ALBION – Orleans County officials are continuing the groundwork needed to bring high-speed Internet to pockets of the county without the service.

After a study of the vertical assets in three western Orleans towns – Shelby, Ridgeway and Yates – the study will be expanded to central and eastern towns. That inventory of water towers, silos and other tall structures will be shared with Internet service providers interested in bringing the service to the county.

County officials want to first discuss the vertical asset survey with the seven towns in central and eastern Orleans before committing to that study, said Legislature Chairman David Callard.

“We want to make sure there is enthusiasm coming from the other seven towns,” Callard said.

Once the county and towns have the inventory of vertical assets, they can work on a formal Request For Proposals from the service providers. Callard didn’t want to issue a timetable for when the service could be in place.

Several wireless Internet providers have already expressed interest in serving the county’s pockets without high-speed Internet.

Time Warner says 95 percent of the county has the service, but Callard and county officials dispute that figure. Callard said it could be as low as 50 percent. The four villages and the areas immediately by those population centers all have good coverage, Callard said.

“But there are a lot of rural expanses and the fringes without service,” he said.

The county and some of the towns have been trying for about four years to expand high-speed Internet in rural pockets without the service.

Time Warner has balked at running the cable in some rural areas, saying the potential for few customers at a $10,000-a-mile cost doesn’t make business sense. Going wireless may be the most cost-effective way to expand service.

The push for county-wide high-speed Internet access is seen as a top priority – for economic development and to keep and attract residents. Students can’t complete some of their homework and research without the Internet, officials said.

Photo by Tom Rivers – The moon looms over a tree at Mount Albion Cemetery on Tuesday night, when temperatures plunged below zero.

National Grid customers are paying about 10 to 12 percent more for electricity this winter, the company said. The prolonged cold spells have customers using more power for furnaces, which are clicking on more often and running longer than in a normal winter.

“Customers are seeing higher delivery bills caused not by a change in rate, but by substantially higher usage,” said Steve Brady, National Grid spokesman. “And, the energy they are using is more expensive than prior months and this time last year because of commodity market conditions.”

The National Grid bill includes delivery and supply of the electricity. National Grid delivers the power and maintains the network. The company purchases the energy from several sources, some in long-term contracts and others in spot market purchases.

The supply costs have jumped. The village of Holley, which operates a municipal electric department, has warned residents they will be facing a huge increase in bills, about 2.5 times the average bill in a typical winter. That’s because the supply of electricity has jumped due to the demands of a brutally cold winter, village officials said.

National Grid anticipated a big spike in costs this month, and sought to defer collecting that increase until later in the year. The Public Service Commission approved that proposal from National Grid, which will spare customers a bigger jolt in their bills.

The cost of energy in recent years had been trending below average for costs, Brady said.

“In New York, like much of the Northeast, the price of electricity is affected by the price of natural gas because so much of the generation is fueled by gas,” he said. “Demand for gas is running very high and, when demand is high, prices tend to be higher.”

With the commodity prices expected to spike dramatically in February, National Grid sought to prevent “sticker shock” for its customers with the delay in collecting the increase in costs, Brady said. The company expects to collect that increase in late spring and summer when prices and demand are expected to stabilize.

The company is deferring about $30 to $32 million for its 1.6 million electric customers in upstate New York, Brady said.

Customers can help reduce their energy usage by lowering their thermostats by a few degrees and wearing a sweater inside, he said.

“Investing in more efficient appliances and lighting potentially has the next biggest impact,” Brady said. “The old saying is that the least expensive kilowatt is the one that doesn’t get used, so any means to simply reduce usage will help the bill.”

MURRAY – The Orleans County Conservative Party Committee on Tuesday passed a resolution, demanding the state Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo repeal the SAFE Act. The local group may have made history.

The party’s committee members met at Christos Restaurant on Route 104 and approved the resolution for the controversial gun control legislation approved in January 2013.

“We hadn’t seen any other political parties come forth and do it,” said Allen Lofthouse, Conservative Party chairman in Orleans County. “We hope it will set a precedent.”

The resolution will be forwarded to Cuomo, U.S. President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and other state and federal officials.

Lofthouse and the Conservatives were praised for their public stance by County Legislator Don Allport during today’s Legislature meeting. The Legislature has passed several resolutions against the SAFE Act.

Every elected town and village board in the county have also formally opposed the SAFE Act. Lofthouse said it infringes on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

DiNapoli says all NY villages should be on alert

A new report by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli doesn’t list any village from Orleans County or Western New York as in a level of fiscal stress.

However, DiNapoli said many upstate villages are suffering from shrinking tax bases, above average child poverty rates and shrinking employment bases.

He urged villages to use “sensible budgeting and careful long-term planning” to avoid fiscal stress.

His office issued a report of 535 villages and identified 15 with a level of fiscal stress. The report covered the fiscal year that ended May 31, 2013.  Albion, Holley and Lyndonville all were well below the fiscal stress threshold. (Medina was one of 48 villages that didn’t file the paperwork for the report.)

“Although the number of villages designated as fiscally stressed is small, village officials across the state must be on alert,” DiNapoli said. “Moving forward, the drivers of fiscal stress will continue to hamper villages in many of the same ways it does our larger municipalities.”

Using financial indicators that include year-end fund balance, cash position and patterns of operating deficits, the comptroller’s system creates an overall fiscal stress score which classifies whether a municipality is in significant fiscal stress, in moderate fiscal stress, susceptible to fiscal stress, or no designation.

The three villages from Orleans that were evaluated all received no designation.

The comptroller’s report establishes 29 overall points. If a village had at least 13 points, or 45 percent of the total, they were listed as susceptible to financial stress. Moderate fiscal stress started with 16 points and significant fiscal stress started at 19.

Holley had 7 points or 29.2 percent, while Lyndonville had 5 points or 20.8 percent. Albion had the best score: 4 points or 16.3 percent. All three were well under the comptroller’s threshold for fiscal stress.

“We are in very good shape,” said Jane Murray, Holley’s village clerk. “I’m very pleased.”

The average village score was 40 percent while Finger Lakes villages were about 42 percent, according to the comptroller’s report. (Click here to see the report.)

Other highlights of the report include:

Downstate villages overall are slightly gaining population, while upstate villages continue to experience declining population.

Median property values in downstate villages is nearly $170,000, while the median value in upstate villages barely tops $40,000.

Unemployment rates vary between upstate (8.6 percent) and downstate (7.1 percent) villages.