By Emerson Drake
2/23/10
The MID Board today authorized Allen Short to buy into the soon to be built Lodi plant for a 30 MW (Mega Watt) share.Interestingly enough this wasn’t one of the options presented to the board or to the public.
Tom Van Groningen made the motion and despite calls from several public speakers for more information the board voted 3-2 with Hensley and Kidd being the two dissenters.It was noted that MID has refused to make cost cutting measures such as stopping the flood of Mountain House red ink.
A concern was noted that possibly the board is going to try to slash the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers contract offer while maintaining the extremely lucrative pay for executives.
The Lodi plant will utilize the most efficient turbines in Northern California and would seem to be a great opportunity if only we could afford it. The MID Board has spent us into $1.2 Billion dollars in debt.
I don’t think Tom Van Groningen will be forced to sell his private plane to pay for the increase in electric rates this purchase will mandate.MID financial advisor Jerry Gold pointed out MID will exhaust it credit capability with this expenditure.
So like families who max out their credit cards and continue to only make minimum payments our road to solvency will be long, rocky and definitely on the back of the average electric user.
Of course we remember that the board is looking at surcharges in lieu of more rate increases this year with a caveat since staff members today said they will be looking at rate increase by next year at the latest..
I’m not sure that semantics (word games) make much difference to our check books or to our bottom line it sure seems to be the direction MID is determined to go in.
Surcharges and rate increases will hurt families, farmers and businesses in District.One concern that was made public during discussions while on a break at the meeting was a question regarding MID’s potential violations of the Brown Act.
Has Allen Short been meeting in series with the board members, and just what emails have been exchanged since that particular form of communications was mentioned by several of the board members?
