Normally, we think, “Three strikes and you are out.” Your MID management now has four strikes on it. MID management has failed. I now call on the Board of Directors to fix this problem. Strike one is Mountain House. This unbelievably bad decision will cost you and your fellow MID rate payers over $50 Million dollars. Mountain House is dead as a door nail. Yet, MID insists on telling us the most outrageous story about its eventual success. MID’s published justification of Mountain House includes an assumption of growth at 8.5% per year forever. That is so wildly irresponsible, it is difficult to be polite about it. Strike two is the “four cities”, which is another expansion like Mountain House. MID will not discuss this project, so we may never know how much you have to pay to subsidize the rate payers in those four cities. Strike three is allowing the statute of limitations to expire on the water treatment plant roof. MID had a 10 year guarantee on that roof, provided by the builder. They knew at least 8 years into the 10 year guarantee period that the roof needed to be replaced. But they waited 11 years before deciding to do something about it. So, they sold $11 Million in bonds to fix it. That means you and I will pay $22 Million dollars for something that the builder should have fixed. This management decision is totally unbelievable. Yet, MID just raises your rates to pay for its blunders. Strike four is the “construction problems” at the current build out of the Phase 2 water treatment plant. If you read today’s BEE story, you will fail to find any specific problems MID admits to. The best we can discern from the story is, that “…structures, pipes, basins, storage tanks, the quality of concrete and more…” constitute the problems. Well, for crying out loud, the darn plant is mostly completed, and those five items would include the entire plant!! This plant was scheduled to be completed in October of 2009. That is 12 months ago, and they are just now telling us that there are problems that might mean the whole plant has to be rebuilt???? Where was MID management in 2008 and 2009? Who was in charge? Who allowed the whole darn plant to get built, and then announce everything is “flawed” 12 months later????? And their solution? Hire three more consultants!! Please notice that not one MID manager was interviewed by the BEE reporter. The only MID official quoted made his comments during a Board meeting designed to whitewash an admission of total mismanagement. Remember the message I sent you about four months ago? It was titled, “Something sinister is going on at MID”. Did you believe me then? Do you believe me now? Ten years ago, we had very inexpensive electricity. Today, it is almost the most expensive in America. Ten years ago, MID had virtually no debt. Today, we think it has about a Billion dollars of debt. (This Phase 2 build out alone is funded by bonds totaling over $92 Million dollars.) Today, MID management is clearly unable to make sound decisions or husband the ratepayers’ assets. Their absentee management is costing you and me untold millions of dollars. Perhaps the Board of Directors will tell what they are going to do about fixing this management problem. Thank you, Dave |
