(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Colorado Springs City Council unanimously approved Colorado Springs Utilities’ proposal to decrease to the natural gas cost adjustment on Tuesday, Jan. 9. This comes after the warmer winter months resulted in lower demand for gas usage.

“Today we were at City Council requesting a decrease to our gas cost adjustment, which really passes through cost of purchasing natural gas,” said Colorado Springs Utilities Pricing and Rates Manager, Scott Shirola. “On the average sample bill that represents about a $6.42 decrease, so it helps offset much of the non-fuel increases that were approved last year.”

While customers will be saving money from this natural gas decrease, they will be seeing an increase in the base rates.

“Last November, City Council approved increases to our electric and natural gas base rates,” Shirola said. “Base rates really recover the cost of our electric and natural gas system, so the physical parts of our system that you see. Those increases took effect on Jan. 1 of this year and they represented about an $8 impact to the typical residential customer.”

Colorado Springs Utilities clarified that the purpose of the base rate goes toward operating the day-to-day utilities, as well as helping to build new plants and infrastructure.

“I think it’s important to remind customers with the base rates there is no such thing as a for service utility staying static, remaining in the status quo, because if you do that, you fall behind and the costs are incrementally more expensive for customers in the long term,” said Colorado Springs Utilities Spokesperson Steve Berry.

During the City Council meeting, Springs Utilities was presented with why natural gas prices saw lower-than-expected costs, due to a warmer-than-expected start to the heating season.

“We’ve seen a shift in the natural gas market with prices going downward,” Shirola said. “We were expecting natural gas prices to be in the $5 area, really going in through January and February of this heating season, because of a warmer-than-expected November in parts of the country, along with really strong natural gas production. We’ve seen those forecast natural gas prices, decreases in those prices.”

In a presentation to City Council, Scott Shirola presented this graph depicting the shift in the natural gas market.

City Council unanimously approved this decrease which marks the third gas cost adjustment rate decrease within a year.

“This is really the third decrease in about a year,” Shirola said. “We saw decreases approved by City Council in March, July, and now again this January.”

In response to this third decrease, Berry stated “so that’s a big deal for customers because those are the fuel costs. Those are typically [what] would influence how you consume the resource during the winter and of course, they fluctuate obviously depending on market conditions.”

Beyond helping customers save money on their upcoming bill, Springs Utilities shared how this decrease also benefits them compared to other utility providers.

“Utilities does a quarterly comparison of utility providers along the front range serving over other municipal areas,” Shirola said. “Based on this quarter’s results, with this decrease, a customer in Colorado Springs can expect their bill to be about 11% lower than other municipalities along the front range.”

Online there is a sample residential monthly bill outlining the savings that will now be in effect starting Jan. 15. You can also find information on the different programs available to help customers pay their bills with Flexible Payment Plans, Project COPE, Pikes Peak United Way, HEAP and LEAP.

With colder temperatures predicted for the weekend, Springs Utilities shared tips on managing your thermostat and watching your consumption.

“It’s really important to keep that thermostat at around 68 degrees when you’re home, or as low as you can tolerate,” Berry said. “Then when you’re away from home, you’re running errands or you’re at work, set it to 60, that’ll make sure that it’s warm enough to keep your pipes from freezing, but it also ensures that you’re really managing your use of energy and it’s really important. That’s what influences your bill more than anything this time of year.”