Hello Apple Valley Choice Customers! Remember how you were promised that joining Apple Valley Choice Energy would insulate you from those horrible Southern California Edison electricity rates and rate increases? Have you checked the April 9, 2019, Town Council Meeting agenda? Your electric rates are going up. The agenda item even states that amendments to the rates will occur as Edison adjusts its own rates.

I was fortunate to see the press release from the Town of Apple Valley relative to the LAFCO approval to annex 1,365 acres in the north Apple Valley area. The property is described as “prime freeway frontage,” which “prime frontage” has not seen development in the 28 years that I have been in the Victor Valley. “Revenues will outpace the cost of services to the area,” but no services yet exist. Common sense causes one to ask, “how much” was spent by the town in its two-time annexation approval process (recall it failed in 2009) and how many years of property tax revenue (at .0475 cents of every dollar of property value) will be required before the town sees a return on its investment?

The Town of Apple Valley’s Choice Energy program has accumulated at least $70,000 in legal fees (to Troutman Sanders LLP), has hundreds of thousands in other costs (not counting the $250,000 lockbox deposit), and will require $500,000 in administrative fees annually to pay whichever company the Town chooses to operate it. All this for a few pennies off the cost of energy — only to the consumer. The cost to deliver energy over the grid is still billed to the consumer and if the cost to deliver energy goes up, so does your bill.

Eight months ago the Town of Apple Valley officially acknowledged what concerned citizens had been saying for years: Spending was way out of line (“More cuts to hit Town Hall amid budget crunch,” Daily Press, April 22, 2018). From sky-high salaries and pensions to wasteful practices to downright unnecessary (and in some cases improper) expenditures, the Town had blown through millions in reserves and was facing a $2.6 million budget shortfall. Everyone was going to have to feel the pinch, we were told.

Apple Valley has been on a downward trend for the last four years. The proof of this is the depletion of its reserves to “zero” in order to balance the budget, despite the Town Council bragging about a balanced, “award-winning” budget, and now borrowing millions in a “payday loan” to continue its lifestyle on credit. It’s spending millions of your dollars on the takeover of a water system it can’t afford, and for which it lacks adequate knowledge to operate. It lost one suit over improperly imposing fees on the residents and another is still pending. The only award I see the Town winning is a “Razzie.”

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