Sunbury’s energy aggregation letters going out

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

For nearly two years the Vil­lage of Sun­bury has been explor­ing acquir­ing elec­tric­ity for vil­lage facil­i­ties through an aggre­ga­tion agree­ment as a cost sav­ings mea­sure; and has also moved towards elec­tric and nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion options for vil­lage res­i­dents by plac­ing elec­tric and gas aggre­ga­tion issues on the Novem­ber 8, 2011, bal­lot. When the issues reached vot­ers they approved allow­ing the vil­lage to nego­ti­ate res­i­den­tial elec­tric and nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion by sig­nif­i­cant margins.

In June mem­bers of Vil­lage Coun­cil and vil­lage admin­is­tra­tors inter­viewed poten­tial sup­pli­ers for the village’s elec­tric and national gas aggre­ga­tion pro­gram. In July, with the assis­tance of energy bro­ker Scott Bel­cas­tro, Trebel, Inc., they began cre­at­ing the nec­es­sary plans of oper­a­tion and governance.

In early Novem­ber coun­cil mem­bers sched­uled two required pub­lic hear­ings on Novem­ber 20 and Novem­ber 28; in Decem­ber coun­cil mem­bers voted to move for­ward with res­i­den­tial and small busi­ness elec­tric­ity and nat­ural gas aggregation.

Bel­cas­tro, who described him­self as an inde­pen­dent bro­ker, said the plans of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance he nego­ti­ated for the vil­lage would have elec­tric­ity sup­plied by Powell-based Bor­der Energy, and nat­ural gas sup­plied by Pickerington-based Vol­un­teer Energy.

For both elec­tric­ity and nat­ural gas, Bel­cas­tro will act as the vil­lage energy bro­ker, with no fees assessed to the vil­lage; the energy sup­pli­ers pay Belcastro.

Bel­cas­tro attended last Wednesday’s Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing with an update.

“Things are mov­ing for­ward with the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion of Ohio,” Bel­cas­tro said. “As of this Fri­day let­ters will be sent to all Sun­bury res­i­dents and busi­nesses that are eli­gi­ble for elec­tric­ity aggre­ga­tion — they should start get­ting the let­ters Mon­day or Tues­day — and have 21 days to send them to Bor­der Energy if they want to opt out.”

Bel­cas­tro said if vil­lage res­i­dents and small busi­ness own­ers want to accept the terms of Sunbury’s blan­ket elec­tric­ity aggre­ga­tion agree­ment they have to do nothing.

“Twenty-one days goes by in a flash, and then Bor­der Energy puts its list together,” Bel­cas­tro said. “On April 1 every­thing will be up and run­ning. On your elec­tric bill you’ll see an AEP cus­tomer charge, and then you’ll see a 15 per­cent dis­count on gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion from Bor­der Energy – 10 per­cent for businesses.”

Bor­der Energy’s res­i­den­tial early ter­mi­na­tion fee will be $50, Bel­cas­tro said; elec­tric bills would still come from AEP with Bor­der Energy charges noted.

Vol­un­teer Energy cur­rently offers a sav­ings of 7 per­cent off of the res­i­den­tial customer’s nat­ural gas bill adder, with no early ter­mi­na­tion fee. Because nat­ural gas rates will not be nego­ti­ated until later this month, Bel­cas­tro said, it’s not known whether or not the vil­lage would enter a nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion agreement.

In other busi­ness, Roger Howard, owner of the new Donato’s Pizza in Fair­land Plaza, asked coun­cil mem­bers to approve the trans­fer of a beer-only liquor license from his Polaris Donato’s loca­tion to the new Sun­bury Donato’s.

“This is my 46th year with Donato’s, and I’m really excited about being part of the vil­lage,” Howard said. “Part of our mis­sion is to be part of the com­mu­nity, to be good neighbors.”

Howard said the new Sun­bury Donato’s, located in the space for­merly occu­pied by North Star Stu­dios, should be open by the end of March. The restau­rant will fea­ture a 38-seat din­ing facil­ity, and have deliv­ery and carry out service.

Coun­cil mem­bers also approved increas­ing waste­water treat­ment plant employee Dale Wampler’s pay to $15 per hour.

“The waste­water treat­ment plant is cur­rently short one worker, and Dale has passed his Waste­water Treat­ment Class I test,” said Sun­bury Mayor Tommy Hat­field. “(Waste­water Treat­ment Pant Super­vi­sor) Rich (Fel­ton) said Dale has been per­form­ing lab tests, and wants the plant to have a wage scale tied to jobs.”

Hat­field said that cre­at­ing a job-related pay scale at the waste­water plant could not be done dur­ing a coun­cil ses­sion – that task would have to be tack­led by mem­bers of vil­lage council’s 139 com­mit­tee. He did agree that it would be appro­pri­ate to increase Wampler’s pay based on the duties he is performing.

“I’m not thrilled about increas­ing his pay retroac­tively,” Hat­field said. “But I don’t see this as a raise per se, but as an employee who has taken a test and stepped up and started a process for Class II. This is a guy who is spent an inor­di­nate amount of time doing this.”

Coun­cil mem­bers approved the request.

Sunbury’s web­site is located at < sunburyvillage.com >.


Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meets the first and third Wednes­day of every month at 7:30 p.m., third floor coun­cil cham­bers, Sun­bury Town Hall. Coun­cil com­mit­tees meet one hour before reg­u­larly sched­uled coun­cil ses­sions. All vil­lage coun­cil and coun­cil com­mit­tee meet­ings are open to the public.

Posted by Gary Henery on Feb 12 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.