Chairman of the Roundtable’s Infrastructure Working Group, and President and CEO of PKC Corp., Howard Pierce released a statement of support of the Vermont Gas proposal to extend service to Vergennes and Middlebury communities today.

In a prepared written statement, addressed to the Vermont Public Service Board, Pierce wrote: “The Roundtable supports this proposal for two principle reasons: it improves and expands the mix of energy sources available to both residential and business customers in an important area of the state, and it utilizes a creative and ‘Vermont-like’ approach to solving the challenge of how to finance the building or renovating of infrastructure in our thinly populated state.”

The familiar problemof finding a business model that permits our best public and private entities to bring key services to areas that lack a critical mass of consumers, will always be part of Vermont’s heritage. As federal funds become harder to find and the need for environmental and human efficiency becomes more compelling, every opportunity to spread key infastructure costs across a population of beneficiaries should be tested. Vermont Gas has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to deliver a dependable product at an improving price point. Harnessing one of these improvements in pricing across their existing customer base, in order to better guarantee expanded user base and product volume, seems in everyone’s interest – new customers, existing customers, and the State of Vermont.

The Roundtable’s Infrastructure Working Group supports this proposal We also encourage other key utilities, in particular broadband data and communications, to investigate similar strategies that use small across-the-board discount diversions and usage taxes – in a careful and targeted manner – to overcome the challenges presented by Vermont’s highly valued beauty and deomgraphics.”

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