A coalition of environmental and progressive advocacy groups launched a petition drive this week to ask voters to force the city into taking over its electric grid from Duke Energy — a move that, by the industry’s own estimate, could cost St. Petersburg residents between $2.7 billion and $4.1 billion.

The group, Public Power St. Pete, includes the Sierra Club, the CLEO Institute, Florida Rising, the Florida Youth Action Fund and People Power for Florida. (Along with another initiative, Dump Duke.) Organizers need roughly 16,200 signatures to put a charter amendment on the 2028 ballot that would require the city to build a government-run electric utility and buy out Duke’s local infrastructure — through eminent domain if a purchase deal can’t be reached within a year.

Sierra Club advocate Josh Sproat told reporters at a Williams Park rally that current electric bills are “way too high” and predicted the effort would be remembered as “a historic turning point” for the city.

But the price tag for getting a public utility is steep and contested. A report commissioned by Duke Energy from Concentric Energy Advisors put the cost of municipalization at up to $4.1 billion — a bill that would ultimately land on residents regardless of what a future city-run utility charges for power. Duke spokesperson Ana Gibbs said the report shows a “government takeover” of the utility is “unaffordable and irresponsible.”

Organizers dispute that figure, noting Concentric produced a similar estimate for nearby Clearwater’s now-shelved municipalization push that came in at roughly double what the city’s own independent appraisers later found. Both sides agree on one thing: nobody has a clean, independent number yet for what taxpayers would actually be on the hook for.

The ballot measure itself is unusually detailed for a Florida utility question. It would create a five-member governing board — three elected, two appointed by the City Council — with the mayor holding no seat and no appointment power. Supporters describe that as insulation from political influence. Skeptics might just as easily call it a new layer of government with limited direct accountability to the elected officials residents already vote for.

That skepticism isn’t hypothetical. City-run utilities in St. Petersburg have a recent track record voters may remember: thousands of residents saw water bills spike after 2024 hurricane-related billing problems. Organizers argue a separate, voter-elected board for electric service would avoid a repeat — but that argument concedes the underlying point: the city’s own management of a public utility has already burned residents once.

Separately, the City Council voted in June to commission its own feasibility study, expected to be finished next year — meaning voters may be asked to gather signatures and vote on a multibillion-dollar government takeover before the city’s own experts have weighed in with hard numbers.

Public power advocates point to Florida Municipal Electric Association data showing publicly owned utilities in the state generally post lower average bills than investor-owned ones like Duke. Whether that comparison would hold in St. Petersburg — after absorbing several billion dollars in acquisition costs, debt service and the overhead of standing up a brand-new government agency — is the multibillion-dollar question voters will ultimately have to answer, likely in 2028.

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