Little more than a year ago, I attended the New York Conference of Mayors’ (NYCOM) annual meeting. At this meeting, there was a session on aggregated energy presented by a NYCOM endorsed company called “GoodEnergy.”
This company proposed an interesting concept which I brought back to the Village Board for discussion. Ultimately, this company created a consortium of municipalities across the country to buy power from the utility in bulk, thereby passing a savings onto the residents directly in their utility bill.
There is a catch, however. The municipality must enroll the utility user (resident) in the program without their direct consent. That’s where the Village Board did not necessary feel comfortable moving forward. We understand that many decisions in our form of representative democracy are made on our constituents’ behalf, such as our garbage contractors, our water plant operators, paving contractors, etc., but a utility bill is in no way the government’s “domain.”
To that end, we’ve sent out a mailing with some details on the program and asked the community if you’d like us to enroll you, along with the entire community, in this basic energy savings. The bottom line – there is no contract, you can leave the program at any time – even before it begins, you still receive the same energy from Orange and Rockland, same utility bill, just at a lower rate than if you bought it direct from Orange and Rockland.
Nothing changes except your rate. Again, this is not something we feel governments should be involved in and that is why we want YOUR opinion and essentially your consent to move forward. In fact, there is no monetary gain for the Village itself in this move. Only the residents see the savings. As it stands, the Village could collectively save approximately $70,000 annually. If you are currently enrolled in any sort of energy program, nothing would change.
We recently had the company send a mailer to every resident in the Village. The mailer can be marked and dropped off at Village Hall, or you can submit your opinion on the program by going to our website , www.villageofgreenwoodlake.org/poll or by calling 833-696-3759.
