Prominent National Physicians Group Calls for Immediate Halt to Smart Meter Deployment smartmetersafety.org

From everything I’ve been able to read: Smart Meters are not our friends and just another way for big elec co’s to cut their costs, only in order to increase their profits, without once ever dealing with our health, safety and welfare.

Perhaps this topic will be a diversion for our Council instead of their grandiose needs of spending our money to promote their crazy wish list, that has no quantifying revenue to support it! A dream list that they still want us to just go to sleep on.

Shouldn’t it be called “Stay Focused on the Real wants of this town in all the best ways?” Health, Safety and Welfare?

That includes the Smart Meter issue and Council ditching their dream list desires and sticking with legal and elected basics.

Friends: it all comes down to health, safety and welfare.

Very happy to learn there will be another “Special Meeting” for Council next week on the 19th to deal with Smart Meters. Think this one has merit: to discuss this very controversial issue of Smart Meters which is a much wider issue than just the tiny town of Sedona…yet every bit as large as the national issues and our basic issues.

Suggest one and all either send a letter to all Council members and City which says you are not in favor of smart meters and ends with the following: “I request that my comments get “read” into the meeting of 6/19 comment section of that item of the Council Meeting”. That should assure you that you are on record and don’t have to sit through all their “Stuff”.

But, please do watch that meeting on Channel 4 on 6/19/13.

Can we help them get through this issue so they can deal with it and then finally come back to, and somehow become responsible for their spending frenzy routines we are all party to?

I would like to think so – yet see no clear answer.

I won’t allow a smart meter on my house – nor do I wish to witness a “Dumb Council”(vs a Smart Meter) who has no ear for us on any level of wants and who have no interest of pulling out in their spending frenzy!

Reasons for City to file motion to intervene on behalf of Sedona rate payers for NO Fee opt out and community wide opt-out. There is every advantage for the City to intervene prior to the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) finalizing its “opt-out” policy.

Here’s why. We learned from the ACC’s Docket that APS has proposed to charge an upfront fee of $75 plus a lifetime monthly fee of $30. We will use 10,000 as round number of residential and commercial accounts for our analysis.

As told to ACC Commissioner Brenda Burns by APS, this $75 fee is for the labor and cost of replacing analog meters with “smart” meters. But because installation of “smart” meters hasn’t begun here in Sedona, there should be no fee. That translates into saving of $75 for each of us, or $750,000 for the entire city.

The average monthly meter reading fee now is $1.86. The proposed $30/month amounts to a 1,613% increase! Currently, 10,000 accounts equals $18,600 a month, or $223,200 a year for meter reading. This would increase to $3.6 million every year under APS’s proposal! The first year’s opt-out fee of $435 total and $360 yearly thereafter, will make opting out unaffordable for many, especially those on fixed incomes or disabled.

Even if we pay the proposed upfront and monthly opt-out fee, APS still has the right to install a wireless router or collector in our neighborhoods, or even a pole mount outside one’s bedroom window .

The router has a transmission range of 5 sq. miles and the collector’s range is 125 sq. miles. Neighboring meters have a transmission range of 1,200 feet. Individual opt-out is therefore largely meaningless in what is essentially an unregulated cellular network.

We don’t mind paying the regular $1.86 but anything more than that is ridiculous. APS will not waive our $750,000 upfront fees plus the $3,600,000 per year unless our City intervenes to SAVE us the money. Intervening is free. It is a low cost and high impact option for the City to save us money.