The following is a transcript of the April 21, 2025, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA’s News Director.
Our guest on this episode is Jill Weiss, Utilities Director of Wisconsin public power utility Stoughton Utilities.
Jill, thanks for joining us.
Jill Weiss
Thank you very much for having me.
Paul Ciampoli
Jill, just to get our conversation started, I noticed in terms of preparing for this interview that you have many years of experience working in the utility sector.
Could you describe your career leading up to your current role as Utilities Director?
Jill Weiss
I graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in Engineering and then moved to northern Wisconsin where I was an engineering tech and was completing water quality-based designs and reviewed the rural subdivisions.
From there was recruited by an engineering firm that actually submitted most of those subdivisions and started doing rural and suburban subdivision designs.
At that point in time, I was recruited by a firm that did mostly city engineer work, so became city engineer for a variety of communities. Their firm was quite large, so I was able to actually work in northern Wisconsin, but also in the Madison and Milwaukee markets. Close to my hometown a position a city engineering director of public works opened up and so moved into that role.
That community actually had a public power utility, and that's kind of where I was hooked. Just absolutely loved that utility and could see the great things they were doing. Upon the retirement of their utility manager I moved into that role and then actually from there I went and started working for an investor-owned utility where I was overseeing their operations center.
But I missed public power very much, so when the utilities director here in Stoughton retired, I pursued this position and I've been here about six years now.
Paul Ciampoli
And the public power utility was that Jefferson?
Jill Weiss
That was.
Paul Ciampoli
Stoughton Utilities was recently recognized by APPA for its high levels of reliability and safety. Can you provide additional details on the steps that the utility has taken to maintain high levels of safety and reliability?
Jill Weiss
Oh, we do. Safety is core to our culture. We spare no expense when it comes to tools, training, PPE for our staff and I'm always a big believer in training for any different aha moments that come.
You might hear the same thing over and over again, but just the right message at the right time might create, aha, where you might not ever have it some other times and plus always just trying to engage with our staff again.
And with that additional training I think it keeps our focus very much on safety.
As far as reliability, I think many, many years of great planning for the utility -- we actually have four substations, 20 circuits, which affords great reliability for us, but it's also...more than anything, I think it's the commitment to our staff.
They're passionate about what they do. They're passionate for what they serve, the customers that they serve and they're passionate about our community. So whenever there's an outage or there's anything happening, they're very quick to respond, but also we do a lot of maintenance to make sure that we don't have those outages.
Paul Ciampoli
And I would anticipate or I would expect the tree trimming as part of that core mission?
Jill Weiss
It is...we do have a huge rural service territory. We have gotten somewhat behind our tree trimming with COVID, but we are working on trying to recover from that place. But we do do a lot of tree trimming.
Paul Ciampoli
So I want to give you the opportunity to talk about any ongoing or recently completed utility projects that you would like to highlight.
Jill Weiss
One I'd really like to highlight is [the] Lake Loop. We actually have those 20 circuits. We have one that actually is a radial feed and we've got a major highway that goes through Stoughton, U.S. 51, and if the right pole gets hit, those customers theoretically could be out for a long period of time, so for many years we've recognized that this is an opportunity for us.
But there's no easy way just with terrain and wetlands and a variety of different things for us to loop that circuit so that we can back feed it. We've now found a route and we've got a multi year project going on to actually create additional reliability for that circuit -- reliability for our utility as a whole and to do some load balancing with that work that we're doing -- plan to have that completed in 2028.
Paul Ciampoli
And any comments you could provide in terms of communicating with your customers and the community related to that project?
Jill Weiss
We do. When we're going through that area, we talk with the customers that are going to see us doing that work in that area. We actually right now are undertaking a lot of maintenance in all of the utilities that we oversee.
And so we've been communicating on the regular with our customers regarding our five year prediction as far as rate increases and what they're to expect related to rates, but also then share with them the projects that we're doing and the reliability that they'll gain from that work that's being done.
Paul Ciampoli
So again, in terms of preparing for this interview, one of the things that that jumped out at me is a voluntary program that your customers can opt to enroll in -- the Roundup program -- which allows them to help support local community service organizations. And I think this is a great example of the power of public power.
So under this program, customers can round up to the next highest dollar amount on their bill in order to make a contribution. Can you offer additional details on this program and offer examples of the organizations that have received donations through this program?
Jill Weiss
This program started in June 2007. We bill for the utilities we oversee, which is electric, water and wastewater. We also bill for the city’s stormwater utility and with this our customers have the opportunity if they choose to, they can opt in and they can round up to the next whole dollar with each of their monthly bills.
Twice a year, our utilities committee meets and reviews applications that are submitted from different community organizations, and then they look at those funding opportunities and evaluate those and then provide those dollars back to those community organizations.
Throughout that time, we've probably [had] over 20 different organizations that have been supported by those dollars. Some of them include the affordable transportation program, which helps people in need with short transportation, the Dane County Humane Society, [the] Dementia friendly Stoughton organization and one of our community organizations called START, which is a Stoughton area resource team and that helps community members in crisis by maximizing available resources to prevent homelessness. They also help with utility bills, housing, a variety of different things for those people in need.
Paul Ciampoli
OK, great, Jill. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today and we would love to have you back as a guest at some point in the future. I would think that at a minimum we could talk about perhaps updates on that Lake Loop project that you discussed and if there's other things we could discuss as well.
Jill Weiss
I would love that. Thank you.
Paul Ciampoli
OK, great. Well, thanks again, Jill.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, Graphic and Digital Designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
