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City saving on natural gas; change won’t affect homeowners

Mar 31, 2016 | 12:12 PM

The City of Meadow Lake has been refunded nearly $16,000 in PST overpayments and thanks to a new contract can expect to save nearly $200,000 on its natural gas bill over the next three years.

Beginning Nov. 2016, the City will pay nearly 2/3rds less than what they were paying already.

City manager Diana Burton said the new rate will save the city 50-60 per cent or $50-65,000 per year depending on usage.

Residents in Meadow Lake won’t see a change to their monthly bills since typically their natural gas is acquired from SaskEnergy.

“The bills that will be affected are the utility bills for the City of Meadow Lake. Things like city hall, the arena, pool, the fire department, those kind of buildings will see a decrease in natural gas costs,” Burton said.

According to Burton the money will be used at council’s discretion for things like added paving and parks beautification, or can be put into reserves for future projects and unforeseen costs.

“If for some reason a cost did increase, then some of this money could offset those costs. Or it could go to other programs.”

Besides saving nearly $200,000 with the new contract with Connect Energy, the City of Meadow Lake has also been refunded $15,948.83 in PST overpayments from SaskPower.

“Some of or buildings are PST exempt from for SaskPower bills and some aren’t. So for instance city hall, we would pay PST where the fire hall we wouldn’t,” Burton said.

“It was coming in on our bill and we weren’t aware of this provision so we paid it on everything and they went back four years and gave us back the PST we had paid from the places we were exempt from paying.”

The refunded money follows the same process as saved money where council can choose to spend it on upgrades, beautifications and street repairs or put it into reserved.

cswiderski@jpbg.ca

On twitter: @coltonswiderski