An Arizona lawmaker is putting the Arizona Corporation Commission on notice of his opposition to the City of Sedona’s effort to force a multi-million-dollar cost shift onto Arizona Water Company ratepayers throughout northern Arizona who don’t live in Sedona.
Arizona State Representative David Marshall stands in opposition due to the fact that the City is requiring Arizona Water Company to bury a new water storage tank underground and disguise it with a fake home built on top. This aesthetic demand will make the project one of the most expensive the utility has ever undertaken.
“The principle of cost causation—wherein those who drive up costs should be the ones to pay for them—is fundamental to fair ratemaking,” said Marshall. “Sedona’s plan is antithetical to fair and ethical ratemaking and should be an easy rejection by an impartial Corporation Commission.”
Marshall says that the City of Sedona’s “extravagant design mandate benefits only local residents, yet the city is attempting to force water customers in other communities to subsidize the unnecessary increase in cost for its aesthetic requirements.”
“Arizona Water Company’s northern Arizona ratepayers—including the good people of Pinetop-Lakeside, Heber-Overgaard, Rimrock, Munds Park, and the Village of Oak Creek—did not ask for these costly design features,” Marshall said. “Quite frankly, it’s absurd to ask them to fork over millions to subsidize the excessive, big-government design mandates of a city nearly 200 miles away.”
In his letter, Representative Marshall urges the Commission to follow established precedent and ensure that the exorbitant costs associated with the purely aesthetic design upgrades are borne only by the ratepayers of the community that imposed them. Arizona law and Commission rulings make clear that when a city mandates the undergrounding or similar enhancements of utility structures, only local ratepayers should bear the added cost.
“This is a matter of fairness and affordability,” Marshall added. “Sedona chose to inflate the cost of this project for its own benefit. The rest of northern Arizona shouldn’t be stuck footing the bill for Sedona’s multi-million-dollar expectations.”
Does not surprised me one bit. Sedona should have to pay for their own demands.
The Corp Commission is completely bought off by APS so they will probably rubber stamp this one if they get paid. Nothing better for those crooks than a rate increase rubber stamp.
What a surprise. Sedona wants everyone else to pay for their egotistical design to keep their area looking “quaint.” Hey people, its water and you live in the desert. What idiots these “good” people of Sedona are……Oh, wait, that is the bastion of little Johnnie who would have done the same thing if it benefited him. Didn’t he build some nice new roads for himself to reach his house in the area? Thought so……and who paid for those? Can you say all the taxpayers? I can and will.