Fred Ash Impacted the Lives of Millions of People
As an SRP Board Director for 36 years, Fred Ash, made incredible strides in making SRP the low cost, customer friendly power and water company that it is known as today.
When he first arrived at the Salt River Project, it was the 1980’s, and SRP customers had really been hit hard with double digit rate increases, due to some poor resource planning decisions and the high interest rate debt market at that time.
He played a large role in speaking out for the people, and applied a common sense, practical, conservative approach to setting SRP policy.
He narrowly lost re-election to the SRP board in 2016, that was driven primarily by the voter angst caused by the former general manager’s solar rate plan agenda, in the 2015 SRP Pricing Process. Many of the angry solar customers didn’t recognize that it was Fred Ash who championed for the residential solar customers in the 2015 rate hearings, by helping negotiate and put before the SRP board the “grandfathering” of all current and planned residential solar customers (as of 2015), that kept them off of SRP’s controversial 2015 solar rate plan. This wasn’t because he was a huge supporter of solar tax incentives, or rebates. It was for the very reason, it was fair and the right thing to do. Which is how he always decided his policy decisions.
You may not always agree with Fred Ash, but if you knew him, it was known that he always strived to be fair to all SRP customers.
God bless you Fred Ash!
