SAINT CLAIR - The borough council approved an electric power contract during a special meeting Thursday night that locks in a fixed price for the next five years.
The contact is with Nextera, which is selling the energy to American Municipal Power, a nonprofit organization located in Ohio, that then sells the energy to the borough.
James Havrilla of Utility Engineers, which does electrical consulting for the borough, said that the contract does two things, the first is restructuring the next three years of power supply obligations and the second is extend the contract two more years.
Since AMP is selling the energy to the borough, Havrilla said that as the borough grows or has economic downturns over the next five years, it will be protected for price and by volume.
"The unit cost for the energy is going to be lower for the next three years," Havrilla said. "The prices are lower now and we took advantage of that, that's our restructure for the next three years."
Since Saint Clair belongs to a consortium, along with Schuylkill Haven and other municipalities outside the county that buy electricity in bulk and resell it to their residents who cannot choose their electricity provider, borough Treasurer Roland Price said the pricing must be kept confidential until everyone votes on the contract.
Havrilla said the Schuylkill Haven borough council "approved the deal" Wednesday night.
While the contacts will all be with Nextera, the common cheapest supplier for the municipalities in the consortium, the prices will be different, reflecting the cost to serve each specific borough.
Havrilla also said that each municipality makes an independent decision, moving forward with what it considers the best interest of their municipality and it will not hold up any other municipality.
"I think we hit a home run in terms of energy cost," he said. "We have to be prepared for the other components that go into our bills and we're going to deal with those one at a time."
One last part of the contract adopted Thursday is a mutual aid agreement with interstate- and intrastate-participating municipalities to receive and provide mutual assistance during emergencies through the "interchange and use of personnel and equipment."
