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• 77. The City is an "affected municipal electric utility" subject to the requirements of <br />• <br />• <br />Section 366.04(7). <br />78. Prior to passage of Section 366.04(7), consistent with established electric utility <br />industry practice, the City counted its retail customers by quantifying the number of separate <br />meter accounts. The City utilized this customer count methodology in preparing its 2007 audited <br />financial statement which expressly notified the public that the City had 33,442 retail electric <br />customers as of September 30, 2007. <br />79. After Section 366.04(7) became law, the City has apparently disavowed its prior <br />customer counts set forth in its audited financial statements, and has now refused to comply with <br />the referendum requirements in Section 366.04(7) because it claims that it had less than 30,000 <br />customers on September 30, 2007. <br />80. In regulatory filings with the PSC in 2011, the City directly asserted that it is not <br />subject to Section 366.04(7) based on an erroneous interpretation of Section 366.04(7) that <br />would count individuals with multiple meter accounts as a single "customer" for purposes of the <br />statute. The City's erroneous interpretation of Section 366.04(7) is nothing more than a contrived <br />scheme to artificially lower the City's customer count below the statutory threshold to avoid the <br />referendum election requirements in Section 366.04(7). That scheme is contrary to established <br />utility practice for counting utility customers, and differs radically from the method of counting <br />customers which the City uses for purposes of its own audited financial report, and its other <br />filings with the PSC and the credit rating agencies. <br />81. In reliance on this erroneous legal interpretation, the City continues to refuse to <br />comply with the directives of Section 366.04(7), and has not conducted the referendum election <br />18 <br />q 3 <br />