Eye On Modesto

Thoughts and observations about Modesto and Stanislaus County

Archive for the month “January, 2012”

06 Jan 2012

Even the City of Modesto Punishes the Residential Electricity User

By Emerson Drake

When people pay their utility bill I think everyone probably notices the 6% Utility tax added to the bottom.  And maybe you think everyone has to pay it, but you’d be wrong.

On November 29, 2011 the City of Modesto Finance Department sent a letter to businesses reminding them of the $1,500 annual maximum user tax ceiling. This is a combined tax ceiling encompassing electric, gas, telephone, cable and cellular.

So Modesto may need money to pay its police and fire but it doesn’t believe in equal taxation.

The city’s finance department even goes a step further, if you prepay your tax they’ll notify the providers of these services to stop charging you the 6% user tax.  If you don’t prepay and fail take advantage of the city’s “offer” it is your responsibility to request a refund of any overpayment you might have made.

Now let me see if I have this correct.  The tax money all goes into the same pot to pay the bills and we’re all required to pay the 6% utility user tax, except for those that hit the ceiling.

Now the Supreme Court says Corporations are people too.  But Modesto says they’re ‘special people’ who don’t have to pay the same taxes as you and I.

And just for curiosity’s sake we’ll be asking the city how many and who took advantage of this prepayment if any.

Don’t worry; we’ll let you know too.

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06 Jan 2012
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MID is Ignoring and Delaying Public Information Requests

By Enerson Drake

In order to obtain information from  public agencies  they otherwise would prefer to keep removed from the public eye, we sometimes find it necessary to make Public Information Requests.  Officially it’s known as California Code 6250-6270.

It requires public agencies to respond to the request within 10 working days and has an emergency extension of two weeks if invoked.

But MID Attorney Tim O’Laughlin reads the code differently than any other attorney we’ve encountered.  He seems to believe MID can ignore, purposefully misunderstand and  delay indefinately answering questions put to it, and basically flaunts the regulations with complete disregard to the law.

We’ve had Public Record Requests in since October that the MID legal staff refuses to acknowledge.  When a request was made on November 16, 2011  for three pieces of information, we received only one on December 19, and that was after we prompted them yet again.  The second was pushed off indefinitely ( Tim O’Laughlin  basically said you’ll get it when we feel like giving it to you),  the third piece requested at the same time was dutifully ignored.

When we reminded MID of the second and third items, attorney Tim O’Laughlin then has attempted to restart the clock.

Is he working in conjuction with MID General Manager Allen Short and the three members of the old guard, Tom Van Groningen, Paul Warda, and Glenn Wild?  These are the men responsible for MID’s continuing mismanagement and have all voted for the last rate hikes of 7.5% (last year) and the recent 2% increase.

MID is owned by the ratepayers but these men have run it into the ground and need to be stopped.

This delay of information should not and will not be tolerated by the public.

Here is a link to the  California  Code: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=gov&group=06001-07000&file=6250-6270

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04 Jan 2012
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Residential Customers pay 82% more for Electricity than Industrial Customers

By Emerson Drake

Yes I know it’s a surprise for most people but if you pay more than $100 dollars a month you are paying almost twice what industrial customers pay.

Ok, so you want the specific breakdown? Here it is:

Industrial customers  pay $0.085 per KWH.

Home customers  start paying at $0.1367 KWH for the first 500 KWH (kilowatt hours) which equals the first $68.35 of your electric bill.

From there on they charge you $0.1498 KWH or 82% more than industrial customers pay.

Commercial customers pay $0.121 KWH, so residential is 73% more than commercial.

Literally, everyone else pays less than the average residential user.  Now there are breaks for low income and medical customers but residential users pay for that, too.

MID retail revenues come to approximately $300M.  Of the $300M, Residential pays $133M, Commercial $87M, and Industrial pays $60M.

So while residential users only consume 32% of the total electricity sold they pay for 44%.

Since all of the money MID collects is thrown into the pot to pay their bills, basically residential sales are helping to subsidize all of the rest of MID business.

Now don’t forget the monthly $12.50 ‘user’ fee they charge just to have a line to your home.  And it’s charged even if you don’t buy electricity from them. And there are a lot of residential users 92,160 vs 19,219. We are the people electing the MID Board and yet we are the ones paying the most.

Totals of revenue vs power consumption

Residential:    $132,690,000M         893,956 KWH

Commercial:  $ 87,000,000M          726,854 KWH

Industrial:       $ 66,503,000M          786,935 KWH

Other:             $12,868,000M          120,286 KWH

For this we can thank longtime MID Board members Tom Van Groningen and Paul Warda along with MID General Manager Allen Short. During their time on the Board we went from owing less than $100Million to an astronomical amount of $1.2Billion Dollars.

The term mismanagement just doesn’t fully do justice in describing their actions during this time.

The following is the MID report I pulled the information for this article.

MIDAR2009-FINAL[1]

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03 Jan 2012
2 Comments

THE “SANCTITY” OF MARRIAGE

By EOM Staff
 
I’ve heard many people opposed to gay marriage claim that allowing gays to marry would undermine the sanctity of marriage.  In order to better understand their opinion, I googled “the sanctity of marriage”.  This is what I found out.
 
Sanctity means “the quality of being holy”.  Sanctity of marriage means “treating marriage as the foundation of your family, honoring your marriage vows with all your heart and soul and proceeding as if divorce were not an option.”
 
So here are some religious and political leaders who are doing their best to undermine the sanctity of marriage, while preaching against the rights of gays:
 
Ted Haggard – paying male prostitutes for sex and using crystal meth.  He taught that homosexuality was an abomination and actively lobbied against gay rights.
 
Larry Craig, US Senator – arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover cop in an airport bathroom.  Craig voted twice against adding the words “sexual orientation” to hate crimes law.  Craig also voted to give states the right to refuse to allow gay marriage – a right they already had, but he really, really wanted to prove he didn’t like gay people!
 
US Representative Mark Foley – sent sexually laced e-mails to teen-age boys.  Ironically, he was the Chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
 
Bob Allen –  member of the Florida House of Representatives and Florida Chairman of John McCain’s Presidential Campaign – offering an undercover cop $20 to allow Allen to perform oral sex on him in a bathroom in a public park.  He tried to explain this by saying he offered oral sex because the cop was a “burly black man and I didn’t want to become a statistic”.  Allen was one of 21 Forida legislatures to sign Governor Jeb Bush’s friend of the court brief supporting the state’s ban on gays adopting children.
 
Glenn Murphy Jr.- National Chairman of The Young Republicans – got a fellow Young Republican drunk and spent the night at his house.  The other young man woke up in the middle of the night to find Murphy giving him mouth-to-penis resuscitation.  After this incident, a 1998 sexual battery report came to light in which Murphy was alleged to have done the exact same thing to another young man.  Murphy often advised Republican candidates to use gay marriage as a wedge issue to paint their opponents as out of touch with traditional values.
 
Jimmy Swaggart – found two times in the company of prostitutes and confessed to an affair.  We all remember his “I Have Sinned” sermon, tears streaming down his face while asking for forgiveness.
 
Here are some others who undermine the sanctity of marriage:
 
Kim Kardashian – spent $10 million on her wedding, only to file for divorce 72 days later.
 
Sinead O’Conner – her latest marriage lasted 16 days.
 
Britney Spears – her marriage to a childhood friend lasted less than 60 hours.
 
Newt Gingrich – finally found his trophy wife on his third try!  He is now trying to say his first wife wanted to divorce him, but she is denying that.  She says the divorce was his idea, and she fought it.
 
The point is, the only people who can undermine the sanctity of marriage are the people in the marriage, so let’s give everyone a fair shot at it.
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