Category Archives: council

council, water, weather

Too Much To Do Tuesday

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Tonight will be a quick post since the pre-council meeting and then the council meeting with the water issue public hearing took up a lot of time. At least the public hearing went well. We had people from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) present to explain what happens if the issue doesn’t pass on the ballot and the engineers present to detail all the options and treatment methods we considered and their estimated costs, etc. There were less than a half-dozen citizens that testified and asked questions, so I think the public informational meetings along the way really helped. But we did have a nearly full council chambers for only the third time in the last 6 years.

When I came home, it was really beginning to rain and the temperature was already down to 45. The higher altitudes to the east (up around and beyond Denver) were predicted to get snow tonight. I guess fall really is here. Of course when I got home, Molly was waiting and wanted to go out. So I let her out and went to grab a towel or two. There are few things less pleasant than an affectionate greeting from a soaking wet long haired dog, towels in hand or not.

Molly told me about her day as I fixed my late supper. Her discription consisted mostly of woofs and growls from what I could understand. There were also squeaks of the chew toy and a few low rider sprints through the house as well. Of course, as soon as I sat down at the table, she wanted to rest her wet head on my lap.  I’ll leave it to you to imagine just how thrilling that is.

Finally, two readers have signed up to follow my twitter account in the last week. Proof positive that people have too much time on their hands. If you want to follow, I’ll save you all the detective work of those two – I am djones666 on twitter. Just be forewarned that I twit (note that I called it a twit, not a tweet) very seldom and on very random topics. Someday I may even put a button over on the side to let people follow, but for right now you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Time to put together a couple of notes for the radio show in the morning and then hit the sack. Probably better get the names of the CDPHE people written down so I can attribute them correctly. {*grin*}

council, thoughtful tuesday, water

Tomato Tahmahtoe Schlomo ….

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Into the breach once more dear friends ….

I often think of that line. It’s from an album by The Firesign Theater brilliantly titled “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.” This album may be before your time since it was popular when I was a collegian. But I have to agree with the Rolling Stone review more than a decade after it’s release that called it “the greatest comedy album ever made.”

I like that line more because it is, like most Firesign material, at least a double entendre. In this case, referring to the famous lines in William Shakespeare’s Henry V, III, i, 1 “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…” The play on into versus unto is great.

In case you haven’t guessed, I am a big fan of double and triple entendres and puns. Unfortunately, telling puns is usually grounds for immediate execution by howling hordes of unhappy listeners. So I restrict my pun telling and most of my shaggy dog stories to close relatives and those who are unlikely to catch me as I head for the hills at the end of the experience. 

What brought the phrase to mind tonight was the discussion at a city council work session about setting water rates. If you set the rates and add a step structure to the rates to encourage conservation, people might actually conserve too much and so you would have to raise the rates again to cover the operational costs of the water treatment plant. On the other hand, if you set the base rate to cover the operational overhead and keep the per gallon charges down, you hurt those on low and fixed incomes disproportionately. And no matter what you do, people are going to be unhappy and think it was the wrong decision. I sometimes think that people fail to realize that council members pay the same rates as anyone else, so we understand the fiscal pain involved. 

Anyway, another two and a half hours of my life gone in a futile attempt to come up with some plan that doesn’t gore anyone unfairly. I could have been doing so many other things during that time. Oh well, I only have until mid November and I am term limited out of office. I haven’t decided if I am going to call my successor and critique every action of the new council and mayor yet. It might supply some deep winter amusement. {*grin*}  Maybe warm the cockles of my heart during the nights of frozen tundra?

council, Tuesday

Tuesday Trivia

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Today was one of those days with odd weather. To start, it was snowy and cold this morning. It was a glorious 10 degrees and had made it up all the way to 18 around noon. We ended up with just a dusting of powder snow, so not enough moisture to measure. I spent much of the day in meetings or waiting for meetings that never happened. A development group was scheduled to fly in to meet about some city owned property, but they were prevented from making it this far north by the wind and snow in southern Colorado. Small planes don’t do real well in snow and high winds. Scratch that meeting. Then about 3pm, the wind started howling here and adiabatic heating quickly took over. The temperature shot up to 50 degrees and the snow all disappeared. Lends credence to that old saying: “If you don’t like the weather in Colorado right now, just wait 15 minutes.”

Got over to visit Mom at the hospital around 6pm and then headed off to the city council meeting at 7pm. It was nice to have a relatively full chamber for the meeting. The exceptional attendance was explained by the presence of two groups, a church and the Girl Scouts.

Many of the attendees were from a local church that came to make a public offer to buy some city owned land for a church. Of course we could take no action on the offer since it wasn’t on the agenda. But they had also supplied it in writing so it will be coming before the council in the future.

Then I got to present the Girl Scouts with a proclamation for Girl Scout Week (March 8-14) in the city. A group of seven Girl Scouts from all age groups were present (along with parents and leaders) to receive the proclamation and give the council some Girl Scout Cookies. Given that L sits on the statewide council, I have already had more than enough cookies, so I and several other council members gave our cookies to be placed in the city staff break room. (Not to mention, no one wants to fill out all the paperwork for accepting a gift. You wouldn’t believe the kind of paperwork the state demands of elected officials to account for any and all gifts.) When I asked the assembled group who wanted to receive the proclamation after I read it, one little cutie piped right up and said she would. It is nice to see kids at that age with the confidence to pipe up and say yes in front of the crowd like that. Really reinforces how effective the organization is in helping the girls succeed in life. I suspect that I will be in the paper once more, this time surrounded by a group of Girl Scouts, most of whom stand barely as tall as my belt buckle. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the photographer will have cut my head off.

Th meeting continued on with other business, and then B from this post used the unscheduled public appearance slot to address the council. A fair amount of time later, we removed the glaze from our eyes and continued on. Obviously the high light of our meeting. {*grin*} Most such appearances wouldn’t be too bad if people had the facts right or even addressed the issue at hand, but that is often not the case.

After the council meeting was done, I headed over to Mom’s to pick up the list of things she wanted that she had given me earlier. I’ll have to take them up to the hospital after the radio show tomorrow morning. I can tell that many of the effects of the anesthetic are fading. She wanted her bag to work on some hand crafts and she was doing the crossword puzzle when I visited earlier in the evening. Both actions are symptoms that she may still be in pain but that her mind has cleared.

Time to head for the bed – 6am comes early.

council, donor

Yet Another Tuesday

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Today was much closer to an acceptable day for me. The forecast winds did not appear even though the warmth did. (Never trust the weather people!) So Molly and I got a chance to get out in the sun and walk in the park. Hooray!

Tonight’s city council meeting ran long, mainly because we had so many things to go through in our special session and also a rather lengthy executive session for court and real estate matters. One of the fun things coming up and discussed is the 125th anniversary of the founding of the city. The question is whether to celebrate the 125th, and if so, how and when. The actual founding was December 13, 1884. So do you put it off until December, piggy back it on the 4th of July celebration and Heritage Festival, or choose another date? One of the council members pointed out that the 100th anniversary celebration was held in October to correspond with the harvest festivals. Any great ideas?

There was a funny moment after the meeting as our newest council member asked if we had ever heard of B. The veterans were all just about rolling on the floor because B is infamously notorious, both to the city council and city staff. B is so hard to deal with and so irrational at times that speaking to B is considered a rite of passage. Every council member has had the pleasure of speaking to B at least several times and it is an experience they never forget. So when the new council member asked with the bewildered look of confusion if we had ever heard of someone named B, we were ready to hear the story. Once she told her contact story and had heard a few of our B stories, you could see the light come on as she realized that she was not alone.

I suspect every the every entity that deals with the public, whether it be government, retail, service sector, or any other has their version of B. Most retail and service industries have the luxury of firing the customer – just flat out admitting that it costs more in aggravation, time, and morale to deal with that customer than it is worth to the business. Unfortunately, governments don’t quite have the same freedom. So although B has been fired from some municipal services, there are others we are obligated by charter to provide. So each new generation gets to deal with the Bs of the world.

The newest council member wanted to know why we couldn’t have prepared a list of “beware of these numbers/people” for new council members to save her from the hours long barrage of her first contact with B. The answer I gave is straight forward: each council member must deal with all the people they represent, including B, in an unbiased and fair manner. And after all, there is always the hope that someday one of them will hit on the magical key to dealing with the constituent like B in a calm and rational manner. And in a paraphrase, just because you’re outrageous doesn’t mean you don’t have a valid point. So we’ll be forced to keep sacrificing virginal council members on the altar of first contact with the Bs of the world as long as we have representative government.

Time to get to bed so I can mosey down to the radio station in the morning. Our town’s benefactor (from here) has been at it again and made another $250,000 donation to help keep recreation fees down and additional park facilities. The director of Parks, Libraries, and Recreation will join me to acknowledge the gift. Like I said before, having great civic donors like he and his wife makes my job a lot easier. So thank you Frank and Gloria!

council, quiet zone, railroad, whistle

Tooting Tuesday

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Today was a day to consider tooting. (No, not that kind of tooting.) The kind trains do as they creep or race past roadway intersections. Our city and two neighboring cities (well, neighboring for out here – they are within 45 miles of here) are sponsoring an engineering “Quiet Zone” study to see if we can kill the train horns at our intersections.

For those who are not familiar with the mishmash of federal, state, and local regulations on train whistling, consider that here in Colorado any train – street intersection is regulated by or involves all these govenmental and regulatory bodies:

  • RSA – Railroad Safety Administration (federal)
  • County Governement (local)
  • Local (City) Government (local)
  • PUC – Public Utilities Commission (state)
  • CDOT – Colorado Department Of Transportation (state)
  • Railroads – Union Pacific and Burlington Northern & Santa Fe here
What brings it all to a head here is that there are 20-35 coal trains a day through town. We have five crossings here in our little town. The RSA requires that each train approaching a crossing have a long-long-short-long whistle pattern before/at intersection at 96-110 dBA. At those levels, the whistle can be heard miles from the intersection. As you might guess, the populace is not real happy about the noise pollution. Especially since the number of trains may double in the next year or two as the alternative clean air routes force more trains out here to rural areas and the consumption of coal continues to increase. A few years ago, the annoyance factor was considerably less since the old law was 85-90 dBA and the number of trains was less than 7.
So if we can install the equipment and controls to reduce the risk of a vehicle-train collision to below the national average, we can implement a so called “Quiet Zone” where the trains are no longer mandated to toot all the time. Tonight was a preliminary public meeting and presentation by the engineering firm doing the study, mainly to introduce us to what the acceptable technologies are to reach the required risk levels.
The real issue is cost. It could be as cheap as $300,000 per intersection to as much as $2,000,000 per intersection. Needless to say, with 5 intersections, our annual budget of $18,000,000 won’t cover those kind of additional costs. So, it is time to see what the exact cost will be and then see what we can exchange with the railroads to get the project done. The next few months will tell what the chances are.
There has been one meeting with all the concerned parties from the list above and there is another one scheduled for the 18th to get the final numbers settled for required signalling. Then we can see if the railroads are really serious about talking turkey. After all, they can simply tell us where to go if they so desire. There seems to be something the city controls that they want for a project of their own, so we’ll see what kind of horse trading we can do.
So what did you waste your day doing? It had to have been a bit less dry than mine. (If not, you have my sympathies.) 
P.S. I did issue a proclamation for Go Green Week here today. That was exciting if only to talk to the high schoolers behind the effort. The older I get, the younger they look. They were amazed to find out that clear back in the early 1970’s when I was in high school here, I was co-chairperson of the very first Earth Day celebration. Yet another perfectly worthless claim to fame. (I’m not sure whether they were amazed that I was involved in Earth Day or that anyone could be so old as to have attended high school that long ago.)