Negotiations between the city of Kenmore and Puget Sound Energy will begin shortly to hash out the details of possibly renewing a franchise agreement to supply the city’s residents with power and establishing the company’s right of way for maintenance and power restoration.

Kenmore has long been plagued by what residents feel are frequent power outages and delayed recovery times, often longer than neighboring municipalities.

During a November Kenmore City Council meeting, a Puget Sound Energy representative said Kenmore’s power is usually restored more quickly than some neighboring areas in Snohomish County. However, metrics for this claim were never provided to city officials, prompting Councilman Brent Smith to question that assertion.

“We’re at a significant disadvantage even discussing the issue with not having a comparable level of data to look at,” he said.

Puget Sound Energy, Smith said, has never shared the data they look at to determine which outages are fixed first, which areas are more severely affected and why, and factors the company considers when deciding whether to bury cables or not.

“Without them being forthcoming, it would be very difficult for us to really understand what information they’re looking at to make their decisions,” Smith said.

Smith feels not having the data put the city at a disadvantages in the franchise negotiations.

“Just like any negotiation process, you want to use leverage where you have it,” he said. “They have all the leverage in this process.”

During a Dec. 14 council meeting, Assistant City Manager Nancy Ousley discussed with the council a list of concerns the city had, and possible solutions to them.

“Reliability is going to be a main thing, and having the ability to have direct and regular communication between PSE and the city,” she said.

Members of the council noted that many residents in Kenmore own home-based businesses, which are essentially shut down when power is out. Food is often discarded after power failures too, which Kenmore Mayor David Baker said is too costly for many residents to fully replace.

“For people to suffer and foot the losses just isn’t right,” he said, floating the idea of making Puget Sound Energy compensate residents for lost revenue or other costs.

Issues the city will discuss with Puget Sound Energy include the reliability of the power system and instituting regular reports to the city, planning improvements to address reliability. It will require a detailed strategy on improving the notoriously unreliable circuit 26 in northwest Kenmore which has caused many problems in the past with vegetation management, easements and pole replacement schedules, among others.

“We’re gonna expect a detailed strategy on how they’re going to restore reliability to these areas,” Ousley said.

The city and Puget Sound Energy have options other than a franchise agreement. The city could purchase the infrastructure from the company and start an independent power grid similar to Seattle’s City Lights, or continue to receive service without a franchise agreement which determines the company’s right of way access and restoring pavement after repairs if an agreement is not reached.

The last franchise agreement between the city and Puget Sound Energy was forged in 2005, and expired this year.

This round of negotiations are just beginning, and a timeframe for an agreement has not been set.

“This has just been going on for so many years, and I don’t know it’s getting better,” Baker said.