NEWBERRY — The City of Newberry’s Utility Department will soon have a new system for their customers called PayGo that will allow customers to track their utility usage.
City Manager Matt DeWitt discussed this new tool during the Coffee with the Mayor and City Manager at Sonic on Thursday morning.
“What this allows you to do is live time track the your utility usage, which puts the power, literally puts the control of your power back in your hands,” DeWitt said.
DeWitt said that when a customer receives a bill once a month, they cannot remember what they were doing that month to cause the bill to be so high. With PayGo they can go back and look, and see when their energy spiked, which allows customers to correct the behavior.
DeWitt says it is a very powerful tool for Newberry residents.
“We obviously want our folks to know how to conserve power for us. If you use the power we have to pay for it to sell it to you, so it makes sense for us, if you conserve energy we do not have to pay for the energy,” he said. “It behooves us to provide people ways to conserve power. We are not just trying to sell as much power as we can.”
DeWitt also gave highlights for the upcoming 2017-18 budget. Some projects lined up for the next year include the tennis courts at Oakland, and the Recreation Complex that is being built thanks to the Capital Project Sales Tax. On the utility side, the City of Newberry will continue to roll out fiber in the city.
“We will look to bring in fiber providers on our system, they will actually provide the service, we will provide the infrastructure,” he said.
DeWitt said they have also proposed that residential garbage pick up go from $10 a month to $12. The city picks up garbage at residences three times a week, once for residential garbage, white goods and yard debris.
“That is still very cheap for three days a week, service to your home, and it allows us to continue to provide a quality service to our residents,” he said.
In the proposed budget there are also no tax increases nor are there utility increases.
Parks and Recreation updates
Scott Sawyer, director of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, gave updates for Newberry Recreation. The Oakland Tennis Courts are projected to be completed by the end of September, and will include six hard courts and three ClayTech courts, the first installed in South Carolina.
“We are not building a tennis center, we are building a tennis program,” he said.
There will be a fee, that is to be determined, to play on the ClayTech courts, but there is no fee to play on the hard courts.
Other updates
• Wheelchair accessible swings will be coming to Marion Davis Park. This is a part of the city’s effort to provide things for children, and adults, with special needs.
Updates from Mayor Foster Senn
• Bar Figaro is now opened, Senn commented that Bob Shirey continues to invest in Newberry.
• Senn said that there are other people preparing go open downtown, and you can tell this by the fact that there is paper in the windows. As he understands it, that means people are working to get the store ready to open.
• Scott Joyner, vice president of Advancement at Newberry College, also gave updates for the college. Over the summer Derrick and Cromer Halls will undergo refurbishments. On June 23 125 families will be in the city for orientation.
