SMUD customers demand vote on Yolo annexation
By Beth Curda/Enterprise staff writerSome Sacramento residents are worried that if their public utility annexes parts of Yolo County into its service area, costs will be passed along to them. They want to vote on the annexation and were scheduled to launch today a petition drive for a ballot measure in June.
Sacramento Municipal Utility District has asked to annex Davis, Woodland, West Sacramento and unincorporated areas of the county, which now get their electricity from Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
The Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission is reviewing SMUD's request.
LAFCO and Yolo County voters must approve of the move, and that Yolo County-only vote is a sticking point with some in Sacramento.
The other concern is cost. SMUD has said it would keep its existing customers from being harmed by the annexation, but members of the Coalition for Reliable and Affordable Electricity are concerned that won't happen.
“That's my job as a utility director is to make business decisions that are to the benefit of the ratepayers,” SMUD board President Bill Slaton said this morning, reiterating that promise to existing customers.
The increase in customers would be 12 percent, he said, equal to four or five years' worth of growth.
A surcharge levied on Yolo residents would protect existing SMUD customers, in part because SMUD could vary the length of time it would be charged to Yolo customers, he said.
The Sacramento groups' petition drive was set to begin with a 2 p.m. news conference today at the intersection of K Street Mall and 13th Street.
The Coalition for Reliable and Affordable Electricity includes PG&E, Lake Natoma Heights Homeowners Association, Sacramento County Taxpayers League, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, California Black Chamber of Commerce, Sacramento Black Chamber of Commerce and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 1245.
Jeff Raimundo, a consultant for the Coalition for Reliable and Affordable Energy, said the group believes SMUD has underestimated by about half a billion dollars the costs annexation would bring. By promising a discount to Yolo County residents and no rate increases to Sacramento residents, they have created an impossible situation, if the costs are off.
“How can you do that if they're off by hundreds of millions of dollars? The math doesn't work. That's what I want them to talk about,” he said.
Raimundo and PG&E spokeswoman Jann Taber said a Sacramento vote could offer the public debate they do not believe has happened. Raimundo said SMUD's public workshops in the spring were “lovefests” and the information was not debated enough.
Slaton said throughout California and elsewhere in the United States it is “unheard of” for the existing area to vote. The area to be annexed votes because it has no representation within SMUD, he said. Sacramento residents may contact their elected directors.
He said the petition drive is a PG&E technique to try to stop the annexation.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
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