PDI sale talks with Hydro One are back on

$105M remains as negotiating price as Hydro One talks with city resume

Peterborough Distribution Inc. (PDI) could potentially be sold to Hydro One soon after all, says the city CAO – talks are back on between the two sides.

Allan Seabrooke says that after Hydro One walked away from talks to buy PDI on March 10, there were “additional conversations” between the two sides and now the negotiations are resuming.

“They’ve decided to now re-engage,” Seabrooke said in an interview following the special general committee meeting on Monday evening at City Hall. “So we’ll re-engage negotiations to complete the transaction.”

Hydro One first approached the city to buy PDI in 2014. In 2016, city council voted to sell PDI for $105 million. That was meant to include all the trucks, transformers, poles and wires used to deliver electricity to Peterborough, Lakefield and Norwood.

Yet the city would not have received $105 million in the sale: Once PDI’s debts would be paid, as well as the taxes on the sale, the city

would net somewhere between $50 million and $55 million.

Seabrooke said after talks broke off in March that Hydro One never wavered on the offer of $105 million. On Monday, he said that’s still the price under negotiation.

“We’re picking up where we left off,” he said.

But at the special committee meeting on Monday, councillors discussed a report written by Seabrooke and released on March 22 that states Hydro One had walked away from negotiations.

The report also stated that nearly two years of negotiations had cost the city roughly $1.1 million (although it didn’t break down those costs).

At the beginning of the meeting on Monday, Mayor Daryl Bennett said the reasons for Hydro One walking away from negotiations in March wouldn’t be discussed since they’re now prepared to re-engage with the city.

Yet no councillors asked any questions about that or mentioned anything about negotiations being back on again.

Instead, Coun. Dean Pappas asked city staff whether the city had any legal recourse for recovering the $1.1 million already spent in nearly two years of talks.

He moved that councillors meet soon with the lawyer who was helping with the negotiations to talk about that; councillors agreed to it.

Coun. Diane Therrien asked that John Stephenson, president and CEO of Peterborough Utilities Group, be invited to a forthcoming council meeting to discuss speak; councillors agreed to that, too.

When council voted to sell PDI, it was against widespread public disapproval: An Environics poll conducted about a month prior to the council vote, commissioned by CUPE Ontario, found that 90 per cent of respondents didn’t want the utility sold.

A grassroots campaign followed, called Save PDI. It was made up of citizens who wanted to keep the utility in public hands.

Activist Roy Brady, a member of Save PDI, was present at the meeting on Monday evening. He said in an interview that he wasn’t particularly surprised that the negotiations are back on.

“There’s still a lack of trust, in this community, regarding this sale,” he said, adding that he didn’t entirely believe it in March when the sale had apparently collapsed.

“As Yogi Berra said, It ain’t over ’Ttil it’s over.’”