SMITHFIELD - In a closed-door session on Tuesday, the Town Council met with a lawyer to hear legal avenues to pull in more electricity customers around Carolina Premium Outlets.

Electric service in that section of town varies. Some businesses get their power from Progress Energy, a private utility with lower base rates. Others, including the outlet center, get their power from the town.

Though all of the properties are within the town limits, Smithfield can't take Progress customers and put them on the town's grid. But with the Smithfield Crossings road project opening up more land to development, the town wants to power the businesses that sprout there.

To get those customers - and spread the burden of Smithfield's electric-system debt - the town might have to challenge Progress Energy in court.

"The more customers you have, the more you share the expense," Mayor Daniel Evans said. "If the town is entitled to the growth that's coming out there, it is to the town's benefit. There are opportunities for us to increase our sales pretty dramatically."

To get some idea of the town's options, the Town Council hired Rocky Mount attorney Michael Colo to meet with councilmen behind closed doors. Colo charges $465 an hour; his pay will come from electric department revenues.

"If (the council) wants to delve farther into it, the work continues under that contract at the same rate," interim town manager Richard Hicks said.

In general, newly constructed buildings get their power from whichever utility has the closest existing lines, Smithfield utilities director Earl Botkin has said. In cases where two utilities have lines nearby, the property owner has a choice.

But other factors can come into play, too, Hicks said. "It's more complicated than that," he said. "It's kind of a complex law."

Progress and Smithfield both have lines throughout the heavily commercial areas along East Market Street and Industrial Park Drive.

"It's all jumbled up out there," Hicks said, adding that the town's particularly unsure about the land around the new Golden Corral. The state's Utilities Commission typically resolves disputes between neighboring electric providers; Evans said litigation is a possibility but something the town hopes to avoid.

In years past, Progress has served many of the town's newest commercial developments, such as the restaurants at the corner of East Market and Industrial Park. But changes in utility laws could give the town a better position, Evans said.

"Now we have the opportunity where the law didn't give us the opportunity before," he said.

And with a new substation on the east side of Smithfield, the town has the extra capacity to serve new developments. "That will more than adequately serve any growth," the mayor said.