In an aside in an article about the possible impact of a new sewer system in the Town of Lansing, the Journal notes that Dryden led the county in new home construction last year, with 212 to Lansing's 211. I'm not surprised, given the construction I've seen around Etna and elsewhere - Dryden is definitely growing.
NYSEG continues its unremarkable customer service with a website-only approach to letting customers choose their natural gas provider.
At this point I'm pretty well convinced that the benefits of deregulating power and gas are pretty close to zero, mostly forcing people to wander through a maze of not-very-different choices differentiated rather poorly. At least with electricity there's some sense that you can sort of choose the source of your power, but with natural gas it's even harder to see a point. It's just gas, right? Wouldn't it make sense to buy it in maximum bulk and share the cost? (You could still offer price insurance for people averse to risk.) Apparently that's just not exciting enough a business opportunity.
The initial county budget looks tight, and drains the fund balance, so there's probably a huge amount of work left to do on it.
Posted by simon at September 6, 2006 8:38 AM in Ithaca Journal , construction , energy
More striking is that the average assessment of the 212 homes build in the town of Dryden between 2001 and 2005 is $223,000. Average selling price in 2003 outside of the villages of Dryden and Freeville was $143,457. In the villages of Dryden and Freeville it was $128,733 and $92,633 respectively.