MID Part 2 GM Roger ‘the Dodger’ VanHoy Has Some Explaining to Do
By Emerson Drake
When MID General Manager Roger VanHoy was asked during the last MID meeting if ‘the Serpa Rule’ was included in the Governance policy the Board
was getting ready to vote on, he looked down at the dais and acted as if he was going to write something and made no comment. And as I pointed out in the last article the Serpa Rule was indeed part of the Governance plan (BL-4 to be exact).
BL-4 states: (B) In the case of Board members or committees with MID employees or contractors requesting information or assistance without Board authorization, the General Manager or the General Council MUST refuse such requests that require, in their opinion, a material amount of staff time, or funds, or are disruptive.
Previously GM Allen Short had declared that conducting a salary survey was disruptive to morale and that potentially (the project didn’t have to be started) using more than 15 minutes of staff time was cause for not supplying the requested information.
Well I wasn’t the only person he bamboozled. Apparently he had assured more than one member of the Board the Serpa Rule wasn’t included there either. Sadly he mislead several of the Directors who voted him his permanent position as General Manager just last week. The honeymoon is over for ‘the Dodger’ after he stepped on his own…tail. Looks like the Board and the public are going to have a trust issues with Roger ‘the Dodger’ VanHoy in the future, and rightly so.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if the Serpa Rule gets removed from the Governance policy before the elections.
The two men who pushed hard to get the Governance policy in front of the Board as an action item (Tom Van Groningen and Glen Wild) are going around ‘campaigning’ for a few of the candidates saying, that like themselves the candidates believe our water should be sold to San Francisco on a long term basis and that we need to institute the Governance policy immediately.
The three candidates we should avoid like the plague are John Mensinger, Jim Mortensen, and Paul Campbell. We can NOT afford to for these men to get into office. Their irresponsible desire to send water out of our county to San Francisco on a first serve basis utilizing a long term (30 year) contract is shortsighted and foolish.
Eye On Modesto 
The boards approval of reinstating the”Serpa Rule” was very wrong and could prove to be very unfortunate for the new General Manager. All three of the aye votes were from board members that are leaving. My hunch is Directors Byrd and Blom may be second guessing the boards decision in hiring Mr VanHoy, and depending on the election results he may find himself without any fans.
I agree 100%