Letter: It’s about rate stabilization (July 9, 2015)
I find it interesting how Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company is using ratepayer money, hard-earned dollars you and I pay them to support their CPUC-guaranteed profit, double-digit rate increases and never ending surcharges, just to tell you what we’ve already said.
Their recent full-page ad in the Daily Press says the Town can’t promise it will lower rates if it were to acquire AV Ranchos Water. That’s exactly right, we can’t promise to lower rates. What we can do is stabilize rates moving forward and stop the double-digit increases and surcharges. That’s something AV Ranchos Water can’t and won’t do.
This very fact is at the heart of why the Town Council is considering the potential acquisition of AVR. We know we can bring stability to a cost and rate structure that has been out of control of years. Eliminating the 9-plus percent profits and other corporate costs alone will more than pay off the debt service if the Town were to acquire the water system.
As a private company governed by the loose oversight of the California Public Utilities Commission, AVR continues to take money out of our pockets because they know the more it asks for, the more it gets. Under a community-owned water system, the rates would be subject to the proposition 218 process. We would not be paying profits and out-of-town executive salaries. Apple Valley Town residents would only be paying for the actual cost of providing water to your home or business.
The Town Council has been very transparent about what it is spending as we investigate the potential acquisition of AVR and informing the public of what we are doing and why. This is an investment in the long-term health of our community and local control of our future. By contrast, AVR’s expensive ad campaign is not an investment, but a cost that, like others, will be passed directly onto you and me through rate increase and surcharges. I feel like we are getting beat up with our own money.
— Scott Nassif, Apple Valley Town Council Member
Source: Daily Press