Officials offer tips to reduce gas bills

The state has programs to help low-income residents pay heating bills.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- With natural gas prices expected to reach record highs this winter, state officials visited Youngstown to offer tips and assistance to help offset a portion of the additional costs.
Financial assistance from the state is available primarily to low-income households.
Officials with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, the agency with regulatory authority over energy distribution companies, and the Ohio Consumers' Counsel, the agency that represents the state's residential utility consumers before state and federal regulators, spoke Tuesday with Youngstown city officials about the energy crisis.
The public was invited to the meeting, but few people were there.
Clarence D. Rogers Jr., a PUCO commissioner, said the state has programs to help low-income residents, such as the Home Energy Assistance Program, or HEAP.
The program provides $175 million -- Gov. Bob Taft added $75 million to HEAP recently from the state's Temporary Aid for Needy Families program -- to help Ohioans pay a portion of their utility bills.
The program will provide an average of $430 per eligible household to help pay winter heating bills.
Taft also increased the eligibility of residents to add 70,000 more households to the 330,000 served last year under the program.
How it works
The PUCO issued a winter reconnect order, something done annually, that allows residents to have their home heating service restored if it's been shut off for nonpayment, he said.
Under the plan, a customer can pay the amount owed to a utility company or $175, whichever is less, plus a service reconnection fee of no more than $20 to have natural gas service reconnected. The state can pay the fee for some lower-income households, he said.
Natural gas prices in the Midwest are expected to rise by 71 percent this winter compared to 2004, said Janine Migden-Ostrander, OCC's counsel.
Tips
Residents can reduce their natural gas bills, she said, by lowering the temperature on thermostats, buying high-efficiency furnaces, insulating homes, replacing windows, installing weather stripping and lowering the temperature on water heaters.
The various conservation measures could reduce home heating bills by as much as 30 percent, she said.
The city implemented an electrical aggregation program in 2003 that cuts about 7 percent off consumer electric bills, said Carmen Conglose Jr., the city's deputy director of public works. The city is looking at a similar program for natural gas; perhaps one that would include all of Mahoning County, he said.
"We are in a natural gas crisis," Migden-Ostrander said. "We've seen an increase in prices that is unlikely to significantly go down."
The PUCO and OCC are visiting six cities in November to discuss the winter heating issue. Youngstown was the first stop.
skolnick@vindy.com