Letter: Poor TEP

The Opinion piece by Dallas Dukes, TEP's Customer Affairs VP (1/24/26), and the sponsored ad by Sharon Bronson (1/28/26) both plead the case for the 14% rate hike. Both praise the commitment, transparency and integrity of TEP. However, what I have observed, from driving down our streets and having been active in the MidTown Reliability Project meetings, is that "rate hikes" are used as a threat to the community when we care what our city will look like, support undergrounding future work, enforcing our city's codes, or using alternates to obscenely huge, rust-colored metal poles on every corner, mid-block and throughout neighborhoods, sometimes placing them in front or in back of your house. They are strangling our city's views and affecting resale values of our homes and property. Why should we pay more for same old, same old?