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MID board OK¹s massive rate increases By Mike Vanden Bosch Managing Editor The Ripon Record Approximately 1,240 residential customers of Modesto Irrigation District in Ripon will pay more for electricity in 2009, starting with a 7 percent increase on Jan. 1, the irrigation district¹s board of directors decided last week. The district board voted 4-1, with Director Mike Serpa dissenting, to approve the increases of 7 percent on Jan. 1, 6.5 percent in June and 5.4 percent in September 2009. MID indicated in a press release that the package of financial measures would increase overall 2009 revenue by 14 percent. MID dipped into its reserve funds by $4.5 million in conjunction with the board vote. MID said it needed to increase revenue to account for a projected 2009 budget shortfall of approximately $49 million due to the increasing cost of power supply and state and federal mandates. The rate increase options considered by the board were to include changing the residential rate structure, considering a fuel surcharge, adding surcharges to clearly identify mandates, and a two-part rate increase. Director Mike Serpa suggested an additional public hearing in the evening, but that did not forestall the board¹s vote. Community advocate Robert Stanford said the increases would have an adverse impact on seniors, immigrants and the poor, and subsequently chided MID for not offering full disclosure about the origin of the $49 million deficit it was attempting to rectify. "They cannot produce a line item budget for us to examine where money is literally being spent now that causes this deficit", Stanford said after the meeting. "All we know is that there is this deficit, but no one is very clear as to why it is there or how it happened." Stanford suggested he would have been more receptive to the rate increase if MID were more transparent about its Mountain House expenditures and demonstrated the specifics of its debt allocation, and if MID restructured its procedures for delinquencies so that customers would have more flexibility and leniency in the area of service interruptions. Customers with average monthly electric consumption of 850 kilowatt hours would see electric bills increase $7 to $8 per month with each step of the increase. In addition, most commercial and industrial customers would see electric rate increases of between 10 and 17 percent. Ripon has about 40 commercial and industrial customer accounts.