EID meetings and public hearings on rates

The El Dorado Irrigation District will wrap up its schedule of public workshops on its proposed rate increases with the events listed below.
Note the change of venue for the final public hearing, which will be a formal meeting of the EID board to consider the rate increases.

Wednesday, January 27 at 6:00pm Public Workshop	Oak Ridge High School Cafeteria 1120 Harvard Way, El Dorado Hills
Thursday, January 28 at 6:00pm Public Workshop	Cameron Park Community Service District 2502 Country Club Drive, Cameron Park
Thursday, February 4 at 6:00pm Public Hearing	El Dorado Adventist School  ** Gymnasium ** 1900 Broadway, Placerville

Additional information from EID on EID's web web site, including rate notes, additional information and a list of major capital improvement projects in the past decade, a copy of the Proposition 218 Notice, and 6 press releases from August 12, 2009 to date.

The Citizens Alliance web page for this issue includes links to a many of these documents plus others from EID, as well as results from our own independent research. One of the EID documents posted here is the bond attorney's presentation slides from the most recent meeting of EID's Finance, Rates and Charges Committee.

EID Director Harry Norris (El Dorado Hills) has been extremely active in the community to discuss the rate increase issue. One of his many meetings was with the Citizens Alliance board of directors on Friday, January 17.  Our email contact with Director Norris has demonstrated that he and EID are working intensively to seek a way to reduce the size of the rate increase while still complying with minimum revenue requirements of the Rate Covenant with bondholders.

AB 1204 in motion in the legislature

Assembly Bill 1204, authored by EDH resident and District 10 Assemblymember Alyson Huber, passed through the Assembly's Local Government Committee with a unanimous vote of the committee on January 13th. District 1 Supervisor John Knight and EDH Chamber of Commerce director Megan Reeves gave supporting testimony. Those giving comments in support of the bill included Jon Jakowatz, representing the Four Seasons Civic League, and Paul Raveling, representing the Citizens Alliance.

This bill is set to revise representation on the El Dorado County Transportation Commission (EDCTC), whose board currently consists of the County Supervisors from Districts 1, 2, and 3, plus three members of the City of Placerville City Council. The first result of passage of this bill will be to add the District 4 County Supervisor to the board. The City of Placerville will retain its three representatives until another city incorporates on the west slope. At that time allocation of city seats will change to provide two board members for each incorporated city.

The Citizens Alliance offers special thanks to Alyson Huber and her staff, who devoted exceptional time and effort to this issue. That included conducting a series of public workshops throughout the County, and reaching the compromise that ultimately received endorsement by the Transportation Commission. The Citizens Alliance had hoped to gain representation immediately by adding a Citizen Member to the Commission, but accepts the compromise that will give us representation when we incorporate. That date is still too many years in the future to predict.


EDH ranks high in household income

An accidental discovery while researching El Dorado Hills demographics in connection with the EID rate issue was a "stealth statistic", which is not easily evident because EDH is unincorporated. It was found by comparing a number for EDH with a Wikipedia list of highest median household incomes for cities in different population ranges. It turns out that if EDH were an incorporated city, we would be number 3 among cities with populations over 40,000.  Here's the list, with El Dorado Hills collated in: 

Highest-income places with a population of at least 40,000

Rank	Place	Population	Median Household Income
1	Potomac, Maryland	44,821	$128,936
2	Danville, California	42,127	$114,064
	El Dorado Hills, California	42,000 - 43,000	$113,927
3	Bloomfield Township, Michigan	43,027	$103,897
4	Cupertino, California	50,657	$100,411
5	Bethesda, Maryland	55,300	$99,102
6	Greenwich, Connecticut	61,101	$99,086
7	Thousand Oaks, California (includes Newbury Park, California)	117,005	$97,372
8	San Ramon, California	44,477	$95,856
9	Rancho Palos Verdes, California	41,301	$95,503
10	Flower Mound, Texas	51,203	$95,416

This list is derived by filtering higher-population cities out of  Wikipedia's list of places with more than 10,000 population. A disclaimer is that the statistic for EDH median household income probably applies only to part of El Dorado Hills, so that the number could be either higher or lower for the entire Census Designated Place in the upcoming 2010 Census.