Comments on: Jakowatz claims about EID inaccurate

By: Greg Prada

Greg Prada — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 11:36:24 +0000

EID’s publicity releases have claimed tens of millions of dollars of savings since General Manager Jim Abercrombie took over at EID in Fall 2009.

Yet EID has passed 102% of water rate increases for 2010-2015 and plans to raise $60 million more debt in 2013 to continue its $15 million annual deficit spending. EID further has $53 million of unfunded pensions and retiree medical costs… all arising under the 2003-2011 Board, and which will add another 11% to rates when EID stops ignoring their costs.

The foregoing is the reality that more than 38,000 regular EID ratepayers are experiencing.

As for the auditor, Board audio recordings confirm that that the auditor made absolutely no representation regarding any communication or claim of mine. In fact, the auditor’s opinion letter clearly states that he makes no representation regarding any of Management’s assertions other than the accuracy of the audited financial statements…just 29 of the 115 pages in EID’s 2011 Consolidated Annual Financial Report.

Paul Raveling dishonestly continues to make up false accusations against any EID critic wishing to stand up for regular ratepayers. Mr. Raveling still can’t get over that his friend Harry Norris was soundly renounced 61%-39% by El Dorado Hills ratepayers fed up with EID’s sky-high rates, rapid fire rate increases, runaway spending, bogus savings claims…and willfully deceptive public communications.

By: Paul Raveling

Paul Raveling — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 06:15:47 +0000

Greg Prada is again inventing his own reality. The financial analysis was in fact reported to demonstrate about $1 million savings over time due to the new savings in interest rates. Those were due to improved bond ratings, the improved bond ratings were in response to EID’s recovery from the debt service coverage ratio squeeze in 2010.

In the last EID board meeting the independent auditor was present and answered a direct question about another recent false claim by Mr. Prada. This was about a claim by Mr. Prada in email the night before this meeting, which he did not attend. The auditor responded that Mr. Prada’s claim was factually wrong.

The persistent pattern is that Mr. Prada’s claims against EID have been verifiably wrong, EID’s own statements have been verifiably correct.

By: Greg Prada

Greg Prada — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:50:21 +0000

EID’s Communication Director Ms. Carlton is certainly not one to be spewing allegations of inacuracy.

Just last week Ms. Carlton authored an EID News Release that falsely and deceptively headlined “DISTRICT RECEIVES UPGRADED CREDIT RATING
SAVING RATEPAYERS A MILLION DOLLARS OVER TIME”.

The Mountain Democrat printed Ms. Carlton’s false headline and willfully deceptive press release word for word. And that same press release somehow is not currently still on EID’s website adding credence to aspects of Mr. Jakowatz’s allegation.

EID ratepayers shouldn’t have to pay substantial consultant fees for unnecessary new websites when the old website worked just fine. Neither should EID ratepayers have to pay six-figure salaries plus car plus $46,000 of benefits for unnecessary EID Communications Directors to spew out willfully deceptive, unjustifiably self congratulatory EID propaganda.

By: Jon Jakowatz

Jon Jakowatz — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:45:45 +0000

Mary Lynn – thank you for your interest in my concern about EID shutting off access to an unknown number of documents. Yes, as I confirmed, EID did put a short three paragraph article in the July-Aug Waterfront. Did the article say when the website would go up? No. Did the website go up in June? Yes. Did the GM say anything about this most significant change at the June 25th Board meeting? No. Is the website a beta version? I am told, “Yes”. Has the new document management system broke links to unknown numbers of EID public documents? Yes.
Mary Lynn, you do a fine job of doing your job, which is to inform the public of what is going on at EID. But, this time, probably through no fault of your own, EID has once again come up short on full disclosure to the public in a timely and thorough manner. I truly wish this change would have gone better and that you would not again be put on the spot defending EID missteps. Were you left out of the website project planning? When will the public have full access to ALL the documents they had access to prior to June 28?
Mary Lynn, it’s okay to attack me for exposing another EID surreptitious action. It would have been so much better had the public notification and installation of the new website been done in a more professional manner, without any loss (temporary or permanent) of access to public documentation.
Jon Jakowatz
EID Ratepayer