Truth or Consequences City Commissioners sat as a quasi-judicial board during part of the Jan. 27 city commission meeting, hearing three residents’ appeals of a city staff decision denying them an exception to having electric utility smart meters installed at their homes.
Appellants were Ariel Dougherty, Ron Fenn and Lee Foerstner. Dougherty and Fenn were in attendance via teleconference; Foerstner was not present.
Devising the proceedings’ protocols on the spot, the city commission agreed to give the appellants five minutes each to present their cases, since their grounds for appeal varied, and then to rule on all three at once. The hearings ended with the commissioners making no findings of fact or ruling on the various grounds presented.
The final determination, if it can be called that, was a motion, which evidently applied to all three appellants and also signaled a policy change that will give residents the option to pay a fee to avoid the installation of a smart meter.
City Commissioner Frances Luna made the motion that a “set charge [be established] for those not wanting a smart meter, the charge being $50 per month, to cover the city’s cost for reading their meter manually.” Earlier she had reported her research finding that Sierra Electric Co-op imposed a $50 special-trip charge to read rural customers’ analog meters.
City Manager Morris Madrid, who attended the meeting by phone, advised Luna: “Your motion conflicts with the ordinance,” referring to 14-30(e) of the municipal code, which outlines a process for appealing water and electric utility shut-off notices. Dougherty, Fenn and Foerstner were all sent disconnection notices when they declined to allow smart-meter installations at their homes, and the city prematurely and wrongly disconnected Fenn’s electricity for a week despite his timely filing of an appeal.
Madrid called Luna’s motion too broad, because it would let any utility customer, not just the three appellants, choose to opt out of having a smart meter and pay the charge.
Madrid claimed that the “window” for appealing had passed for those with smart meters already installed—some 98 percent of the city’s residential customers, Electric Department Director Bo Easley reported in answer to a commissioner’s question.
Luna asked: “Where in the code is this 90-day window?” Madrid corrected: “It’s 14 days.” Luna asked again: “Where in the code is this 14 days?” Madrid said he didn’t have the ordinance in front of him. “The code is on page 110 of the [city commission meeting] packet,” Luna said, waiting. Madrid finally admitted that he had decided to give Dougherty, Fenn and Foerstner 14 days to appeal in a disconnection notice he sent to them.
“Then my motion stands,” Luna said, stating any customer could still appeal, since no “window” was mentioned in the code.
Prior to her motion, Luna said, “It bothers me that the city expected 100 percent compliance.” People should be given a choice, she said, “But it should come at a cost.” People want to choose “whether to have a vaccine or no vaccine, home school or public school. If I want the good shampoo, I have to pay more.”
Mayor Pro Tem Amanda Forrister asked if the city would have no meter readers if everyone took a smart meter. Madrid said all the water meters are still analog and read manually, therefore meter readers are still on staff.
City Attorney Jay Rubin advised the city commissioners they didn’t have to rule today. A delay would allow city staff to research the cost the city should charge to manually read electric meters, he said.
“Oh, I like the idea of reviewing the appeals one more time,” Mayor Sandra Whitehead said. Over 100 pages of exhibits and briefs submitted by appellants were in the city packet.
“This has been going on a long time. We’ve been kicking this can down the road. We need to move ahead,” Commissioner Randall Aragon said, prompting fellow commissioners’ unanimous agreement to the opt out and the $50 monthly charge.
The commissioners did not address Dougherty’s and Fenn’s complaint that Easley, Rubin and Madrid should not be used as the commission’s legal and informational guides during the hearing, since they had signed the letters dismissing the appellants’ prior appeals and their comments could prejudice the city commission.
Mayor Whitehead did ask Madrid to address the health concerns raised by all three appellants, who had submitted in their appeals numerous studies showing ill health effects associated with smart meters, as well as citing warnings by such authorities as the World Health Organization and American Cancer Society that smart meters may cause cancer.
“Millions of homes have smart meters and they are not deemed to be a health hazard,” Madrid said in response.
Dougherty and Fenn said making them have smart meters was inequitable, since the city had exempted 30 to 40 businesses downtown. The two appellants referred to the minutes of the August 26, 2019, city commission meeting in their written appeals. At that meeting, the city commission passed a motion to award the request for proposals to install the smart meters to Landis + Gyr, after exempting downtown businesses with older electrical systems.
Madrid again addressed the appellants’ argument, a task never undertaken by the city commissioners. “There are not exemptions for those with technical capacity,” Madrid insisted. “It would be a major burden on older homeowners” to have to upgrade their electrical systems to permit installation of smart meters.
Asked to comment on the city commission’s ruling, Dougherty said in an email, “Once again, the kin-to-me-party is flying by the seat of its pants. . . . The Commission should have asked questions of Ron or me. . . . A $50 ‘trip charge’ is higher than many of our electric bills. The decision is ridiculous and insulting. But, following rules and law is not the City’s forte.”
In a post-hearing interview with the Sun, Fenn said, “I don’t know what happened. The hearing was a joke. I believe they accepted our appeals at a punitive cost based on Sierra Electric Co-op’s special-trip charge, which is predicated on how far they often have to drive to read meters. The city has been told numerous times they don’t need to send a reader; we can take pictures, send a fax, whatever.
“I am not going to pay $50 a month for a reading when they can’t read the meter correctly in the first place,” Fenn said. He was referring to his and others’ apparently incorrect or inflated recent electric bills, an example of which was brought to the commission’s attention today during the public comment portion of the meeting.
“This is not over. They have not solved this problem,” Fenn said. “People are not supposed to be penalized for not taking something that will harm them. We are being penalized for wanting to be secure in our homes.”
Foerstner could not be reached for comment by press time.
I’m glad to hear the commission finally agreed that folks can opt out of the smart meter, but the $50 fee seems more punitive than economic. Watching a government retaliate against its citizens is NOT an encouraging scene and not one that would attract new citizens to town. I suggest that the commission sit down with the utility board and figure out a reasonable figure that represents the actual cost to the town. That averaging process should include all those who have been exempted for whatever reason—economic or personal—or risk the observation that money actually IS what rules in this country and county.