I have no idea what the zoning situation is for him. The bottom line in his case was that he thought he was saving money by staying out of the municipalities, only to find that his total cost of living really didn't change at all.

On top of that, public utilities are accountable to the public, while private utilities are accountable to shareholders. There were no obvious economic reasons for the incredible disparity in price, other than one utility had an incentive to profit while the other didn't.