Telephonic Procedural Conference - W-01445A-25-0191 - Arizona Water Company

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Arizona Corporation Commission 8 min 7 agenda items transcribed 3 days ago official recording ↗

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the purpose of this procedural conference and who are the parties involved?

Charles Haynes 0:00

I SHOW IT AS 1 O'CLOCK NOW SO LET'S GO AHEAD AND GO ON THE RECORD. GOOD AFTERNOON EVERYONE. THIS IS THE TIME SET FOR THE PROCEDURAL CONFERENCE. IN THE MATTER OF THE APPLICATION OF ARIZONA WATER COMPANY PURSUANT TO ARS SECTIONS 40-285, 40-301, and 40-302 for authority to issue long-term debt securities in amount not to exceed $100 million and to pledge its assets in connection therewith. The docket number is W-01445A250191. I'm Administrative Law Judge Charles Haynes. To begin, I'll take appearances starting with the applicant, Arizona Water.

Megan Grable 0:53

Thank you, Your Honor. Megan Grable from Osborne-Maladon on behalf of Arizona Water Company. With me from the company is Nick Liu, Robert Speer, and Kevin Rogers.

Charles Haynes 1:03

All right. Thank you. And on behalf of the Utilities Division.

Sean Botkin 1:09

Your Honor, this is Sean Botkin with the Office of General Counsel.

What positions did Arizona Water Company and the staff present regarding the debt‑interest‑rate cap?

Charles Haynes 1:14

Okay. All right, thank you. So this procedural conference was requested by the company and its response to the staff report to discuss whether we need to have a hearing in light of the company's position on the staff recommendations. So I guess I'll start by asking the company, is there anything you wanted to add that wasn't stated inside the response to the staff report at this time?

Megan Grable 1:38

Thank you, Your Honor. No, I don't think we want to add anything to what we've already filed. We think a hearing is unnecessary given the fact that the staff and the company agree on all of the issues.

Charles Haynes 1:49

Mr. Bodkin, on behalf of staff, did you have anything that you wanted to add with regard to the request?

Sean Botkin 1:56

No, Your Honor, but I would ask Mr. Baxter if he has anything he'd like to add.

Brent Baxter 2:02

All right. Mr.

Charles Haynes 2:03

Baxter?

Brent Baxter 2:05

Thank you Your Honor. This is Brent Baxter for Utilities Division staff. No I would just further add for the clarity of the record that after we issued our staff report that we spoke with the company. We understand their concerns.

Why does the judge want an evidentiary hearing despite apparent agreement?

Brent Baxter 2:19

and we did a little bit of investigation and verified that a cap on the short-term debt interest rate could be problematic so we're in agreement that there should be no cap on the short-term interest rate.

Charles Haynes 2:33

All right. I appreciate that. That does, Mr. Baxter, what you just said there kind of highlights a concern that I had is that inside the company response to the staff report I gathered you know the position I didn't get the why of it why staff changed its position I appreciate that you just gave it to me now but we're not inside an evidentiary setting here so I can't consider that evidence per se here it's good so I know where you're coming from though going into it I do think it would benefit to have something of an evidentiary nature kind of spelling out staff's position That said, I do also have some questions for the company by way of clarifying the position. What are the nature of the objection to the staff recommendation?

Charles Haynes 3:25

Is it for all of the interest rate cap or only on short-term debt? Minor clarifications, I think, but nonetheless would be beneficial to get on the record with a witness. I'm inclined to go ahead and have the hearing that said I don't foresee it would necessarily be a long hearing but I do think that it would be helpful to get somebody one from staff to express what Mr. Baxter just stated to the extent there is a why explaining staff's change in its recommendation and two I wanted to get out of the company some testimony with regard to why the company's concerns can't be addressed by simply, for instance, modifying the cap, making it higher. So I'm not asking for an answer on any of those right now, but those are the kinds of questions that I still have lingering, even with the response to the staff report.

Charles Haynes 4:23

That said, I also have a few minor clarification questions that I was going to ask based on the staff report. that if we are going to have an evidentiary hearing anyways, there was one thing inside the engineering component that had me scratching my head a little bit by way of a line in the compliance status tables that didn't really make sense and didn't have a lot of explanation to it that I wanted to get clarified.