HELEN – Helen City Manager Jerry Elkins had a surprise Christmas present for the city commission Tuesday afternoon: the promise of nearly $200,000 in recovered city funds, thanks to persistent work with Georgia Power Co.
Elkins said his most recent meeting with Georgia Power Co. officials, earlier in the day, culminated about two years of work between the city and the utility.
“Our many meetings we’ve had have been very progressive, and I would like to thank Jason Stott, who is the general manager for this area, for his input and help in coming to this conclusion,” Elkins said after the meeting. “For a couple of years now, we’ve been requesting information about our streetlights – location of them, how many, what wattages, everything that we needed to see if we are actually paying for what we are getting, or if we are paying more that what we are supposed to be paying, how many lights we have, the different types and sizes.”
Rather that the city outsourcing an audit of the light, Georgia Power Co. conducted that audit.
“They did their own audit, and were very generous coming back and advising us that we’d been overcharged, in some instances, which resulted in a good-size refund from that audit,” Elkins said. “That’s since the year 2000.”
During Tuesday’s meeting, Elkins told commissioners the utility is going to refund to the city $142,072.77.
In addition to that, Georgia Power Co. is going to change out $48,000 of decorative lighting in the city to new technology at no expense to the city, Elkins said.
“That’s $200,000 worth of cash and lighting,” Elkins told commissioners.
Elkins said he is thankful for Georgia Power Co. officials’ help in resolving the matter successfully and working to prevent further billing issues.
“It’s just been a long time to get here, but now that we’re here we’ve got knowledge of what we actually have and what the charges for those particular type lights are, and we can all look at it closer on the city side, and Georgia Power can monitor, too,” Elkins said. “Georgia Power did this and realized that they had been overcharging and therefore are making the correction, so you’ve got to give them their due for that, also.”
