Bright Energy to expand natural gas service in Marengo

By Randa Wagner -

Nat­ural gas line expan­sion and ball­field issues dom­i­nated the August meet­ing of the Marengo Vil­lage Council.

Bruce Jaynes with Con­sol­i­dated Gas and Bright Energy made a pre­sen­ta­tion to coun­cil mem­bers about pos­si­ble expan­sion of the gas line in the com­mu­nity to give home­own­ers another home heat­ing option.

Jaynes noted the ‘sig­nif­i­cant price dif­fer­ence between nat­ural gas, propane and fuel oil’ cit­ing an exam­ple of usage com­par­i­son as: fuel oil $32.00, propane $22.00, and nat­ural gas $13.00.

“We want to make sure peo­ple have an oppor­tu­nity to get nat­ural gas,” he said, and felt res­i­dents in Marengo have been mis­in­formed in the past about nat­ural gas fees. He said last year there was a meet­ing where Delco (water) tap fees were dis­cussed and the sub­ject of nat­ural gas tap fees came up.

CE re-evaluated their tap fees because the actual (tap) cost was less than what they were charg­ing, Jaynes said.

“Propane fur­naces can often be con­verted to nat­ural gas, and about 14 (house­holds) switched over last year,” he cited.

Jaynes said the Big Wal­nut Fire Dis­trict is con­sid­er­ing con­nect­ing their build­ing to the nat­ural gas line and there was a dis­cus­sion about the vil­lage pos­si­bly shar­ing in the cost of a pipeline from the vil­lage to the fire depart­ment. That prompted a dis­cus­sion about the res­i­dents who might have been missed in the past.

Jaynes said last year CE raised the (tap fee) price to $975 from the pre­vi­ous $550 and they came back down to $750.

“That $750 is actu­ally below our cost,” he noted. “So we’re def­i­nitely chip­ping in towards the cost.”

The way most util­i­ties work, he explained, is they basi­cally get the pipe out to the area and have the expec­ta­tion the res­i­dents will pay for the tap fee to con­nect to the line. He said the $750 tap fee could be reduced a bit if two or more res­i­dents are able to make the same connection.

Jaynes said mak­ing that tap involves dig­ging up the yard and con­vert­ing or replac­ing the fur­nace. An advan­tage, he noted, was being billed monthly instead of a large lump sum, and rais­ing the prop­erty value, since ‘it’s a less expen­sive method to heat a home.’

Another thing the com­pany is look­ing at is pock­ets within the vil­lage that gas lines are not close to; so they are look­ing at lay­ing lines to sec­tions where four or five houses are grouped together, pro­vid­ing those homes with the option. That idea is still being dis­cussed, as well as a dif­fer­ent pric­ing struc­ture to help alle­vi­ate the chal­lenge of home­own­ers rais­ing the ini­tial fees.

The com­pany is also con­sid­er­ing run­ning pipe out­side the vil­lage on CR 26, CR 15 and SR 61 if there is inter­est from home­own­ers in those areas.

Coun­cil pres­i­dent Mike Baker asked how much it would cost to make nat­ural gas avail­able to sev­eral prop­er­ties he owns. Because the prop­er­ties fall within a stan­dard mea­sure­ment for tap­ping in, Jaynes said a dis­count of $150 per unit would apply in that case.

The ques­tion came up: what about bor­ing and cut­ting in the streets (to lay pipe)?

“Bor­ing is where you get into a chal­lenge,” Jaynes acknowl­edged, “because the peo­ple CE used last year went out of busi­ness and the cur­rent bor­ers avail­able are talk­ing about a rate hike of 2 – 4 times the old price ($600). The two quotes CE has received for bor­ing work is $1200 and $2400.”

“I’m sure we could work a deal on the streets,” Mayor Robert Gale said.

The ques­tion came up of the monthly fee once a home­owner is hooked up to the line.

“There is a monthly meter charge of $9 regard­less of how much or lit­tle you use,” Jaynes said. Another coun­cil mem­ber asked if CE sells fur­naces. “Not any­more,” he responded.

Mem­bers of the Marengo Youth Base­ball and Soft­ball Asso­ci­a­tion addressed coun­cil regard­ing the issue of leas­ing the ball­fields from High­land Schools. John Baker, Pres­i­dent of the MYBSA, said they believe it would make more sense for the vil­lage to try to gain the lease as long as the village’s inten­tion is the same as MYSO. They would like to work with the vil­lage and approach the High­land School board to get some kind of long term com­mit­ment out of them. The High­land board is still oblig­ated to pay for elec­tric for the ball­fields. Ross Porter said he has paid his por­tion to AEP but the school board still owes their por­tion of the bill.

“The inten­tion of the vil­lage is to keep the prop­erty like it is so the kids have a place to play,” Mike Baker said.

“We have an agree­ment now to do the main­te­nance and take care of the prop­erty through this year and we’ll con­tinue to do that,” said John Baker. “But it’s dif­fi­cult to keep devel­op­ing things back there with­out some kind of com­mit­ment from the school board. I don’t know that they’re going to give that to us but I hope maybe they can do that if we can work together. The big con­cern, being a vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tion, is if the wrong peo­ple get elected into the orga­ni­za­tion and don’t ful­fill that com­mit­ment, then we’re stuck.”

“I think we all have the same goals in mind,” said Coun­cil­man Baker. “To get the school board to make a long-term com­mit­ment they’re going to leave it the way it is in the best inter­est of the community.”

“We’ve got some good peo­ple involved right now,” John Baker said. “There are some peo­ple putting together a league for next year. If we can make this hap­pen with a com­mit­ment from the school board, the fields could be uti­lized through the end of Octo­ber for 7 – 8 months out of the year instead of just 4 months out of the year.”

“I don’t know if the school board’s going to be able to go along with that, based on the agree­ment they have with me,” Ross Porter said, “with me sup­ply­ing the sewer and water back there. A long-term lease agree­ment kind of vio­lates what they agreed to on first-right-of-refusal to my orga­ni­za­tion. We all have the same goals though, keep that in mind. Every­one still wants to use it for ball­fields. As it sits right now, though, they still have an agree­ment with me.”

Regard­ing another mat­ter, Porter said he wanted to be on last month’s coun­cil agenda (to speak) but when he showed up for the meet­ing he found out it had been held the night before. Mayor Gale said it was changed at the last minute and posted the change [pub­licly] it in town at two or three loca­tions in town, not­ing it was the best coun­cil could do, under the cir­cum­stances, to notify the public.

Porter asked to be put on the next four meet­ing agen­das to dis­cuss ongo­ing prob­lems with his prop­erty (the for­mer High­land West Ele­men­tary School).

A dis­cus­sion took place about the recent power out­age and the effect it had on the vil­lage. The ques­tion of whether res­i­dents should con­sider a more depend­able elec­tric provider was raised.

“All these alter­nate energy com­pa­nies are just buy­ing their kilo­watt hours from [the orig­i­nal provider] and it still comes in on the same lines,” one res­i­dent remarked.

“If you drive around town and look at the trans­form­ers in town, many of them look old and dis­col­ored,” said coun­cil mem­ber Earl Ben­nett. “You go out into the coun­try­side and look at Con­sol­i­dated Electric’s trans­form­ers, they look very new. My esti­mate is Con­sol­i­dated has, in the last 10 years, spent 10–20 mil­lion dol­lars in Mar­ion and Mor­row coun­ties replac­ing equipment.”

“Would it help if the peo­ple affected by the power out­age with AEP and the vil­lage itself to file com­plaints with the PUCO, stat­ing they’re not get­ting what they’re pay­ing for?” asked a resident.

“The PUCO deals with whether AEP is pro­vid­ing depend­able ser­vice to the vil­lage, so, yes,” Ben­nett responded. “They do not deal with whether the vil­lage is going to be ser­viced by Con­sol­i­dated or AEP.”

“The more peo­ple in Marengo and the sur­round­ing area that file com­plaints in a timely man­ner, the more they’re going to start an inves­ti­ga­tion to try to resolve this issue,” the res­i­dent offered. Ben­nett agreed.

Mayor Gale con­tended July’s severe storm was unusual and the sys­tem is usu­ally reliable.

In other busi­ness, the mayor said main­te­nance and repairs were needed on the waste­water hold­ing tank and coun­cil had a quote from a com­pany in Cleveland.

An appli­ca­tion a res­i­dent sub­mit­ted that needs to be addressed by the Zon­ing Board of Appeals was dis­cussed. Mike Baker asked, “Since we haven’t been able to get a quo­rum for the Zon­ing Board of Appeals, can that appli­ca­tion be turned over to the plan­ning com­mis­sion, so we can get it resolved?”

“There is an oblig­a­tion to act in a cer­tain period of time,” Weston said. “They’re sup­posed to resolve it in 45 days, and it’s been more than 60 days.

“Seems to me if we can’t resolve this in a timely man­ner, we should just dis­solve zon­ing alto­gether,” Baker responded.

“Well, it is a new board,” Robert Weston said. “Peo­ple said they could serve on it, and it’s got to be instilled in them the impor­tance of it. I agree with you it’s got to func­tion, but I don‘t agree we should dis­solve it,”

“To cor­rect the prob­lem we need to talk to them; if they can’t serve we need to get some­body else,” Mayor Gale suggested.

“Well I think we need to fill the gap in our zon­ing book right now,” Baker main­tained. “If, after 45 days, it doesn’t get resolved, it goes back to the plan­ning com­mit­tee or some­one else to get resolved.”

“I’ll bring a let­ter next month to that effect,” Weston said.

The coun­cil approved the quote sub­mit­ted by Mike McClain to track and update map­ping of sewer and water tile sys­tems in the village.

The next vil­lage coun­cil meet­ing will be Sep­tem­ber 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the waste­water treat­ment plant on SR 229, Marengo.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Aug 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.