ENERGY PANEL ON HIATUS TAB TOTALS AT LEAST $25,000.

Byline: Heather MacDonald Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - The City Council has placed the Energy Advisory Committee on hiatus, after officials decided there was nothing the panel could do to help Santa Clarita combat the state's energy crisis.

The City Council formed the committee after a group of business and civic leaders urged the creation of a municipal utility using local power plants during a series of closed-door meetings with individual council members in April at the Hyatt Valencia.

The council spent at least $25,000 of its dwindling contingency fund on the energy committee's work.

``The committee wasn't a waste of time,'' said Doug Sink, a member of the panel who attended the closed-door meetings and president of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce. ``In order to do the right thing for our community, we had to see what our options were.''

Eventually, the committee abandoned plans for a municipal utility after the Berry Petroleum plant in Placerita Canyon signed an agreement with Southern California Edison, officials said.

The advisory committee then decided to focus on community aggregation as a solution to the threat of rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity prices. Aggregation, or direct access, would allow Santa Clarita to bypass Edison and the state's electricity grid.

However, Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a bill two weeks ago that would have allowed cities to do that because of concern it would threaten the state's ability to repay billions of dollars in debt incurred earlier this year at the height of the crisis, said Terri Maus, director of field services for the city.

``At this point, there's not much for the committee to do, and there's no point in spending the public's money,'' said Councilman Cameron Smyth, a nonvoting member of the committee.

Perhaps the city's most concrete and effective method of coping with the energy crisis, which was brought on by the state's deregulation of the electric utilities, was the council's commitment to reduce energy consumption by 10 percent in city facilities and an endorsement of an advertising and education campaign encouraging residents to do the same.

The committee is expected to meet again in January when the state Legislature reconvenes in Sacramento. The bill allowing direct access is expected to be reintroduced, Maus said.

In addition, the unknown impact of the settlement between Edison and the Public Utilities Commission also thwarted any solution contemplated by the committee, Maus said.

The final cost of the committee's work has yet to be tabulated, according to Santa Clarita Facilities Manager Chris Daste.

Steve McClary, of Oakland-based MRW & Associates Inc. was hired by the committee as an adviser. Through August, his services cost the city $17,446, Daste said.

McClary said he is finalizing a report for city officials on the energy crisis, but hasn't prepared the final invoice for his work.

Those bills do not include dinner for the committee members at the weekly and biweekly sessions, incidentals or materials, Daste said. Three staff members were also assigned to run the committee.

The panel was formed after a series of rolling blackouts hit the valley in the spring. Although state and local officials predicted at least 30 hours of forced outages during the summer, none materialized.