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Editorial
Consider ACE when you choose your gas supplier
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Have you checked out your Nebraska Choice Gas selection packet yet?
You'd better hurry; you only have one more week to do so.
If you're like most of us, you don't give much thought to the process, perhaps even failing to make a selection and letting others make the choice for you.
But Mayor Dennis Berry makes some good points in an Open Forum letter reprinted elsewhere on this page.
He points out that ACE -- it stands for Public Alliance for Community Energy, but PACE was already taken -- is the only non-profit, community owned supplier in the Choice Gas program.
That's not an insignificant point in McCook, Nebraska. For one, as an agricultural community, we have a long history of involvement in the cooperative form of business. Farmers have long benefited from being members of co-ops that can provide the fuel, chemicals and other supplies needed to keep an agricultural enterprise in operation.
For another thing, we live in Nebraska, the only fully public power district in the nation. Nebraskans enjoy some of the lowest-priced electricity around in part because profits are plowed back into the infrastructure, or returned to the customers in the form of lower rates.
Thirdly, McCook was home to the late Sen. George Norris, father of the Rural Electrical Administration, which got its start by bringing electrical power to rural Tennessee.
Not coincidentally, he was father of the Nebraska Unicameral, designed to be another model of cooperation instead of partisan self-interest and personal profit. (Note we say "designed to be.")
It's in that same spirit that McCook is a member of ACE, which has returned $44,454 in excess revenue to the city since it was formed in 1998, as well as $845,000 to the other 70 member communities.
That's money that otherwise would have gone to a private company and its stockholders, many of whom probably live out of state.
Is ACE always the lowest price? Not always.
Is choosing a natural gas supplier a confusing and time-consuming process?
We have to admit, it can be.
But we hope residents will take time to study their options, make the calls and at least consider ACE when they make their choice.