Under proposed new model, Independence council would no longer set electric rates
The City of Independence is considering shifting responsibility over who manages city electricity, moving to a model common in larger cities.
Independence Power & Light has operated as a municipal electric utility since 1901. This means that electric services are publicly owned, and that they are organized and operated by the city. Electric service policies, as well as rates, are determined by elected city officials.
Now, city leaders are prepared to propose establishing a utility board to oversee Independence’s electric service. The board would include appointed members with some outside experience in utilities management, while the city’s water and sewer programs would stay in the hands of city staff.
Creating a utility board would require changing the Independence city charter, with voter approval. The board would still be a public body with significant involvement from the city council, IPL leadership and council members said Monday.
The new board would be responsible for setting electricity rates instead of city council, which could have a direct impact on residents’ electric bills.
“The anticipation is that this is going to be a very important, high-functioning board,” councilmember John Perkins said Monday.
Residents would vote on the proposed restructure in either April or November 2026.
Creating a board
At a Monday night Independence City Council work session, interim city manager Lisa Reynolds said that serious discussions about restructuring Independence utilities management have been taking place since 2023.
Most recently, some residents gave feedback on the proposed switch at a July 14th forum. The Independence City Council also held an internal discussion in June debating possible new leadership models for IPL, which led to the proposed charter amendment.
IPL director Joseph Hegendeffer said Monday night that most cities the size as Independence have a public utility board, while municipally operated utility services are more common in smaller cities.
IPL is one of the three largest municipal electric utilities in Missouri with 60,000 customers, according to the city. It’s also one of the largest municipal power providers in America, currently in the top 5% nationwide by size.
The current Independence city charter lays out the structure of IPL in detail, establishing a city-run department with a utilities director and a seven-member advisory board. The charter gives IPL the power to oversee other utilities including water and sewage, and also requires the city council to consult with the IPL advisory board, whose members serve four-year terms.
The proposed restructure would eliminate this section of the charter entirely. It would be replaced with a new section defining public utilities as electricity, sewer and water, then placing water and sewage responsibilities with the Independence City Council and assigning oversight of electricity to a new body: the public utilities board.
The public utilities board would have nine members, Hegendeffer said, with a chairperson, vice-chair, secretary and specific requirements for prior experience in utilities management. The members would have to live within a set geographic area in and around Independence and would serve staggered three-year terms, so only a few seats would ever turn over at the same time.
Members would be appointed directly by the City Council and would be eligible for up to two terms each. Board seats are not expected to come with a salary, Hegendeffer said. However council members discussed leaving charter language vague around compensation in case the proposed roles become more intense in the future.
“Our first board is going to have to be some kind of pretty rigorous application process,” councilmember Heather Wiley said. “These are going to have to be folks who want to do this, because this is a big ask.”
Debates on structure
Councilmembers also debated shrinking the size of the proposed board to seven, loosening the residency requirements or setting rules around nonpartisan appointments before bringing the change to a public vote. Some also advocated for the proposal to include language that would allow board members to weigh in on appointments.
“I would hate for me as a councilperson to pick someone and have that person end up on the board without a lot of thought from my colleagues and thought from the existing board of utilities,” councilmember Bridget McCandless said. “Because of not just their subject matter expertise but how they get along, how they work, how they complement the skills that are already on that board.”
The current proposal would exclude board members from holding any other kind of political office during their term. It would also restrict the board from selling “utility properties” without voter approval, except for surplus supplies.
“If the city decided to move in the direction of privatizing the electric utility, [a sale] could not be done without a public vote,” Hegendeffer said.
An additional study session will take place in November before the Independence City Council votes on the proposed restructure. Councilmembers said they want to create auxiliary policy documents to help determine how city officials would work with the board if it was added to the charter, and that they’d like to see more public education before putting the proposal to voters.
“This is complicated stuff, and while we’ve been talking about this for three years, for the average citizen, they haven’t spent five minutes thinking about this,” McCandless said. “And we’re going to ask them to make a really substantive decision on the future of our utility.”
