and environmental
issues. And we have an opportunity through this election to do something
about it.