Dear editor:

For those members of the Shoshone Irrigation District (SID) who couldn’t attend the annual meeting on Feb. 18, I would like to provide an overview of the meeting along with some observations and comments. The meeting started with a reading of the newspaper advertisement regarding this meeting, a reminder to be sure to sign the roll call log sheet at the front of the room and an introduction of guests.

President Bill Cox then announced the individuals who were up for election. When the issue of the requirement of individuals seeking election to have $20,000 in agricultural sales was raised from the floor, the podium started berating this individual, and one commissioner came striding towards the individual, slammed down a document and stated that here were the rules and that he didn’t know what he was talking about.

When the attendee tried to protest, President Cox firmly stated that he also knew that he didn’t know what he was talking about and he knew that the attendee had not read the rules. Further, President Cox stated that if the attendee kept speaking that he would be escorted out of the meeting. I will address this matter further in my next letter to the editor, there are other more important issues to bring forward now.

After this rather heated exchange, the meeting continued with the reading of the names of the individuals who were seeking election. After this, the prior meeting minutes were read. At no time did President Cox state how many votes these individuals received or the percentage of the eligible votes were received. No effort was made to show documentation that these individuals owned land in the appropriate districts, and no effort was made to show that these individuals had the required $20,000 in agricultural sales. Most importantly, there was no formal announcement of who won the election. So, the question needs to be asked — was there even a fair and open election? 

All in all, in my opinion, it was an embarrassing attempt at an election and it didn’t seem to be transparent at all. This lack of transparency has the unfortunate side effect of making people question the validity of the attempted election. 

President Cox then reviewed the report prepared by the financial auditor. The report covered the timeframe of July 1, 2023 to June 20, 2024. Item three was disturbing. In summary, the most disturbing item noted was that SID had overspent their approved budget by a whopping $454,000. Examples of the overage are Wages & Benefits $108,000; Power Plant $89,000; Office Expense $57,000; and WWDC project $176,000. 

The audit report points out that SID lacks good controls on the budget. President Cox’s statement was “we have to a better job at budgeting.”

President Cox also made the mild comment that “we will try not to increase the landowner fee and that the budgeting meetings would take place soon.”

If the above doesn’t scare you, item five should. It noted that SID has depleted much of its cash reserves and had a NEGATIVE cash flow for the year. Cash and Investments were depleted by $136,470. In summary the financial audit report noted that SID had R&B additions of $405,552 and had purchased vehicle(s) in the amount of $87,500.

If the above doesn’t scare you, here is some more data:

• Cash Reserves to Operating Expenses (a measure of available cash to cover expenses) in 2018 was 217.1%. In 2024 it had sunk to 91.5%;

• Operating Expense per Irrigated Acre (a measure of the actual cost per acre) was $32.17 in 2018 and it had exploded to $58.32 in 2024;

• Wages were $602,172 in 2018 and exploded to $829,017;

• and the most scary of all, Unrestricted Cash & Investments (a measure of available cash or another way to think of it is the “rainy day fund”) was $2,245,336 in 2018 and had tanked to $1,487,498 — a drop of $757,838, a drop of almost three quarters of a million dollars! To put this another way, it is a DECREASE of 33.75% in seven years! I wonder how long it took to save this much money?

Conclusions: Given President Cox’s statement that the commissioners would TRY not to raise the current Landowner Fee of $300, in my opinion the commissioners intend to keep using the landowners fee methodology. If I were to hazard a guess, I would think that we will be seeing a landowner’s fee in the range of $500 to $700 range for the next fiscal year. I hope that I’m wrong, but I fear that I’m right.

Based on the above it is imperative that everyone plan on attending the upcoming budgeting meetings. I believe that large farmers should also consider attending these meetings. If I were a large farmer and I saw that my most critical sole source vendor was showing these kinds of worrisome numbers and issues, I would want to know how SID will correct these issues!

If you would like to see the auditor’s report, you may go to our new, independent, website at www.shoshoneirrigationissues.com.

At this site we will post information that we feel may be of interest to all concerned members of the SID. I may be reached at 307rob.stevens@gmail.com if you should have any questions or comments.

I ask that SID President Cox, review the above information and correct any misstatement of fact.

Rob Stevens

Powell