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SRP board election garnered lots of attention
Board Elections for the Salt River Project (SRP) took place on April 7. Board elections for utility firms are often overlooked, but this election has garnered a lot of attention, even if the election is not open to everyone. FOX 10's Ashlie Rodriguez has more.
PHOENIX - Board elections for the Salt River Project (SRP) happened on April 7.
The public utility provider serves about 1.1 million customers across Arizona, setting electricity rates and managing water supply. Not everyone within the service area, however, can vote, and here's why.
Dig deeper:
According to SRP's website, a person must "own eligible land (or have been appointed to vote eligible land held in a qualifying trust) within the respective boundaries of the District and/or the Association" in order to vote in SRP Association or District elections.
In many SRP races, one acre of land roughly equals to one vote, so those who own multiple acres of eligible land can have multiple votes that are tied to that land. Some may also have fractional votes, if their land is smaller than an acre.
SRP has provided a map showing who can vote in their elections.
Local perspective:
On Tuesday, foot traffic was constant outside the SRP voting center in Tempe.
"I think the issues at hand are more important for this election than they have been in the past," one voter said.
The issues facing this SRP board is not just electricity rates, but investing in renewable energy, like utility-grade solar plants and battery storage, and then there’s natural gas.
"In order to meet the higher demand in Arizona, you need to meet peak demand," said Chuck Coughlin, president of HighGround, Inc. "Think summer day, hottest day of the year — that’s peak demand. You have to have capacity to meet that. The way they’ve been doing that is natural gas."
And that’s where the election gets political. Natural gas is cleaner than coal, but still emits carbon dioxide.
"It’s the clean energy situation I’m concerned about," another voter said.
So is the conservative political action committee Turning Point Action. Their SRP candidate signs are everywhere, the PAC even setting up two booths at the voting center.
The other side:
Turning Point told FOX 10: "Radical environmentalist groups that want to turn Arizona into chaos like California are coming here to try to hijack SRP. We supported the common sense leadership helping prevent Arizona from insane energy prices like in California."
"I think that a religious group needs to stay out of our energy and out of our elections," a voter said.
The Source: Information for this article was gathered by FOX 10's Ashlie Rodriguez.