Unhappy with both

Duke Energy and Spectrum, Winter Garden officials will explore options for utility services.

Displeased with Duke Energy and internet provider Spectrum, Winter Garden city commissioners agreed by consensus this week to explore options to replace both utilities, possibly with city-run services.

“We may be able to do a better job,” City Manager Mike Bollhoefer said.

He received permission from commissioners to take a preliminary look at making changes that could give the city more control of both utility operations.

“Winter Park does that, Orlando does that,” he said.

Located about 15 miles west of downtown Orlando, Winter Garden is Orange County’s fourth-largest city. It serves as its own water provider.

Some of the city’s simmering discontent with Duke emerged as the electricity company struggled to restore power in Winter Garden after Hurricane Irma hit last month.

“It seemed as if we were not a priority,” Bollhoefer said.

Duke spokeswoman Ana Gibbs couldn’t say how long power was out for its 17,000 customers in Winter Garden, but the utility restored more than a million outages within four days of the Sept. 11 hurricane and nearly all customers were back online by Sept. 20. Duke, which includes Progress Energy, serves 1.8 million customers in 35 Florida counties.

“We deeply apologize to those customers who felt we did not meet their expectations during Hurricane Irma,” Gibbs said in an email. “Duke Energy customers have become accustomed to a higher level of communication, information and customer service. Our customers expect and deserve better from us … We look forward to continuing to work with the city of Winter Garden.”

Bollhoefer said the city also is unhappy that Duke hasn’t buried more transmission lines in growing west Orange.

“Perhaps if the city were to take it over, we could bury more cables,” he said.

Gibbs described as “significant” the cost of converting overhead power lines to underground ones.

“Outages are not eliminated with underground lines,” she said. “While the total number of outages may be reduced, restoration can often take longer because of the time needed to locate the problem, dig it up and make repairs.”

Bollhoefer also lambasted internet- and cable-television provider Spectrum during the meeting.

“There is probably no company more hated in Winter Garden than Spectrum,” he said, citing continuing gripes of homeowner associations. “We receive complaints from HOAs all the time, asking us what the city can do to bring in different providers. Bright House [the cable provider that transitioned to Spectrum] service was bad, Spectrum has taken it to new lows. We feel

it’s important for us to take a look and see if the city should become the provider for internet services and perhaps cable services for our residents.”

He said complaints about Spectrum include its confusing price structure, failure to respond to customer complaints and other issues, including outages after Irma.

Winter Garden’s complaints with Spectrum sound similar to frustrations aired about the company last month in Winter Park.

Winter Park Mayor Steve Leary formed a committee earlier this year to study whether the city should build a fiber-optic network to access the web.

Though the city intends the network to add speed and security to government operations and communications, Mayor Steve Leary did not rule out an expansion to the public.

“Who knows what the future might hold,” he said last month.

Bollhoefer said Winter Garden staffers will examine the feasibility of becoming its own internet-service provider and perhaps for cable TV, too.

He said he hoped he could persuade dissatisfied communities to join Winter Garden’s effort.

Joseph Durkin, a spokesman for Charter Communications, Spectrum’s parent company, did not address Bollhoefer’s remarks but said most service outages after Irma were caused by a loss of power, over which Spectrum has no control.

“Many customers weren’t affected at all, of course,” he said in an email. “For the small percentage of customers impacted by downed lines, we had crews out inspecting damage and making repairs the Monday following the storm.”

He said the company restored service to nearly all its customers within 10 days of the outages.