Hilton's electric service opened to Parma residents

Hilton's electric service opened to Parma residents

In addition to urging more Hilton residents to sign up for the Village of Hilton Municipal Electric Utility, Hilton officials have opened the utility up to Town of Parma residents.

Hilton has offered its residents access to electric for close to a year; they had 900 customers the first year but that number has dropped off a bit. The town currently serves 870 customers; including four churches and 45 commercial accounts. "Some people didn't like receiving two bills in the mail for their electricity," Village Clerk Janet Surridge said. "We bill for the electricity supply charges and RG&E still bills for the delivery charges and maintenance."

RG&E, Surridge said, reads the meters and sends the information to Hilton which then completes the billing of the services.

In 2006, the village only offered customers a fixed rate plan. For 2007, it has added a variable rate plan. "The board felt we were at a 50 percent level of community participation and this alternative would spur enrollment," village officials had written for a slide presentation offered to Town of Parma officials and residents at a recent meeting.

"We're marketing this utility to Parma because there is strength in numbers," Mayor Larry Gursslin said. "When we're buying the wholesale market, the more electricity we buy, the cheaper price we get and can pass along to the residents."

Town of Parma Supervisor Rick Lemcke said the opportunity for Parma residents to tap into Hilton electric is an excellent way for residents to reap financial benefits. "This has the potential to generate great savings for farmers, businesses and residents," he said. "It's not often we can take advantage of an opportunity to pass along savings to our residents and have it cost us nothing."

Lemcke said he had already switched his home electric, service and was in the process of changing his business electric service over to Hilton Electric.

The village buys its electricity on a wholesale basis, rather than retail, and is, therefore, able to pass the savings along to the residents.

Surridge explained that Hilton (and Parma customers) receive a monthly retain access credit of -$.004/kw and sales tax no longer applies to the RG&E delivery charges for local businesses.

Gurrsslin said the 2007 fixed rate for the supply charge for Hilton Electricity customers will be $.085/kw. The RG&E rate is $.096 and Energetix is $.092.

Village of Hilton officials said they decided to offer this service to residents because they knew that New York state was promoting deregulation of utilities and it was an opportunity for them to offer taxpayers another service. "We looked into what we could offer residents that could save them money and this was one thing we could offer," Gursslin said. "We didn't look at getting into offering this service as a way to make money."

As an example, Gursslin and Surridge said a local restaurant used 17,750/kw in a month, the retail access credit generated a savings of $71; annually $852. An average residential customer uses about 10,000/kw annually and the retail access credit will save them about $40 a year. The savings are realized for those customers who make the change to Hilton Electric from RG&E, they said.

Surridge said that last year the price of electricity sky rocketed because of Hurricane Katrina and at that time the village lost some of its electricity customers. "We need to educate the taxpayers about our program and let them know they have choices and that they can save money with our program," she said.

Another benefit offered to residents, Gursslin said, is customer service. "I placed a call to RG&E and by the time I made my way through the automated phone choices and was on hold, I spent about 12 minutes getting my question answered."

"Residents can just come into the office and we can help them almost immediately," Surridge said. "We also have a program in our computers that if a resident brings in his or her electric bill, we can put the numbers into our system and let them know what kind of savings they could have by switching to Hilton Electric."

Residents can call the Hilton village offices at 392-4144 for information on the program. Customers have until December 29 to choose an electricity supplier.