A consortium of five suburbs no longer will negotiate natural-gas deals on behalf of residents, following a winter when the group's prices were much higher than the local utility's.
The participating cities - Bexley, Dublin, Gahanna, Grandview Heights and Upper Arlington - provide fixed-rate gas contracts for more than 24,000 participating households, a program that will be phased out at the end of this year.
"There's really not a need for government to be in it," said Dana McDaniel, Dublin's assistant city manager, who announced the decision yesterday....
The current fixed rate, 83cents per 100 cubic feet of natural gas, began in January and is the lowest in the group's history. And yet it is roughly double the price offered each month this year by Columbia.
Columbia's price is unusually low because of a general downturn in commodity prices and because of quirks with the way the company is switching to a new system for buying its gas.
Since the consortium began in 2005, its price was higher than Columbia's in 43 out of 63 months, according to a Dispatch analysis of pricing and consumption data. Customers who had the city group plan that entire time and had average gas usage would have paid nearly $800 more than if they had gone with the utility.
via www.dispatch.com
