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Where to go tonight
Athletes' advocate / P. 25
/ P. 3
Sunday, July 4, 2021
FREE ($1 OUTSIDE THE EAST VALLEY) | TheMesaTribune.com
An edition of the East Valley Tribune
California, Texas squeeze Mesa Electric
INSIDE
This Week
BY TOM SCANLON Tribune Managing Editor
NEWS ............................ 4 Bringing hope to southeast Mesa.
COMMUNITY ............. 18 Banner brings back kids' best friend.
W
hat happens in California doesn’t stay in California? It becomes a matter of supply and demand – and, as any beginner economics student will tell you, when the latter outpaces the former, prices will go up. So it is that the 17,000 city of Mesa Electric Service Area customers are likely to be paying more for their electric bills in coming months. Mesa Electric is being “squeezed” by California to the west and Texas to the east; droughts, heat waves and cold snaps have drained reserves, increasing prices that places like Mesa pay on the “wholesale energy market.” “What happens in California affects us,” Anthony Cadorin, city energy resources coordinator, told Mesa City Council during a study session last week. “What we’re seeing in the short term is anywhere from 250 percent to 700 percent
Discussing Mesa Electric's rates at a recent City Council meeting were Anthony Cadorin, city energy resources coordinator, and Energy Resources Director Frank McRae. (YouTube) (increases),” Cadorin said. “We’re really in it, right now ... This came upon us much faster than we ever could have predicted.” After years of relatively cheap “bulk energy,”
which it provides to residents and businesses in the downtown area, Mesa is being hit with
The law-abiding folks following the action from their Mesa homes and drug dealers tracking where “po po” is may lose access to scanner traf�ic, thanks to a third group: “Police auditors,” also known as “citizen journalists” or simply bloggers. “I wouldn’t call them bloggers,” Mesa Assistant Police Chief Ed Wessing snarled. “They call themselves ‘First Amendment Auditors,’ which I think is not accurate. I refer to them as social media agitators.”
Wessing is agitated by “auditors” who use phone apps to tap into scanners and track calls. To �ight these “phoneslingers,” the Mesa Police Department is considering encrypting its radio traf�ic, making it inaccessible to scanners. Often beating police there, the phone camera crews race to the scenes of potential crimes, whip out their phones and start recording the action.
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‘Phoneslingers’ haunt and taunt Mesa cops
BUSINESS ................... 22 Mesa Market Place Swap Meet a never-ending bargain. COMMUNITY ............................... 18 BUSINESS ..................................... 22 OPINION .. ..................................... 23 SPORTS ........................................ 25 GET OUT ........................................ 28 PUZZLES ...................................... 30 CLASSIFIED ................................. 31 Zone
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BY TOM SCANLON Tribune Managing Editor
E
mergency dispatchers typically communicate calls they receive so police of�icers can respond to them over radio frequencies that can be picked up by “scanners.” Historically, two types of people listen to the scanners: 1) Hobbyists who like to follow what the police are up to “just for fun” and, 2) Criminals trying to stay one step ahead of the cops.
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