BROWN “BAT” VIOLATIONS

 

Yes indeed, the last LDPCSD Meeting on October 21st, 2011, actually scheduled as a Personnel matter, only provided another opportunity for a handful of the SO GOSIP (Same Old Group Of Special Interest People) to YET AGAIN intentionally disrupt a public business meeting. 

Considering the season and the absurd nature of their arguments and complaints, guess one could say they are “hollow-weenies”  🙂 

Before addressing this most recent display of counterproductive activity, let’s see if we can get through some more information from the last Regular Monthly Meeting on October 17th, 2011.  

  

“LEW’S VIEW” CONTINUED

Regarding the

REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING OF THE

LAKE DON PEDRO COMMUNITY SERVICES DISTRICT

Monday, October 17^th, 2011 1300hrs

NOTE: Verbatim transcriptions were based on analog and digital recordings.

Here are some brief descriptions of agenda items, Board decisions, and pertinent verbatim transcriptions.

XXXXX

3.  DISCUSSION/ACTION

c.Conference with Legal Counsel – Potential litigation Government Code Section 54956.9 (b)(3)  Number of potential cases: two

REPORT OUT OF ACTION TAKEN DURING CLOSED SESSION:  The Board unanimously declined the claims by Mr. Hoover and Mrs. Agee for reimbursement of monies.

d.Interim General Manager’s Report: D Tynan.  Water loss, SCADA system difficulties requiring equipment replacement, eye wash station repaired, Ranchito Well testing continuing – must wait for stabilization, communication equipment for field operators, started “Blow Off” project for the plant – waiting for other components to finish [equipment enables discharging of “bad water”],  and continuing the color coding of fire hydrant pressures within district.

e. Treasurer’s Report: C Reeves, Treasurer/Secretary to the Board.  Unanimous Board approval to read and file October Treasurer’s reports for reporting period September 2011 and to pay Department of Public Health bill, and scheduling the Audit Presentation for the Regular Meeting on November 21^st.

f. Consent Calendar.  Approve, read and file of the consent calendar.

Special Meeting Minutesfor July 25^th, 2011 not approved.   Kinsella, Richardson aye, Skoien Nay, and Emery Ross abstain.  [Due to verbatim transcript portions of Minutes]

Board approval of Special Meeting Minutes, August 4^th, 2011; Regular Meeting Minutes August 15^th, 2011; Special Meeting Minutes August 26^th, 2011, and correspondence.  Vote:  Directors Kinsella, Skoien and Richardson aye, Director Ross nay due to verbatim transcript.

g. Wastewater Meter Reading.  IGM Tynan follow-up report on bill containing the error with meter reading.  Representative from Public Works failed to attend meeting as scheduled.  Discussion of the 10% interest [$4,500/mo] on the balance due being waived for this month; public suggestion of shutting off water to the plant; how the previous meter read in gallons not traditional units of 748 gallons; and the majority of the bill regarded meter placement cost not water consumption.  Director Ross suggested IGM Tynan talk with Public Works again and bring it back to the Board.  Directors Kinsella and Richardson advocated putting everything in writing to establish a paper trail.  Kalvin Gile stated he spoke with “them” about the matter and “they” were interested in resolving the matter but maybe not for the whole amount.  Board consensus to have Charise Reeves compose a letter to Public Works, for IGM Tynan, reiterating the matter with another month of interest waived until our next board meeting and requesting their attendance of the November 21^st, 2011 (since the last two board meetings were missed) with their response to the billing with copies to the Board of Supervisors and County Counsel.  Board approval to waive the fees pending an answer.     

Kalvin Gile was late for the meeting and asked questions concerning information in Treasurer’s Reports for preceding years.   

h. One Day a Month for Policy.  Request by IGM Tynan to dedicate one day per month for a meeting to work on policies.  Special Meeting set for November 14^th, 2011 @ 10am – 1pm to start policy updating beginning with Personnel.

i. Counsel/Mediator.  IGM Tynan to discuss having counsel or a mediator at each meeting.  Meeting with a mediator before and after the next regular monthly meeting [in public so as not to violate the Brown Act] to conform and meet Grand Jury recommendation.

j. Request from Wes Barton – Follow-up on September Discussion.  Discussion regarding follow-up to his letter and presentation in September including a new letter to the Board of Directors.  

Wes Barton:  Still on the budget, and actually it’s also the answer to the mediator job too, you know, if we were all focused on doing the same thing we don’t need a mediator and our biggest problem is that we’re not all focused on the same thing.  We’re back to the budget and using the budget.  The budget is a, the budget that we’re using is just, we’re showing five years, basically five years, it may be going to get changed again in a little bit because there was a couple of corrections with the ah, the ah, ah retirement monies and things of that nature.  But it is basically a five year plan of just showing numbers without saying what we’re doing, how we’re solving the problems we have, etc., OK?  I’m not, I’m not complaining about what is in the budget, I’m complaining about what is not in the budget, OK?  And in the budget we say at the end of five years ah we’ll have something like $970,000 worth of cash.  But what it doesn’t say is that the five year plan, that was put together and has never been rejected by this board, said we were going to spend a million-two on capital assets, CALPEX capital projects, and this budget says of that million-two we’re now only going to spend 417 so if we had a, a need for a million-two that means we’re deferring $800,000, that’s still going to have to be done.  And you old timers that have been around here remember what all this got started with getting some financial statements and doing, trying to do some of the right things, was we had like ah, Bob Kent used to say, needed a million dollars a year for 50 years for all the capital expenditures, bu (inaudible) We definitely have major capital expenditures that need to be done.  If you go back from 2005 I think it is through 2010 we were averaging $185,000 a year capital expenditures and still we were crying that we didn’t have enough money for the capital expenditures, but now we’re saying we’re only going to spend 400?  So, yep, something’s wrong with those numbers we are going to need more capital expenditures sometime during this next five years.  If you take the million two, you back up the 417 which is what we’re budgeting that means you’re a shortfall of $802,000.  OK?  That’s $802,000 out of 970,000 you say we’re going to have.  Ah, if you take your PERS retirement and ah, Charise you can correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I think with the corrected numbers at the end of 2015 if you add that $168,000 a year in, over the last five years plus the 208 you end up with $833,000 ah, which once again, is another $833,000 that we’re saying that we have that liability, it’s going to have to be paid, we’re going to further discuss this later on, because I’m still not personally, I’m not satisfied with that number, but that’s where we’re at right now.  Ah, the ah, then we have ah, ah, one of the premises with this was so we had money in case of emergencies and cash flow to balance out the fluctuation from one month to another.  Bartle and Wells recommended 25% which is another $460,000.  OK?  Now if you take $460,000 plus $800,000, plus $800,000 you’re over two million and, that we need, even if we don’t spend it, theoretically we should be restricting the $973,000 by two million, OK?  And actually that’s a million in the hole, OK?  Point of this is that the budget, if you take a look at the budget, we’re saying OK, we’re going to increase our costs over the next five years by something like, ignoring interest, by something like $255,000, we’re going to increase our revenue over the next five years by something like $300,000 so for all intents and purposes what we’re saying here is for the next five years we’re just going to basically do the same thing we’ve been doing for five years that has gotten us into this same problem.  OK?  And that does not satisfy me, I just had my rates increased a 100% and if at the end of this five years we’re still in the hole another million dollars, I’m going to get my rates increased another 100%, doesn’t make sense to me, just does not make sense to me.  So that’s what I mean by what isn’t said in this budget.  Now we’ve got price cost issues, we’ve got less than half of the people that are paying the bulk of the money, OK?  We need to solve the problem of the unimproved lots paying additional money.  Now, is it double like we were talking before?  I don’t know.  Is it half of what we were talking before?  I don’t know, but it’s a hell of a lot more than what we’re getting right now.  Ah, that has to be addressed, there are several different ways to address it, it’s in my three or four letters that I’ve got here so, the board has it, I’m not going to go into the details.  Cost to operate, yeah it’s fine, I’m not picking on you, but to make Dan give up his $100 pants OK, when he’s also going to have to meet people and things of that nature isn’t going to get us out of the hole.  What’s going to get us out of the hole is to set and look at every job we do, OK?  And look at it and say, is the customer, does the customer requires us to do this job this activity?  Does the government require us to do it?  Ah, is it something we have to have to keep the place clean and neat?  And, basically if it isn’t, let’s get rid of it and you’re going to end up finding out, back in the days of consulting, we used to go into an operation knowing that we were going to find 30 or 50% of the cost was waste.  OK?  Because it wasn’t satisfying the customer, it wasn’t meeting requirements, it was just things that grew over a period of time that you didn’t need.  That’s where you’re going to decrease your costs.  Simplify, get rid of activities and the ones you have to have in the end, automate them make them work better.  That’s where the moneys at, its work, but that’s what’s got to happen if we’re ever going to bring these costs down and get them back anyway shape, closer to 2005 plus you know, the, excuse me the CPI, ah, Capital Expenditures we’ve basically already talked about that, ah.  Disclosures of risk and liabilities for the next five years.  You know, and business interruption, I’m going to combine these two together.  I honestly believe, and I believe if you use common sense and you say we have not been spending the money to correct our capital items, we’re going to have some major break downs, OK?  When we have major break downs how are we going to get out water?  What is our emergency plan to get our water?  Well as far as I know we don’t have an emergency plan to get our water.  And I’m not talking about are we insured to come out here and rebuild the treatment plant I’m talking about how am I going to get my drinking water and how it’s, what’s it going to cost me to get it?  What’s our plan?  To the best of my knowledge we don’t have a plan.  Ah, new business opportunities, we’re going to talk about some of those in a few minutes.  You know we beat some of these folks to death when all they’re wanting to do is get some water and we’ve got three or four major items, the SOI we don’t know what our SOI is, that Sphere of Influence. We don’t know what the usage, the ah MID usage system is, ah, we got, we got all kinds of issues like this that we’re assigned to talk about resolving but we don’t have a plan to resolve them.  When I talk about a plan what I mean is, is what are we going to do?  When are we going to do it?  Who’s responsible for doing it?  Who’s measuring it as we go along and do it?  OK?  That’s a plan, that makes things happen.  That makes commitments, now some people think that if we make commitments we don’t do it we’re going to get sued, that’s bull crap we’re getting sued every day for not doing these things.  You know, this is, this is what’s not in the plan that we’ve got to have in the plan.  Ethics, the last one.  Ah, you know, if we’re not trustworthy OK?  If we can’t be trusted we can’t do any of this crap, you know, it’s all bull if we can’t be trusted we can’t do it and obviously we’ve got major trustworthy issues.  This board has known about, I don’t care what you do with, with Dan, OK?  Dan’s a figurehead over here that caused a problem.  Here’s my problem here’s what the board has got to do.  This board has not recognized that we’ve been paying an employee under the table, employee or employees under the table, this has been going, that ah, well it may have stopped but it has been, the board has known about it, ahh, since August the 4^th or 5^th, the board has never stood up and said, made a statement, that yes we love under payments, under the table payments, we, we, that’s the greatest thing that could happen to us or no we’re not going to have this crap.  We, we’ve got now, we’ve got ah, ah, two employees that are upset with each other, ah, their accusing of discrimination.  A discrimination if we’re paying one man under the table and not paying anybody else under the table, sure as hell a discrimination.  We’ve got legal failures from the labor law we can’t pay a guy part time and, and, and out of the payroll and part time out of contracts, ah, the overtime issues would be involved in that, ah, the SDRMA contract that’s our insurance contract I’m sure we’ve violated it by doing this.  Ah the IRS, we violated ah we probably got fiduciary ah, and ah, ah issues in this, once again the board has not addressed it….Bill, Bill, I got my time please, ah…

VP Kinsella:  Yeah but you’re treading on things that have no bearing on this, particularly Dan’s operation, what he’s doing

Wes Barton:  I, I said that Don, Dan I don’t care about, I want, I address this to the board, very explicitly addressing this to the board.

VP Kinsella:  OK

Wes Barton:  Dan is your problem OK?

VP Kinsella:  Tell me about it

Wes Barton:  My problem, my problem is that the board is sitting here and they’re not even acknowledging anything wrong has happened.  Let me finish, you guys, you guys want the routine let me finish mine then I’ll be, I want to hear because that’s what I’m here for today, is I want to see some commitments made on these things.  Ah, OK, that’s basically it, what I want, you know, this board, you know, I know that in 2008 when I came on and believe me I wasn’t successful, but the purpose of coming on was to turn this CSD around and we’re not turning it around.  Ah, did this ah, well let’s see, ah that’s basically it, that’s close enough.

Director Lew Richardson:  I just had a question for you.

Wes Barton:  Yeah, yeah

Director Richardson:  I’ve read your material numerous times and I agree with a lot of what you say but what we witnessed this morning – if this board cannot even appoint one qualified applicant for one open position- how in the heck are we going to address these other major problems?

Wes Barton:  Well, I, I..

Director Richardson:  I mean seriously.

Wes Barton:  I could tell you what I would have done as a consultant, OK?  And I tried to do it but you guys didn’t, we didn’t want to do it

Director Richardson:  I’m not talking about before I’m talking about (cross talk) what happened right here today (cross talk)

Wes Barton:  I’m talking about right now

Director Richardson:  I’m talking about right now too, we can’t even get a qualified person on the board, it’s a game play (cross talk)

Wes Barton:  And we’ve got the same thing going on with the Federal government right now, OK?  We’ve got the same damn thing, we’re talking here, we’re talking about (inaudible) are we going to try to put some kind of real sweet thing in here for the short term or going to look at this place and correct it for the long term.  These short term things won’t work, we’re going to have to correct it for the long term, the long term you’re going to have to start with understanding what the hell this business is and what we’re going to accomplish over the next periods of time.  OK?  That’s the only way to do it, and it gets back to the like the ah, I talked about you know, what are you doing?  Why are we doing the things we’re doing?  Get rid of the things we’re not supposed to be doing, get this cost down to where it belongs to do only what we have to do.  OK?  That’s the way you do it, and only then, then when you do that agreement OK?, you’re agreeing on something, not personalities, not the, not the, ah, you know trying to protect my butt, or not trying to ah, ah, what’s my next ah, ah, government job going to be?  You know, serving this, serving this area right here, do this, get it down just to a handful of very simple things that you got to get done, OK?  And focus on those, get rid of all the other crap.  And that’s the way you’re going to do it.  Now, you’re not going to do it by bringing in a mediator, OK?  And I don’t care if you’re bringing in a mediator, believe me, that’s up to you guys, it doesn’t matter, it aint going to happen by bringing in the mediator, it’s going to happen by you guys getting on base heading in the same train, heading north, and everybody going in the same direction.  That’s the only way it’s going to happen.  OK?  And I don’t know how you do it with the, with your bunch, ah, yeah I bailed, OK?  Because I knew the people that were going to come on here wasn’t going to change our board with what we had at that time and there wasn’t anything I could do.  OK?  Ah, so I can’t answer you unless you want to do it the right way, you want to do it the right way?  I’ve offered to help before, I’ll offer to help again.  But you don’t do it by just sitting here arguing.  OK?

Director Richardson:  I, I, I agree with you, but again I submit what we witnessed here today.

Wes Barton:  Well then, we’re going to raise my rates

Director Richardson:  because you’re putting the cart before the horse

Wes Barton:  I don’t think so, then we’re going to raise my rates and everybody elses in here 100% in five years

Director Richardson:  I don’t want mine raised either.

(inaudible) 

VP Kinsella:  No I don’t have a question

Wes Barton:  Oh I thought you did.

Director Ross:  I don’t, not a question of you, it’s a comment (inaudible) ah, I asked Raymond about this under the table situation.  I just looked through all my papers I bring everything (inaudible) it’s not here, I was going to read the memo, he says what happened between him and somebody else is between them, it has nothing to do with us.  Right?  Now, if he’s paying somebody (inaudible) that’s (inaudible) that’s our legal opinion.

Wes Barton:  Did you, did you ask, when you talked to Raymond (inaudible, cross talk)

Director Ross:  I just said it was an email

Wes Barton:  Raymond, Raymond, did I, is there any issues with the labor laws? 

VP Kinsella:  There are all kinds of issues

Wes Barton:  There’s all kinds of problems here. 

Director Ross:  Well I asked him, I said, let’s say that one employee is blackmailing the other employee, that’s a legal, that’s a law enforcement issue, I, I haven’t raised a bunch of questions it right?  But if he pays somebody it has nothing to do with this board. 

Multiple voices

Wes Barton:  (inaudible) then just stand up Emery and say (inaudible, cross talk) stand up in this community and say, OK, that if the chemical company (inaudible) starts sending $50 back to ah Mark, or to ah, ah, Charise, that’s OK with us so long as we’re getting the chemicals we want.

Interim General Manager:  It came out of my pocket

Wes Barton:  No wait a minute, or, say to the folks here, that if we had a general manager, that wants to start paying one of his employees under the table OK, but not the others, OK, that’s OK with us, stand up and be proud of it and tell the people in this community that you think doing that kind of thing is a great idea.

Director Ross:  I never said that.

Wes Barton:  And that’s all I’m asking

Director Ross:  I said I asked Raymond if it was, if it was legal or illegal or a problem.  Raymond said it is not, it’s no concern of this board (inaudible, multiple voices)

[NOTE:  This discussion continued for quite a while.  Essentially, Interim General Manager Dan Tynan, out of his own pocket, paid a $25 reward to employees who discovered illegal connections within the district.  He also admitted to paying one employee a bonus, also out of his own pocket, for saving the district between $10,000-$15,000 dollars in ordering parts and repairing one of our largest leaks that had existed for many years because the employee went above and beyond his normal employment duties to tackle the job.   When Bill Kinsella heard about the “under the table payments” as they have been characterized, Dan Tynan was advised it wasn’t a good idea and rewards for theft detection or incentive payments immediately ceased because of potential problems with the labor code and IRS and they have not occurred again.   The discussion also included an accusation by Ruth Smith that Bill Kinsella exceeded his authority as a director by telling Tynan that using his own personal funds was not a good idea and should have been done through a board decision.]

Consensus of board to move Item L – Yosemite-Mariposa Regional Water Management Group: Presentation by Pat Garcia, representative of the Yosemite-Mariposa RWMG and approval of the updated MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) and M – Tuolumne-Stanislaus Integrated Regional Water Management Planning Group, Approval of the updated MOU, forward on the meeting agenda.  Charise Reeves was approved by the board to be the representative for both organizations.  Unanimous Board Decision to appoint Charise Reeves as the CSD representative to these two groups and sign the MOUs. 

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NOTE:  The next BLOG REPORT, regarding the October 17^th, 2011 meeting, will start with Item N: Request from Mrs. Poe, Michael and Theresa Terry:  Request by Mrs. Poe in response to questions raised at the September 19^th, 2011 Board Meeting. 

[This is a controversial case, where two meters were removed upon request by Mrs. Poe and later her two sons, was based on information obtained from individual investigations and presentations to the board by former President, now director, Emery Ross and former Vice President, now Director, Mark Skoien.  CSD records do not appear to support the fact pattern as presented to the Board at the initial January 18^th, 2011 meeting or subsequent meetings for that matter.]  

My best to you and yours, Lew