I was appointed as the Town of Kingsville’s representative for E.L.K. for this term of council. Prior to that, I was engaged and worked on this file as a councillor. See these two previous posts with details:
In the first post, I gave the background of previous council’s decision to sell our share of E.L.K. to the Town of Essex who is now the sole shareholder. This post also contains the wording of a resolution I put forward at the council table regarding E.L.K. service. You can read that post here: E.L.K. Hydro Service.

In the second post, I provided a Hydro One update from a Kingsville delegation I attended at the Association of Municipalities conference in 2021. Four major projects were planned for our region and you can read about them here: More About Hydro.

The Latest

At our July 10, 2023 meeting, Entegrus CAO and lead of E.L.K.’s management contract, Jim Hogan, came to the Town of Kingsville council meeting and provided an update of the work accomplished and still to be done. You can watch the video of that delegation here: E.L.K. Delegation July 10, 2023, it begins at the 10min 30sec mark.
At the recent AMO 2023 conference earlier this week, I spoke with a Hydro One representative about coming to the Kingsville council table. I have a motion on the next regular agenda: That we request Hydro One attend a town council meeting at their earliest availability to provide an update on regional upgrades and service reliability.

The topic of HYDRO will be discussed during our upcoming strategic planning. There is definitely more work to be done as reliability remains uncertain and the disruptions continue.

A Message from E.L.K. Chair Bondy

I have been on the E.L.K. board for eight months. Chaired by Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy, Vice Chair is Essex Deputy Mayor Rob Shepley, Lakeshore rep Councillor John Kerr, 2 Essex residents, Brandon Chartier and Jeff Scott, who work in the hydro industry, and myself as the Kingsville rep make up the new board of directors.

Our chair provided this statement recently which captures some history up to current happenings:

“The ELK Board term coincides with the term of council with 6 seats, one from Kingsville, one from Lakeshore to ensure those service areas have representation. Following the fall election, the new board took its position in late January only to find that we would soon be without a CAO. The Board had ten days’ notice to find a replacement. We did our homework and brought in Entegrus to manage the daily operations of ELK and give the Board a full strategic review of what we are taking on. I have included the public reports for your information to read. Since the new Board took over this is the first time anything has been reported publicly and this was at the suggestion of the Kingsville ELK Board Rep – Deputy Mayor DeYong. Even Essex being the sole shareholder was not privy to what happened at the Board level, something I openly disagreed on in public. The Board has had some heavy agendas which focus on discovering issues and trying to best allocate our resources to fix them. Unfortunately, the last Cost of Service Rate application in 2022 was a decrease in rates which meant we had little money to spend in our 2023 budget. ELK rates are the lowest or the second lowest in the province. They are low due to lack of previous investment; the Ontario Energy Board only approves rate increases to utilities who spend money and historically ELK has been underspent.“

“In my previous 12 years on council and 8 on the ELK Board I had little support to question what was happening. Since taking the chair of the Board I have had weekly meetings with ELK staff and management to try to make up for lost ground. Unfortunately, changes will not happen overnight as the utility was underspent for 20 years. We are investing in more staff training, more tree trimming, more customer service staff, more linespersons, more fault indicators, more pole replacements, IT supports, phone system, generator for the building and more. The public reports give more details of the scope of work the board has been doing and still needs to do. We recognize the issues and want to fix them to bring ELK Energy into the 21st century.“

“Please take the time and read the attached reports and articles as it gives some history and shows the aggressive direction the board is taking to move forward with solutions.”