A practical plan to help Lafayette neighborhoods underground their power lines — paid for by the neighbors who want it, unlocked by the City.
Lafayette's overhead power lines are more than an eyesore. They are the single largest utility-caused wildfire ignition source running through our neighborhoods — the same kind of equipment traced to many of California's most destructive fires. They fail in winter storms, they trigger fire-season shutoffs, and they are a growing reason insurers are non-renewing Lafayette homeowners and pushing families onto the expensive, capped FAIR Plan.
PG&E has told us plainly: Lafayette is not in its wildfire undergrounding program, and there are no plans to add us. If we want the lines buried, we have to do it ourselves — and California law gives us a way. Neighborhoods can form assessment districts under Rule 20B, vote to tax themselves, and pay to convert their own streets. Berkeley, Newport Beach, and neighborhoods across Marin and the Peninsula have done exactly this.
The evidence is consistent and comes from the utilities and regulators themselves:
Wildfire safety. PG&E reports that undergrounding permanently reduces wildfire risk by about 98% in the converted segment, because it removes the overhead ignition source entirely. In Southern California Edison's modeling, undergrounding is the benchmark against which every other mitigation is measured.
Reliability. Underground systems experience roughly 78% fewer outages and 69% less downtime. For hillside streets that lose power in every winter storm and every safety shutoff, that is a daily-life difference.
Property value. Studies associate undergrounding with home values 5–20% higher nearby. Even PG&E's own conservative figure is 2.5–10%.
Insurability. Undergrounding eliminates a leading community-level ignition source — exactly the kind of risk reduction that improves a neighborhood's underwriting profile and supports a return to standard insurance coverage over time.
And to be honest about the cost, because credibility matters: neighbors who choose this typically pay a special assessment on the order of $35,000–$75,000 per home, financed over 15–20 years on the property tax bill — roughly $250–$550 a month. That is real money. Which is why this decision belongs to each neighborhood, by supermajority vote — not to City Hall, and not to me.
Here's what I've learned leading the Happy Valley undergrounding effort: the neighborhoods willing to pay can't even get a price.
PG&E will not produce a cost estimate — not even a ballpark — until someone delivers a parcel-level boundary map, names a legally responsible applicant, and posts a non-refundable engineering deposit that can run into six figures. No individual homeowner can reasonably be that applicant or carry that risk. But the assessment district that could carry it can't form until neighbors see a price. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, and today the City of Lafayette has no policy for breaking it.
So willing neighborhoods stall for years, and the lines stay up.
I will bring to the Council a simple, citywide policy:
When owners representing two-thirds of a proposed district sign a petition — or otherwise demonstrate overwhelming support — declaring their willingness to tax themselves for undergrounding, the City of Lafayette shall submit that district's boundary to PG&E as the responsible applicant and backstop PG&E's engineering costs if the assessment district ultimately fails to form.
What this does:
It breaks the deadlock. The City becomes the legally responsible applicant PG&E requires, submits the parcel-level boundary, and gets neighborhoods the real cost estimate they need to make a real decision.
It sets a high bar on purpose. State law requires only 60% of owners to petition for a district. This policy asks for two-thirds — overwhelming, documented support — before the City puts anything at stake. The City acts only where failure is unlikely.
It limits the City's exposure to one thing. The backstop covers PG&E's engineering and design costs, and only in the rare case where a neighborhood that already showed two-thirds support fails to confirm its district at the ballot. Construction, financing, and every other cost is borne entirely by the benefiting homeowners through their assessment. This is not a subsidy — it's a guarantee that lets willing neighborhoods get to a vote.
It may cost the City nothing at all. California cities are collectively sitting on roughly $950 million in unused Rule 20A utility credits. Lafayette should determine its residual balance — under PG&E's own rules, those credits can be applied to a district's engineering advance by City resolution.
This is not a Happy Valley policy. It is a standing offer to every neighborhood in Lafayette — and its benefits don't stop at any district's boundary. A fire ignited on one street doesn't check parcel maps. Every converted segment removes an ignition source near shared evacuation routes, reduces the shutoffs and outages that ripple across circuits, strengthens the insurance story for the whole community, and protects a tax base we all depend on. The homeowners pay for the pipes and wires; the whole city shares the safety.
Look at what this one policy activates. A single 100-home district at typical assessments represents $3.5 to $7.5 million of private homeowner money invested directly into safer public infrastructure — plus PG&E's own construction spending, plus the telecom and cable conversions that ride along in the same trench. Multiply that across every Lafayette neighborhood willing to reach two-thirds support, and this policy could mobilize tens of millions of dollars of non-City investment in hardening our streets against wildfire.
No bond measure. No parcel tax on residents who opt out. No draw on the general fund. The City's entire role is a limited engineering guarantee — likely covered by utility credits Lafayette may already hold — that unlocks private capital at a scale the City budget could never match. Few policies available to this Council convert so little public risk into so much invested infrastructure.
"Will my taxes pay for someone else's undergrounding?" No. Construction is funded entirely by the district's homeowners. The City's only exposure is the engineering backstop, triggered only if a district with demonstrated two-thirds support fails to form — and potentially covered by existing utility credits, not the general fund.
"Isn't this PG&E's responsibility?" PG&E maintains the lines, but under state rules it will not fund conversion here, and the ratepayer-funded program that once did is being wound down. Waiting for PG&E means waiting forever. This plan uses the process that actually exists.
"Why should the City be involved at all?" Because the process is legally impossible without a responsible public applicant, and because wildfire risk, evacuation safety, and insurability are city problems, not just neighborhood problems.
Neighborhoods across Lafayette are ready to invest their own money to make their streets safer, more reliable, and more beautiful. They're not asking the City for a handout — they're asking for a partner who can unlock the door. As your Councilmember, I'll make sure Lafayette says yes.
Please reach out for more details.
Figures drawn from CPUC, PG&E, SCE, City of Berkeley, and California Department of Insurance public sources; see the Happy Valley Undergrounding Fact Book (May 2026) for citations. Assessment figures are regional benchmarks — district-specific costs come from PG&E's estimate.
