Oct 13, 2026 · 20 min · 8 segments
October 13, 2026 ~ Lucy Ann Lance is joined by Brian Geiringer, Executive Director; Fiona Dunlop, Field Coordinator; Sean Higgins, President, Ann Arbor for Public Power (A2P2). A2P2 is an organization…
Lucy Ann LanceHostFiona DunlopGuest
There are a lot of concerns, obviously, Ann Arbor City Council has about this.
They voted against Proposal E. We'll talk about them throughout the conversation here.
But one of those is that it's felt that that board is, uh, would take over council's role in a lot of things.
I think that that is, um, uh, it's a fear that I think is, people are using in place of what we should actually be talking about.
Prop E, all it does is create the board, and that board can't really do a whole lot until another vote via 60% majority later in the line, 10 to 12 years in the future.
Sean, Ann Arbor City Council, as we mentioned, has formally come out against this.
They believe that taking over DTE system, uh, is gonna cost hundreds of millions, uh, uh, dollars or more, and that it would potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars or even more than 1 billion, um, before we own the system or collected its rate revenue even.
How do you get past that when you're trying to push something like this if it's ultimately gonna cost taxpayers far more than, than what's happening right now?
So my understanding looking at other, uh, municipalities in America that have studied municipalization, so recently that are pl- there are places like San Diego, Clearwater, Florida, that have done feasibility studies assessing these sorts of costs.
There are places like Winter Park, Florida, or Jefferson County that have pursued municipalization.
And these costs have been on the scale of, um, you know, sort of the lower end of the hundreds of millions of dollars range.
And, uh, these sorts of feasibility studies that have been done have basically projected that through taking out municipal bonds to fund this and then pay out that rate through electric rates over time, um, this does end up saving the city of Ann Arbor.
Um, this ends up saving municipalities that pursue this municipalization, this switch away from private utilities, a lot of money on the scale of billions in the long run.
And so that's what we see as sort of the potential of this, why we're advocating for it.
Um, we think that there has been a lot of poorly backed claims suggesting that this will be into the billions range, um, based on, um, sort of poor conceptions of sort of legal precedent in Michigan.
Um, without getting too deep into the weeds, um, there have been claims around essentially this legal idea that DTE has sort of the right to, like, a perpetual amount of, um, sort of electric rates or payment from the people of Ann Arbor for sort of the leaving cost of sort of switching off of DTE, that this future revenue that DTE would get from us not being their customer anymore is something that would be owed to DTE.
There are a lot of concerns, obviously, Ann Arbor City Council has about this.
They voted against Proposal E. We'll talk about them throughout the conversation here.
But one of those is that it's felt that that board is, uh, would take over council's role in a lot of things.
I think that that is, um, uh, it's a fear that I think is, people are using in place of what we should actually be talking about.
Prop E, all it does is create the board, and that board can't really do a whole lot until another vote via 60% majority later in the line, 10 to 12 years in the future.
Sean, Ann Arbor City Council, as we mentioned, has formally come out against this.
They believe that taking over DTE system, uh, is gonna cost hundreds of millions, uh, uh, dollars or more, and that it would potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars or even more than 1 billion, um, before we own the system or collected its rate revenue even.
How do you get past that when you're trying to push something like this if it's ultimately gonna cost taxpayers far more than, than what's happening right now?
So my understanding looking at other, uh, municipalities in America that have studied municipalization, so recently that are pl- there are places like San Diego, Clearwater, Florida, that have done feasibility studies assessing these sorts of costs.
There are places like Winter Park, Florida, or Jefferson County that have pursued municipalization.
And these costs have been on the scale of, um, you know, sort of the lower end of the hundreds of millions of dollars range.
And, uh, these sorts of feasibility studies that have been done have basically projected that through taking out municipal bonds to fund this and then pay out that rate through electric rates over time, um, this does end up saving the city of Ann Arbor.
Um, this ends up saving municipalities that pursue this municipalization, this switch away from private utilities, a lot of money on the scale of billions in the long run.
And so that's what we see as sort of the potential of this, why we're advocating for it.
Um, we think that there has been a lot of poorly backed claims suggesting that this will be into the billions range, um, based on, um, sort of poor conceptions of sort of legal precedent in Michigan.
Um, without getting too deep into the weeds, um, there have been claims around essentially this legal idea that DTE has sort of the right to, like, a perpetual amount of, um, sort of electric rates or payment from the people of Ann Arbor for sort of the leaving cost of sort of switching off of DTE, that this future revenue that DTE would get from us not being their customer anymore is something that would be owed to DTE.
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