Safford and Co-op sign historical agreements
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After locking horns for more than 62 years, the city of Safford and Graham County Electric Co-op signed new service contracts Tuesday evening that explicitly define new service areas and will facilitate a new era of cooperation, according to the parties.
The good vibrations of the evening were in the air as it was mostly all smiles, jokes and warm feelings between the two sides as they met and began their meeting.
The groups met at the co-op’s new building in Pima to solidify the agreements that replace the problematic 1946 agreement and a previous transmission agreement.
The first contract, called the Territorial Settlement Agreement, quells litigation between the utilities and defines a new service area for Safford. The agreement also swaps service rights to the Wal-Mart Supercenter and Safford Regional Airport on Jan. 1, 2013. The co-op will receive the rights to the airport and Safford will receive the rights to the Wal-Mart property.
The second contract, called the Wheeling and Transmission Agreement, solidifies transmission service rates and will update Safford’s Eighth Avenue substation to incorporate a 69 kilovolt circuit breaker ring bus, among other upgrades.
Co-op President Gene Robert Larson said while he believed that the two parties had been bickering over the 1946 agreement since before the ink had even dried, the new contracts are “a great agreement for this Valley.”
Safford Mayor Ron Green expressed his gratitude to the co-op’s board of directors for working with the city to accomplish a new agreement with special thanks to Safford Engineer Dennis Delaney and Richard Kurtz of the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative.
“The thing(s) that we can do together will be good for everybody,” Green said. “It’ll make our power grid stronger here in the Valley for both Safford, Thatcher, Pima and the county.”
Delaney and Kurtz were the “architects” of the agreements and presented several different proposals before finding one that was acceptable to both sides, according to Kurtz.
Co-op General Man-ager Steve Lines echoed Green’s statements and said the utilities’ missions are to serve the residents with the best electric service they can and that the new agreements assist in providing to do so.
“We recognize each other’s territory and existence,” Lines said. “And like I say, ‘We’re interconnected electrical anyway, but now we’re interconnected where we can work together (and) plan together. . .”
Lines said that with the new contracts in place, the city and co-op are in a position to help each other with various needs, especially assistance with infrastructure and future needs.
He said people may nit pic at the details of the contracts, but there is always give and take in any kind of agreement.
“That’s what’s been accomplished here is there was give and take on both sides,” Lines said. “There was middle ground that was achieved, and now both utilities are going to benefit from it.”
Safford City Manager David Kincaid said an added benefit to the city is an expenditure savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars due to not having to build a new substation. He said Safford was budgeting for a new substation, but with the WTA in place, it will only have to upgrade its Eighth Avenue Substation.
