Mayor Elizabeth Patterson will ask the City Council on Tuesday to oppose Assembly Bill 2145 that affects Community Choice Aggregation programs.

CCA is a system that lets cities and counties join, or aggregate, the buying power of individual power customers so they can secure alternative energy contracts on a communitywide basis.

They’re alternative programs to investor-owned operations, such as Pacific Gas and Electric.

Power users are converted to the aggregation, unless they prefer to remain customers of the investor-owned utility, which in any case continue to deliver electricity through their distribution systems. If users wish to remain with the utility, they have the choice to opt out of the aggregation program.

Marin Clean Energy (MCE), in Marin County, is California’s first CCA program. It was formed in 2010, after California legislation authorized such operations in 2002.

Though Benicia’s Climate Action Plan states that the city “should consider a CCA feasibility study and financial analysis to determine viability,” Benicia has no Community Choice Aggregation of its own.

A solely Benicia aggregation may prove too expensive, representatives of the Marin organization recently told a group of Benicia residents attending a presentation at the Benicia Community Center.

Instead, the city’s interest in procuring independent and renewable-source electricity could be furthered either by forming a new aggregation in Solano County in collaboration with the county government and those of neighboring cities, or by allying with an established entity, such as the one in Marin, residents were told.

The Climate Action Plan acknowledges that Benicia may need to partner with other agencies in a CCA.

Assemblymember Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, authored AB 2145, an amendment to the Public Utilities Code. Patterson told City Manager Brad Kilger that the bill proposes changes to the Public Utilities Act that governs the formation and operation of CCA programs.

“Specifically, AB 2145 would change the current community aggregation customer ‘opt-out’ process to an ‘opt-in’ one,” Kilger wrote the City Council in a report on the matter.

“Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations such as a Community Choice aggregator,” he wrote.

In addition, the Public Utilities Act requires Community Choice programs to provide customers the opportunity to opt out, Kilger wrote.

“The act provides that customer participation in the Community Choice Aggregation program does not require a positive written declaration for participation, but each customer shall be informed of his or her right to opt out of the program,” he wrote.

AB 2145 would change that, so that each customer who wants to participate in a CCA program would need to make “a positive declaration.”

Kilger wrote, “Interest groups in support of the expansions of Community Choice Aggregation have contacted the city of Benicia and requested that the city take an opposed position on AB 2145. It is their opinion that the bill would limit a CCA’s ability to viably exist at the local level due to several bill provisions, including mandatory customer opt-in.”

The bill would also exempt notification expenses from being reimbursed by the state, and would require potential CCA customers to be informed of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the various power sources. It would not affect the enrollment of those belonging to a CCA program before Jan. 1, 2015.

Kilger wrote that CCA proponents believe the bill “will severely hamper the ability of a CCA to achieve minimum scale, will increase costs and thwart a local government’s statutory right to pursue a CCA program for their community.”

He said the California League of Cities already has written a letter opposing the bill.

Jason Rhine, that group’s legislative representative, has written Bradford, saying the organization “does not fully understand the need to alter the existing ‘opt-out’ process, which seems to be operating in an effective and transparent manner with few, if any, customer complaints.”

Rhine told Bradford the CLC worked with Carol Migden, then a member of the Assembly, and other interested parties to pass Assembly Bill 117 that lets cities and counties form CCAs on “an ‘opt-out’ basis.”

He described the extensive public notice and due process in establishing a CCA as “ensuring full transparency” that gives utility customers “multiple opportunities over a minimum four-month public noticing process to ‘opt-out’ of the CCA before it begins offering service in a new community.”

He wrote that other states with CCA statutes impose the same opt-out process as California to give customers choice as well as to provide smaller CCAs “greater certainty in the market.”

AB 117 “helps level the playing field for small CCAs attempting to compete in a highly competitive market,” he wrote.

“It should also be noted that the final amended version of AB 117, as signed into law, received wide bipartisan support and had no opposition,” Rhine wrote.

In other matters Tuesday, the Council will hear Benicia Unified School District Superintendent Janice Adams describe the district’s Measure S, to be decided by voters June 3.

The $49.6 million general obligation bond has been proposed to bring school buildings to current health, safety and technological standards, including those recommended by Benicia police for security improvements.

Should the measure pass, property owners would be assessed approximately $39 for each $100,000 of assessed taxable property value, or about $3.25 a month, according to information provided by the school district.

Benicia City Council will meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Council Chamber of City Hall, 250 East L St.