“Name that Year” is designed to put your knowledge of Tracy and its newsmakers of the past to the test. Each week, we will publish a news item that ran in a past edition — maybe it was a major event, or a story about a Tracy resident — it’s up to you to determine in what year that particular news item hit the pages of the paper:
• The Peoples Natural Gas office in Tracy is closing, effective Aug. 4 of this year.
The consolidation, announced by the company Tuesday, will mean the end of all People’s office functions in Tracy and the closing of the Tracy retail appliance outlet. Regular natural gas service to customers will not be affected.
“We want to stress that all natural gas services will remain the same,” commented Dave Kultz, director of customers services, located in Fairmont Two Peoples Natural Gas service technicians, Al Deming and Mike Andree, will continue to work out of Tracy. Plans are to find a smaller indoor shop space in Tracy where the men can operate from.
The office is one of a handful being closed for company restructuring. The others are in Appleton, Madison and Wells.
A part of the restructuring includes having only one manager serve all three remaining offices. The Tracy office has been served by a manager out of Windom since last spring, when former manager Gary Abrahamson was let go by the company.
Kultz said the company believes that new technology will allow Peoples to serve customers just as efficiently after the consolidation, while cutting costs.
“We are striving to be a low-cost provider,” he said. Another factor in the realignment, he said, is the government de-regulation of utilities that will allow other gas companies to compete with Peoples as a customer provider while using Peoples pipelines.
The closure of the Tracy office will result in the loss of two local jobs, now held by Sandy Sanderson and Peg Zwach.
• Last week’s answer: A proposal for high school girls’ softball in Tracy was approved by the school board in the year 2000.
