Full time residents of Grand Marais will receive cold weather notices with their September bills, and the Grand Marais Public Utilities Commission (PUC) would like people to spend some time and fill them out if they feel they can’t pay their winter electric bills, said PUC secretary Jan Smith.
“We really are encouraging people to fill them out,” said Smith. “Last winter was tough. Propane skyrocketed. People plugged in space heaters and used a lot of electricity. People need to come in and work out a pay plan that is acceptable.”
The Minnesota Cold Weather Rule protects residential customers having difficulty paying their heating bills from October 15 through April 15.
But City Administrator Mike Roth warned, “This pay plan, this protection, isn’t available if they [the client] aren’t current going into the winter.”
With Cook County Local Energy Project (CCLEP) leader George Wilkes out of town, PUC board member Tim Kennedy was asked by Wilkes to make a request for $3,000 from the PUC. Kennedy said CCLEP needed the money to hire a consulting service that would look for grants and other dollars to fund a rebidding of the Grand Marais District Heating System study.
“The estimate to hire a firm to re-bid the heating biomass project is expected to be between $50,000 to $75,000,” said Kennedy.
Bids received last winter for a biomass heating plant that would have potentially fed 18 businesses and government buildings steam to heat their buildings came in $4 million over the estimates of the engineering study.
Roth told Kennedy, “The PUC can’t spend sewer funds on this and can’t use general funds on something that doesn’t exist yet.”
Roth asked Kennedy to take his request to the city council, which Kennedy said he would do.
Grand Marais Electric Superintendent Mike Taylor said that Lake States Tree Service had been hired to help with tree removal around power lines.
“I hope to have them here in September,” he said.
Taylor said Lake States wouldn’t be paid more than $10,000. “I picked out some of the worst spots for them to work. They are going to chip the wood, which is kind of a problem because we don’t have a burn pile anymore. If anyone wants some chips for their garden, let me know,” he said.
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