Turlock Irrigation District’s board of directors voted to increase the irrigation volumetric water rate for the first time in a decade, on the same day it said goodbye to a longtime employee.
By a 5-0 vote, the directors approved a rate increase that will be phased in over three years, along with a restructuring of its water-rate tier system, in accordance with a study provided by consultant NewGen Strategies and Solutions.
The current normal-year fixed fee is $60 per acre ($68 in dry years), while Tier 1 is $2 per acre, Tier 2 is $3, Tier 3 is $15 and Tier 4 is $20. Under the newly adopted guidelines, there would be no change to the normal-year and dry-year prices from 2025 through 2027, while tiers 1, 2, and 3 would be consolidated into a single rate (up to available water) of $2.70 in 2025, $3.23 in 2026, and $3.83 in 2027. Tier 4 (over available water) would have a cost-justified rate of $20 in each of those years.
The rate adjustments will allow TID to increase its total operating revenues by nearly $16 million for the coming year, according to CFO Brian Stubbert. It also would lift its available cash to more than 1.5 times its debt service (1.87), as opposed to the current coverage of 1.41. Finally, the increases would bolster TID’s estimated days of cash on hand from 190-202 to 204-216.
“We want to be above 225 days cash on hand, and though we’re not, it’s OK because we have three years to reach that threshold.”
Before the board got to the business of voting on the rate increase, it said goodbye to Chief Hydrologist Wes Monier, who is retiring after 36 years with the utility. A bevy of TID executives and employees thanked Monier for his years of service, which included playing key roles in the opening of the Don Pedro Reservoir spillway for the first time in its history during the flood of 1997, and then again during the flood of 2017.
“It’s been an absolutely pleasure to learn with Wes,” said TID General Manager Brad Koehn, who has worked with Monier for the past 14 years. “It is 100 percent true that Wes has forgotten more than I’ve learned here at the District.”
Koehn added that TID should’ve written down the vast collection of “Wes-isms.”
“Some of them I can repeat and some I can’t,” kidded Koehn. “But we will continue using the Wes-isms; we will confuse whoever we’re talking to because we’re also confused when you use them: something to do with a gnat and a hoe handle; something with tall cotton involved. There are hundreds of Wes-isms, and sometimes we kind of understand what he means by them, and most of the time we don’t. But we will continue the Wes-isms.”
Monier, a native of Greenville, Texas, started his career with TID in 1989 as an electrical engineering technician. He eventually became a power services technician, and then a utility analyst before being promoted in 2005 to strategic issues/planning manager (a position reclassified as chief hydrologist in 2017).
“I had delusions of grandeur about doing stuff with spectrum analyzers in a cold basement with no people,” said Monier. “How wrong I was.
"I do want to apologize if I’ve rubbed people the wrong way. And I have. I think my staff calls me a loose cannon, but it was always to move the chess pieces. My saving grace, though, is all of the people and the fun times and the laughs. … That, I will miss.
“I know I’m blessed.”
Monier was joined at the send-off by wife Mary, daughter Margarette Greene, son Nathan Monier, Nathan’s girlfriend Alexis Machado, and mother Sandra Monier.
