Bedford re-enlists with Sustainable Westchester

BEDFORD, N.Y. - Bedford chose last week to continue to offer the option of powering homes and small businesses with green electricity.

Re-enlisting last week in a decade-old program of Sustainable Westchester, the Town Board gave the environmental-activist nonprofit the authority to seek bids on behalf of Con Edison and NYSEG’s Bedford customers for electricity from renewable sources. With the board’s vote, residents and business owners are automatically in the green program but have the option to withdraw at any time.

At this point, Supervisor Ellen Calves said, 507 of Con Edison’s 644 customers have chosen to go with the 100 percent renewable supply but only 1,533 of some 6,000 served by New York State Electric and gas (NYSEG) are in the green program.

“The numbers show that people do know how to opt out if they don’t want to be in the renewable supply,” Calves said. “But it also gives them the choice to be in the renewable supply, quite easily. And, if we default to the 100 percent [renewable supply], they can opt into the 50 percent, or they can opt into their utility’s supply, which is nonrenewable.”

A Sustainable Westchester subsidiary, Westchester Power, manages the program for 26 municipalities, including Yonkers, the latest addition. But three municipalities, Lewisboro among them, have dropped out as the volatile energy market has frequently priced green energy higher than the rates for the utilities’ electricity, generated by fossil fuels.

Touted in 2013 as both reducing electric bills and encouraging green supply, the bulk-buying program known as community-choice aggregation won state approval for a Westchester pilot program in 2015.

As the Northern Westchester Energy Action Coalition, an affiliation of environmentally conscious north county municipalities and a predecessor of Sustainable Westchester, lobbied for the program’s approval, the supervisor of a neighboring town summed up CCA’s appeal: Under the proposed law, communities could say, “Everyone in our town is buying their electricity through this provider, and whoever comes in with the best deal, that’s who everyone in the town will buy their electricity from, unless they opt out.”

In the earliest days of the pilot, residents were assured the CCA rate would be lower than the one their utility offered. That pledge was largely lost in the continuing turbulence of global energy markets. The original secondary goal, renewable supplies, became the principal advantage of CCA participation.

Firefighter Exemption

Bedford residents who volunteer as firefighters and ambulance crew members anywhere in Westchester can receive a partial exemption of their property taxes, the Town Board voted last week.

The vote, following a public hearing at the board’s April 1 meeting, extends the partial exemption now given to resident-members of Bedford volunteer companies to anyone serving in those capacities with volunteer fire companies and ambulance corps in neighboring communities.

To be eligible for a 10 percent exemption on town property taxes, the homeowner must have at least two years of service, said Tax Assessor Harold Girdlestone, the hearing’s lone speaker. State law that had provided the exemption to residents serving in their own municipality’s emergency organization was amended last year, he said, to service anywhere in the county.

“Hopefully,” Supervisor Ellen Calves said before the board’s vote, “if it’s passed here it will be passed in other places so that those benefits can be conferred on people [from other communities] who are serving in our agencies.”

Town Clerk Allie Whalen, who joined the Katonah Bedford Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps in 2014 before she was a Bedford resident, had been instrumental in bringing about the change in state tax law, Calves said.