Laconia: Heating nearly doubles in price- What's Moultonboro doing?

The Citizen      Saturday, August 2, 2008

It's going to cost a whole lot more — nearly double — to fuel municipal boilers this fall and winter. On Friday, City Purchasing Specialist Jonathan Gardner opened three bids for No. 2 heating oil and the apparent low bidder, at $3.995 per gallon, is the Fred Fuller Oil Co.The Irving Oil Co. bid $4.285 and Strafford Oil, $4.495 per gallon.
Subject to verification, the winning bid from Fuller was $1.63 higher than its winning bid from 2007 of $2.335 At the time, the 2007 Fuller price was a good deal given that the average price of heating oil in Central New Hampshire last August was $3.207 per gallon, while the high was $3.249 and the low $3.15. Fuller's 2007 bid, in fact, was six cents per gallon lower than what the city paid for oil in 2006. Those relatively good times are gone, however, and going into this year's bidding process Gardner said he had heard that prices could be twice as high. Fuller is expected to provide the city with 39,300 gallons of oil during the 2008-2009 fiscal year, which includes 3,000 gallons for emergency delivery in 100-gallon allotments to city welfare recipients.
Twenty of the city's municipal buildings are heated with oil, including city hall, the police station, the community center, Laconia Public Library, Goss Reading Room, all park houses, the public works garage and all water department buildings.