Category Archives: meeting

meeting, rant

Today I Rant For Tomorrow I …

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Today I wasted yet another two hours of my life sitting through a meeting of a committee I got volunteered to serve on. It seems that in spite of having a paid facilitator, we run in circles week after week. Mostly because there are too many players with personal skin in the game, all trying to act like they don’t. I just wish that we could somehow force everyone to stand up and declare their real interests so we could move on to solving the problem at hand without all the posturing and protectionism and hidden pushing and shoving. Oh well, probably much too sane and logical to have happen in a room full of pols and idiots …

Then to make matters worse, the weekly meetings have been moved to a room in a historically restored court house.

 The meeting room has 18 foot high tin plate ceilings,

hardwood floors,

and absolutely no sound absorption. So the meeting is like sitting in a echo chamber with a jet revving for take off at one end. No one can hear anyone else and that includes the recording system for making the official notes. And so it goes …

At least there was a football game on the TV when I finally got home.

Grrr, meeting, weather

Grrr Day

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I hate getting suckered. Today I wasted four hours of a perfectly nice (albeit windy and pollen filled) day attending a meeting I would not have attended had the true agenda been published. Grrrr.

Then I had a Boy Scout committee meeting tonight that ran a bit long. The actual business of the meeting should have been completed in less than a half hour. The meeting lasted ninety minutes after all the asides and reminisces. So all in all, close to six hours of my time were wasted today in pointless or needless activities. Grrr.

The wind is howling outside, making noises and rattling the windows. Days (and nights) like this are somewhat akin to the Santa Ana winds in SoCal. Everything feels a bit out of kilter and unsettled and the gusting noises and random bangs and booms from the wind keeps nerves on edge. Grrr.

(Painting: Gust of Wind – Corot)

What are your Grrrs for the day?
meeting, water

A Contentious Evening

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Tonight I was a speaker at a voter information meeting about the city water treatment plan and then the proposed county wide EMS Authority. The meeting was contentious and full of hot air from all sides. What really gets my goat is that we have been holding public meetings and talking to the press about the water issues for the last three years and yet none of the armchair idiots concerned citizens was willing to even attend a single engineering meeting, council meeting, meeting with the EPA, heck, even a meeting with me. Now that it is clear what the whole issue will do to water rates (raise them to a level similar to other communities in the area for a start), the people are up in arms.

What really bothers me is that they don’t seem to grasp that this is a no win situation where trying to deny the issue just makes it worse and more costly. Some points are conceded by all sides:

1) The EPA standard is capricious and has no scientific basis.
2) Treating to handle 1) will obviate the need for home water softeners and reverse osmosis units.

After that, it is a toxic mix of coffee shop rumor and non-thinking knee jerk reactions. The plain facts are:

1) We are under EPA edict to do this. It is not an “if you want to”, it is a “it will be done on this timeline” situation.
2) If we don’t start construction by the end of the year, we can be declared non-conformant by the EPA.
3) If we are declared so, then a whole bunch of bad things happen and we still have to do it, but with no help and no time. That basically means a $29 million dollar effort will become an estimated $110 million dollar court ordered action with no ability to control costs.

So all the aforementioned armchair idiots concerned citizens get up and rant about how we should show those government people who we are and how we should get Obama $$$ to do this, etc. The last city who tried to show those EPA and government critters is 150 miles from here. It looks like people would have at least followed the news as that city’s $18 million dollar water treatment plan became a $72 million dollar court supervised disaster that had to be built in 6 months (by court decree) which doubled the cost yet again. All because the voters were going to show those government people. Seems to me the government showed them – and left them paying for it for a long, long time.

The real stick (there is no carrot) in all this is not the fines ($2000 to $20,000 per day) if we don’t get voter approval to do this. It is not that we are the only city in Colorado with a charter provision requiring us to get voter approval for revenue bonds (bonds issued against water plant revenues – in any other city it is already a done deal and construction has already started which reduces the costs appreciably to meet the EPA deadline). It is not even the fact that the mayor may be jailed for being in contempt of federal court for being the nominal leader of the non-compliance rebellion. (After all, I am term limited out in November, it won’t be me! {*grin*}) No, the real issue is that if a town like ours is declared non-conformant, we become ineligible for *all* federal funds (like fire and security and 911 systems and …) and FHA and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financing of real estate sales is prohibited. And property cannot be sold without going through a lot of hoops even if no bank financing is needed. And that in turn kills business financing since they can’t use their property as collateral. So during the months while everything sorts itself out in court and the treatment plant is built under court supervision and time line, the town goes through throes that might kill it and the very livelihoods of those same people who are going to tell the government to take a hike.

All I have to say is that I sure hope the sane voters who understand what the consequences are come out to vote. Actually, I hope they put marker to paper in timely manner since the county wide vote this year is by mail-in ballot only.

In any case, another 3 hours of my life wasted and I get to do it again tomorrow afternoon. And all for $500/month whether I like it or not. Just declare me insane now and send out the men with the big butterfly nets! I’ll be waiting.

friday high five, meeting

Five Oddities Spotted …

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It’s time once more for

Five Oddities Spotted at the Meeting I Attended Tonight

  • Although the meeting was about a development in the far rural reaches of the county, there were more city officials in attendance than officials from the county.
  • The engineering/consulting firm for the project actually had an approximately equal male/female ratio in the engineers attending. Given that the project is geologic and oil and gas related, to see that kind of equality warmed the cockles of my scientist’s heart.
  • The code of ethics for the FERC representative prevented her from even sampling the food buffet put out for all to enjoy by the project backers. That sounds to me like a policy in need of some sanity, especially since they sent the representative out for a evening meeting without many other options for food. (FERC = Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) 
  • The landowners adjacent to the project attended the meeting because it was a social event. They were there to exchange gossip and crop news more than to ask questions about the project. (So related to the above, the representative from FERC was probably the loneliest person at the meeting.)
  • Nothing will perk the ears of the Emergency Coordinator and the Fire Chief quicker than an off-handed discussion of tanker trucks loaded with highly flammable explosives following a HazMat route through the area.
blog, meeting, writing

Interesting Experience

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This evening I was the guest speaker at the League of Voters meeting. I believe that this group used to be called the League of Women Voters, but like many organizations has begun to refer to itself as the League in a sex neutral way. That is undoubtedly a good thing for this group as the crowd was more than 50% male in composition.

The evening was in an informal Q&A format. I had asked the other city council members to attend, but none of them did. Pretty much typical – it is hard to get the council members out to an occasion where they might have to speak. I seem to be the only member that actual enjoys public speaking from time to time. Anyhow, the evening started at 6:30 and the next time I consulted my watch it was 8:30. Seemed like no time at all because I was enjoying having an interested and involved audience who asked intelligent questions. I only wish I ran into such crowds on a more regulatr basis.

The interesting event didn’t happen until the meeting was over and I was chatting with the chairperson before heading off into the roaring wind and stormy weather. (Yes, we may indeed be on track for yet another spring blizzard tomorrow.) The chairperson made the offhand remark that he was so happy I was blogging and that he really enjoyed reading the blog. It took me aback for a second or two because I don’t know the chairperson well. But he evidently enjoys the writings herein. I told him thanks and gently made sure he knew that this blog is a personal effort and not any official organ of the office. He said he understood. Coupled with running into one of my Very Important Teachers from this post at the post office today, it made for a strange day. Meeting two people in the flesh who like my writing, one of whom keeps trying to convince me to write a full length science fiction novel rather than my occasional forays into the sci-fi short story, in the same day, could cause me to get a big head! (Alright, an even bigger head. {*grin*})

The question that has been rolling around on the tip of my mind for the last couple of hours: Have you ever met an unknown blog reader in real life? Have they commented to you about your writing? How was the experience? I ask because after I got over the initial shock of a local, non-family member, non-political friend or foe, reading this blog, I rather enjoyed the experience.

(I am scheduled to plant a tree in one of the parks tomorrow for Arbor Day. It will be interesting to see if the ceremony gets blown and snowed out. One of the predictions from global warming is drier winters and more violent spring weather here on the plains. So far it fits in perfectly.)

(Do you think I abused the poor comma too much in this post? I’m to lazy to go back and re-write it, so abusive or not, they stay. {*grin/2*})