Photos by Tom Rivers

ALBION – Pastors from four churches in the Albion area led an Ash Wednesday service tonight at the First United Methodist Church.

About 40 people attended the service, which included music by the Joyful Good Shepherd Ringers, a group that includes Diane Scharping, pictured in front.

Ash Wednesday was celebrated by millions of Christians around the world today. They received an ash marking on their foreheads in the shape of a cross, an outward symbol that Christians have been marked by God, said David Beach, pastor of the Gaines Carlton Community Church.

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a time of reflection, repentance and sacrifice leading up to Easter.

Jack Laskowski, pastor of the United Methodist Church in Albion, delivered the message during the service. Marie Follett, the organist, is pictured in back.

Other pastors that participated in the service include Jon Rieley-Goddard of the Gaines Congregational United Church of Christ and Edward John Devine of the First Baptist Church in Albion.

Photos by Tom Rivers – Monroe Ambulance is seeking state permission to have an ambulance stationed in eastern Orleans County. The proposal would decrease ambulance response times, company officials said.

ALBION – Leaders of the eastern battalion, the fire companies and departments in eastern Orleans County, gave strong support to a proposal by Monroe Ambulance to have an ambulance stationed in Orleans County.

“We 100 percent support Monroe Ambulance,” Bob Freida, chief of the Clarendon Fire Company, said during a public hearing Monday about the Monroe Ambulance plan.

Monroe Ambulance said it would keep at least one ambulance in eastern Orleans at the Fancher-Hulberton-Murray fire hall. Right now the company tends to keeps two ambulances about 3 miles from the county line in the Brockport area.

Monroe Ambulance, because it wants to be stationed in Orleans and it isn’t based in the county, needs the state Department of Health to sign off on the request. Monroe Ambulance submitted more than 1,500 pages as part of a certificate of need. That application was the focus of a public hearing Monday with the Big Lakes Regional EMS Council.

“It’s our belief that service at this time has been exceptional,” Pete Hendrickson, chief of the Holley Fire Department, said about Monroe Ambulance.

The Holley Emergency Squad split off from the Holley Fire Department in 2003. The Emergency Squad has about 300 calls a year, but can only handle 20 percent of them with their own EMTs and drivers, said Ron Meiers, president of the Holley Emergency Squad.

He expects the Emergency Squad will discontinue in the next year due to a shortage of a volunteers and the need to upgrade an 11-year-old ambulance. The group doesn’t have the money for a new ambulance, he said. Right now the squad has three active drivers and five active EMTs, but many of them work outside the community.

Meiers praised Monroe Ambulance for being on scene quickly for emergency medical calls in Holley. Meiers said Monroe Ambulance could be faster to calls in eastern Orleans if it was permitted to keep an ambulance in Orleans County.

Monroe Ambulance responds to 600 calls in eastern Orleans on a mutual aid system, and those calls have been increasing in recent years as the local departments struggle with volunteer manpower, said Michael Bove, Monroe Ambulance assistant chief and project manager for the eastern Orleans proposal.

Bob Freida, chief of the Clarendon Fire Company, speaks in support of Monroe Ambulance’s application to park an ambulance in eastern Orleans County.

Monroe Ambulance currently keeps ambulances in western Monroe that respond to calls in Clarendon, Holley, Murray and Kendall, Bove said during a public hearing at the Orleans County Emergency Management Center on Countyhouse Road.

Another ambulance provider wants to be the primary provider for eastern Orleans. Central Orleans Volunteer Ambulance based in Albion said it would commit to putting an ambulance in Holley. COVA leaders said the organization should be given preference for the ambulance services because it is based within the county.

“If we have to put a rig or a substation in Holley that is what we’ll do,” said Kevin Sheehan, vice president of the COVA board of directors. “There is no call we can’t handle.”

COVA has three fully equipped ambulances and a trained crew that responds to calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week, said Wade Schwab, president of the COVA board of directors. COVA will add a fourth ambulance if it is approved to provide primary ambulance service for eastern Orleans.

Monroe Ambulance has already submitted its certificate of need to serve that section of the county. COVA is preparing its application.

The eastern Orleans fire department leaders said 90 percent of their patients go to hospitals in Monroe County. With Monroe Ambulance the local departments also can meet Monroe partway going east towards Rochester. With COVA, the fire officials said that group is coming from the opposite direction, and the local fire departments might have to wait for a COVA crew to show up and transport the patients.

Schwab said COVA is willing to have an ambulance on the eastern end of the county, which will speed up the responses. He said some of the eastern Orleans fire officials work for Monroe Ambulance and may feel an obligation to back that company, not only for the certificate of need but in requesting ambulance services. He worries Monroe Ambulance crews could be dispatched from Rochester rather than from COVA.

“I don’t think we’re getting the full consideration for providing service in our own county,” Schwab said.

Albion is about 10 miles from Holley. Monroe Ambulance’s crews in Brockport are closer than that. Gary Sicurella, a Fancher-Hulberton-Murray firefighter, said state officials shouldn’t look at which county the ambulance provider is based when determining which company is picked to provide primary services in eastern Orleans.

The focus should be on which ambulance company can provide the best service with the quickest response time. He said Monroe Ambulance has proven itself, working well with the eastern Orleans firefighters.

“If I have a patient I want the best and fastest care,” Sicurella said during the hearing. “I don’t care where it’s coming from.”

The Big Lakes Regional EMS Council will make a recommendation about the Monroe Ambulance CON to state officials, which will then make a final decision.

Hearing today at 1 p.m. at Emergency Management Office

ALBION – A Rochester-based ambulance company will pitch its plan this afternoon to provide ambulance services for eastern Orleans County.

Monroe Ambulance will share its plan at 1 p.m. today at the Orleans County Emergency Management Office, 14064 West Countyhouse Rd. The meeting is a public hearing and is required as part of the company’s certificate of need application with the state.

Monroe Ambulance currently provides advanced life support services in eastern Orleans. It wants to transport patients by ambulance in addition to ALS.

The Kendall, Holley and Clarendon fire departments all have ambulance squads in eastern Orleans. Central Orleans Volunteer Ambulance, based in Albion, also is pursuing a certificate of need to transport patients in eastern Orleans.

ALBION – Orleans County officials are pushing to expand high-speed Internet to areas in the county without the service.

First, the county and local municipal officials need to know precisely which houses have access to the service and which don’t.

The county is working with town governments in the 10 towns to create a database of vertical assets that could be used to mount equipment for wireless Internet. The towns will also try to document which sections of roads have access to cable and high-speed Internet.

BP Greene, a Holley company, will work with the towns and county to help determine where the service currently is provided. BP Greene also has been hired to prepare a Request For Proposals for Internet service providers to expand service in Orleans. The County Legislature last week approved paying BP Greene $27,980 for its work on the project.

Town supervisors and county officials have been working on the issue for about three years. Pockets of the county have very limited service and that hurts residents’ ability to use the Internet for school homework, to apply for jobs on-line and run businesses, Legislature Chairman David Callard has said.

The county has heard anecdotally that service is spotty in Orleans. But Callard said the service providers claim 95 percent of the county is covered with high-speed Internet, a figure that the towns and county say is an overexaggeration.

The work from the towns and BP Greene should provide accurate data on access to the service. Callard expects the study will show gaps in coverage in the county.

“If we can demonstrate the need, we may be able to get a grant to expand the service,” he said.

The state has been providing resources to expand the service in rural, underserved areas. In December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced $14.5 million in state funds for nine broadband projects that will expand access to broadband services for nearly 30,000 residents and more than 2,000 businesses in Upstate New York.

Callard said he expects the study will produce needed data for the towns and county to determine the next step in expanding high-speed Internet.

“We want to make a determination this year,” he said.

ALBION – When a resident can’t afford an attorney for criminal or family court, a judge in the case will often pick an attorney from the 50 on the county’s assigned counsel roster.

Judges need to make sure the attorneys don’t have any conflicts or past dealings with others involved in the case. Judges sometimes scramble, making several phone calls to find an attorney for a resident. Sometimes a judge will pick an attorney who happens to be in the courtroom.

The Orleans County Bar Association would like to see the county approve a part-time assigned counsel coordinator who would work with judges to find attorneys for cases. The coordinator could also ensure the residents meet income qualifications for indigent defense, and the coordinator could assess the quality of legal services in each case.

The coordinator of the program would make sure the cases are also rotated among the attorneys and that they follow consistent billing and reimbursement practices, said Shirley Gorman, chairwoman of the Bar Association’s assigned counsel committee.

The county spends about $600,000 a year through the public defender’s office and for assigned counsel, said Public Defender Sanford Church.

The state pays about $110,000 to $120,000 towards the cost. The state designates how its money should be used. A coordinator for assigned counsel is one of the functions that would be funded through the state Office of Indigent Legal Services. It has offered to pay for the coordinator for at least three years, Church said, as long as the County Legislature approves the position.

Church and Gorman presented the plan for a coordinator on Wednesday to the County Legislature, which said it would likely support the plan for more oversight with assigned counsel. Church and Gorman said the plan would match attorneys with clients sooner, and speed up the time their cases are in the court system.

The coordinator could also try to match the expertise of attorneys with the difficulty of each case, Gorman said.

“This is the best way to provide representation right away,” she told county legislators. “You have attorneys who show up right away who are prepared.”

Wind chill advisory issued as temps drop

March is two days away but Orleans County and Western New York are still in the hard grip of Old Man Winter.

Today will only reach a high of 15 degrees and temperature could fall to 1 below tonight, according to the National Weather Service, which has issued a wind chill advisory, effective at noon today for Orleans and several WNY counties. The advisory lasts until 10 a.m. on Friday. Wind chills could reach 15 to 24 degrees below zero.

It’s also expected to snow 2 inches today across the Niagara frontier.

Tomorrow temperatures are forecast to peak at 13 degrees. Saturday it will warm up to a high of 35 degrees, according to the Weather Service.

The burst of snow around noon today resulting in three car accidents in Orleans County. None of the accidents were serious with injuries, dispatch reported at the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department.

One of the accidents involved a rollover on Route 104 at Lattin Road in Gaines. The driver wasn’t hurt, dispatch reported.

“It’s what we all want and dream of, to have 60 years of committed love.” – TV producer for German television station

Photos by Tom Rivers – Ed and Floreen Hale’s son Ricky Hale and Floreen’s sister Marleen DeCarlo of Albion hold a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Hale on their 50th anniversary.

It’s been a whirlwind week for the family of Ed and Floreen Hale. News media from around the world have published articles and photos about the Hales’ 60-year marriage and their death a day apart.

This afternoon a television crew interviewed them in Batavia. That story will be published in Germany and several European countries.

The couple’s daughter Renee Hirsch says it is a privilege to share the story about her parents. But Hirsch and her family didn’t expect an article that first appeared in the Orleans Hub a week ago to become a world-wide phenomenon.

“We’ve been blown away by it,” she said this afternoon during a filming break.

Producers for RTL, a German television station, interview Renee Hirsch today in her parents’ home. Hirsch, the daughter of Ed and Floreen Hale of Batavia, holds some of her mother’s collectibles. Mrs. Hale loved the color red.

After appearing on the Orleans Hub, the article was on The Batavian. On Monday, WGRZ in Buffalo did a story. It quickly caught on with The Daily Mail in London doing a story that had 61,000 shares on the site, and more than 500 comments.

“This has been a big story in the UK,” said the TV producer for the German news organization RTL. “It resonates beyond religion and countries. It goes beyond culture. It’s what we all wish and dream for, to have 60 years of committed love and to die together naturally.”

The TV producer asked not to give her name, saying she preferred to be in the background for her features.

“Women dream of men who will love and cherish us, who will clean the car off for us,” she said. “This is very much a global story.”

She was joined in Batavia by Srdjan Stojiljkovic, a videographer. He said Mr. Hale’s devotion to his wife, including in their final days, has touched many hearts around the world.

“It’s beautiful,” Stojiljkovic said.

Orleans Hub has shared photos of the Hales with The Daily Mail, The New York Daily News, and other news organizations in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Germany and Brazil. Most organizations that published the story used the photos without asking permission.

Traffic from the story crashed our server on Friday. We made an upgrade after being offline for a several hours.

The articles have detailed the Batavia couple’s 60 years of marriage and their death a day apart of natural causes while in the same hospital home. The couple had two children, Renee Hirsch and Ricky Hale of East Bethany.

Mrs. Hale loved to have family over in her Batavia home designed by her husband, who was an engineer. Mrs. Hale decorated many of the rooms in red, her favorite color. She had a lot of spunk, said her sister Marleen DeCarlo of Albion.

“We witnessed every day the love they had for each other,” DeCarlo said today.

Provided photo – Floreen and Edward Hale married in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Albion on May 12, 1953.

“When you walked into their house you didn’t want to leave because of the warmth inside.”

Mr. Hale delighted in bringing his wife gifts and treats. He made sure the car was warmed up and brushed off during the winter. He never had an angry response, said the couple’s son, Ricky Hale.

“He was mild mannered with a lot of patience,” Hale said today. He is stunned by the world-wide intrigue in his parents.

Mr. Hale, 83, was at a different hospital 35 miles away in Rochester before his health rebounded enough for him to travel by ambulance to join his wife in Batavia at United Memorial Medical Center on Feb. 6. He was at Unity Hospital so he could get his dialysis treatments.

Mrs. Hale, an Albion native, lost her first husband in a car accident after they were married for only three months. She told Mr. Hale he could not leave her, ever. She didn’t want to live without him.

Mr. Hale was near death at Unity Hospital in early February. He had been mumbling and seemed incoherent. But at 4 in the morning on Feb. 6 he declared he needed to see his wife. His family, officials from the two hospitals and two hospice organizations, all worked to get Mr. Hale to see his wife, who was also clinging to life in Batavia at United Memorial Medical Center. He was cleared for the trip and was taken by Monroe Ambulance.

He joined his wife in the hospital room where 20 to 30 family members surrounded them. It was a blessing for the family to be together, and not splitting time at two bedside vigils.

Provided photo – Ed Hale and his wife Floreen comfort each other after being reunited at United Memorial Medical Center in Batavia on Feb. 6.

The couple held hands while they lay dying. The family shared a picture of the Mr. and Mrs. Hale in the hospital room. The picture has brought many people to tears around the world, according to comments posted on the news sites.

“They died holding hands,” DeCarlo said. “Everyone says that they have been touched by the story.”

The family initially reached out to the Orleans Hub, wanting to publicly thank the hospitals, two hospice organizations, an ambulance squad and a social worker who helped the Hales to be together in the their final days.

But the story became much more than that.

“We knew it was a magical moment and we wanted to share it,” said DeCarlo’s daughter Lisa Giattino of Albion.

The family recalled words by Mr. Hale on Feb. 2, the day of the Super Bowl. Mr. Hale had been incoherent and heavily medicated. At one point he told his family, “I’m going to be in headlines.”

Photo by Tom Rivers

MEDINA – The freeze-and-thaw cycle this winter has taken a toll on local roads, causing cracks and potholes.

The craters in this photo appear on Main Street in Medina, in front of City Hall. Local highway crews have been busy in recent days trying to patch the holes and make it a less bumpy ride for motorists.

‘Old-fashioned winter’ drives up costs for salt, OT

Photo by Tom Rivers – A Village of Albion plow truck was out in early February after another snow storm.

The cold and snow hit hard around around Thanksgiving and it has stuck around since, with little breaks in the frigid temperatures.

The unrelenting winter has kept local municipal highway crews busy. Their stockpiles of road salt are shrinking, while costs climb for overtime and fuel for the plow trucks.

“It’s been one of the longest winters that I can remember,” said Ed Morgan, Murray highway superintendent. “It started right after Thanksgiving and it’s been steady.”

Murray typically uses 1,000 to 1,200 tons of road salt a year. The town has already gone through 1,300 to 1,400 tons this winter, Morgan said.

He has 400 left in the highway storage shed. The town might buy another 400 tons, in addition to its stockpile.

The town of Barre has the most roads to work on in the county with 62 miles of town, plus 20 miles of county roads. Barre usually uses 1,200 to 1,400 tons of salt and is up to about 2,100 tons so far this winter, said Dale Ostroski, the town highway superintendent.

Last evening was a rare chance for him to be home. The highway crews have been working at all hours of the day, plowing and salting roads.

Ostroski said he has enough salt stored to last until the end of winter.

“We can get through it,” he said.

Some municipalities in the state and outside New York worry they will run out of salt. They are scrambling to get more. February and March often have days with temperatures near freezing, when salt should be deployed.

Local highway chiefs interviewed say they are in “good shape” with their salt supply. Many of the towns entered the winter with deep reserves. The previous two winters were far less demanding, which allowed the salt stockpiles to grow.

Some days have been so cold that towns actually didn’t use salt. When it drops below 15 degrees, salt doesn’t work. It needs moisture to activate, said Roger Wolfe, Yates highway superintendent.

Some of the recent sub-zero days actually were too cold for the municipalities to spread salt, although some use a mix that can be effective as low as 0 degrees.

Wolfe said the towns would have used more salt if the sub-zero temps had been in the teens or the 20s.

Yates has about 500 or 600 tons left for the winter. It plows 72 miles of roads.

“We’ve used more salt than in the previous two years,” Wolfe said.

He is thankful he has salt storage facilities that allowed the town to have a sizable stockpile. Other municipalities in the state have smaller storage sheds, forcing them to do frequent orders for salt. Many salt suppliers are only giving partial orders right now. Companies such as American Rock Salt in Livingston County are trying to serve as many customers as possible by giving them smaller salt orders.

The Village of Albion has used about 1,400 tons of salt so far, about 400 more than in an average winter, said Dale Brooks, the DPW superintendent. The village pays $42 a ton. The municipalities buy the salt on a state bid.

They have to buy at least 70 percent of their contract. In a light winter, like the previous two, the towns and villages will see their stockpiles grow.

They can keep the $42 price for up to 120 percent of their contract. After that, the price increases. Brooks said the village had about 500 tons stockpiled before the winter.

He had hoped to buy 800 tons this winter, but the December ice storms “burned up our salt.”

“We haven’t seen something like this in 15 or 20 years,” he said. “It’s an old-fashioned winter.”

A few warmer days beginning today doesn’t mean the highway crews will get to rest easy. The deep freeze and thaw has cracked roads and created many sizable potholes. The highway superintendents say they will be out with their crews trying to patch some of the roads.

Provided photo – Floreen and Edward Hale married in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Albion on May 12, 1953. Mrs. Hale, an Albion native, died on Feb. 7. Her husband died a day later.

The story about Ed and Floreen Hale’s 60-year marriage and their death a day apart is by far the most popular story ever posted on the Orleans Hub.

We posted the article – “A love story to the very end” – at about 8 p.m. on Sunday. The story has been viewed at least 7,562 times. The second most popular story ever on the Hub, about a Medina drug bust, has 3,586 page views.

Since we launched the site on April 2, we’ve posted about 2,500 articles. Our most viewed stories, unfortunately, tend to be crimes, accidents and tragedies.

Many of the people who have read the article about the Hales have commented on Facebook that it is a positive story about a life-long commitment. The media should report more of these stories, people have wrote on our Facebook page.

Orleans Hub obliterated its traffic records on Monday, mostly due to people reading the story about Ed and Floreen Hale. We had 19,947 page views and 9,143 unique visitors, by far our best numbers.

WGRZ in Buffalo also featured the couple on Monday.

Small cities get far more in aid per capita

State Sen. George Maziarz calls the disparity in state aid to villages and small cities “unbelievably unfair.” Maziarz has seen the Jan. 27 article in the Orleans Hub that details the vast difference in funding from the state for small cities versus villages that provide similar services. (Click here to see the original article.)

For example, Salamanca in Cattaraugus County gets $928,131 in state aid for a city of 5,815 people. That’s $159.61 per person.

But the village of Albion, population 6,056, gets only $38,811 or $6.41 a person. Medina and its 6,065 residents receive $45,523 in state aid or $7.51 per person.

Maziarz and staff from the State Senate are researching how the state came up with a formula for distributing the funding to cities, towns and villages. The formula for Aid and Incentives to Muncipalities or AIM goes back before Maziarz joined the Senate in 1995.

“We’re certainly going to take a look at it,” he said.

State Assemblyman Steve Hawley also has Assembly staff looking at the formula, trying to determine the state’s rationale for distributing the aid, said Eileen Banker, Hawley’s chief of staff.

Village of Albion Mayor Dean Theodorakos said villages should be receiving significantly more in state funding. Many villages like Albion operate much like cities with police departments, water and sewer plants, and many other services. The villages also are challenged with aging infrastructure that is costly to maintain.

Theodorakos has reached out to the New York Conference of Mayors, an association of villages and cities. He wants the group to advocate for a change in the state aid distribution so villages receive more dollars.

The tiny state aid dollars is a prime factor for the villages’ high tax rates. Albion’s village rate is $16.86 per $1,000 of assessed property while Medina property owners pay a $16.45 rate. If those villages received $160 per person like they do in Salamanca, Albion and Medina would each receive nearly $1 million in state aid. That would be enough to cut the village taxes by about 40 percent.

The City of Batavia in Genesee County receives $1,750,975 in state aid for its 15,465 residents or $113.22 per person. City taxpayers pay a $9.29 rate per $1,000, far less than in the Orleans villages.

Village taxpayers have the added pain of paying town taxes. City residents don’t pay taxes to towns as well. That additional $3 or $4 rate means village residents in Albion and Medina are paying about $20 combined in village and town taxes, about twice the rate in the city of Batavia.

Medina Mayor Andrew Meier said the high rates in the villages are driving out residents, businesses and investment. Medina officials are looking at dissolving the village to reduce taxes and the disparity in tax burden between village and the surrounding area outside the village boundaries.

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.”

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.