News you need...

Just a quick hello and a notice to check out the updates on the other website.

I have posted a lot of new documents for your reading pleasure.

Most of the new items are correspondence between the citizen groups and the City, and PERC and Boyle Engineering. (no conflict there)

Isn't Tom doing a great job? I'm so grateful that he takes the time to field the comments. I'd like to get back to writing more topics but still a little too busy. There is so much to write about.

What other issues would you like to discuss? I know everyone loves to talk about the sewer plant - but there are lots of other issues!

Have a great weekend and be cool...

The 48 Laws of Power

I’m going to suggest a book to everyone, “The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers. “The 48 Laws of Power” is essentially “The Prince” by Nicolò Machiavelli rewritten into modern day language. If you’ve ever tried to read “The Prince”, it can get a little dry. “The 48 Laws of Power” gives forty-eight methods that have been successfully used throughout history by power brokers. The book gives some amusing examples that I think you will recognize and is well worth the $20.

ISBN: 0140280197
ISBN-13: 9780140280197
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)

It’s Review Time!

Okay let’s review the rules one more time. Comments have been rejected that could have otherwise appeared if the author could have just resisted taking a shot by insulting someone. If you expect your comment to appear it must meet the following criteria:

The comment must be free of personal insult.
Your comment may not contain“rumors” or innuendos about others.
The name under which you post may not be insulting others.

To Mr. All Caps,
If you don’t like this blog, why do you insist on coming back? Do you feel threatened by this blog? I’m sure you are an intelligent person and if you have an alternative viewpoint perhaps you could take the time to express yourself in a manner that is consist with your actions in public.

As Requested: What Do You Like About Fillmore?

Also, "What would you like to see in Fillmore" - Types of businesses, services, etc.

Santa Paula Surprise...

I attended last night's council meeting in Santa Paula. They were going to decide whether to continue down their current path of conventional procurement(competetive bidding) for their sewer plant or to use DBO and PERC.

The estimated costs that their engineering consultants presented were about $56 million. PERC's estimated costs were $35 million(for 3 MGD). There was quite a bit of discussion and a lot of good questions and comments from the Council members and staff.

I think the most brilliant question was; what makes you think you can save that much money? (paraphrased).

(You have heard from me and others that we could be saving a lot of money. For some reason instead of enthusiastically pursuing that possibility on our behalf, the response from the City is to ignore the savings and move numbers around in our estimates. (i.e....our plant isn't $82 million, it's only $46 million but the disposal is $36 million.). Or use that "it's not apples to apples" defense.)

So, the answer is; engineering, contingencies, land, management.

Using DBO is supposed to be a fixed bid, guaranteed performance, package deal. It doesn't require contingencies, extra engineering design, program management.

They were presented with a legal opinion memo defining the requirements of Government Code 5956 procurement laws stating that you don't need daunting RFQ's. You don't need 10 pound RFP's(not 527 pages anyway).

Santa Paula voted last night to pursue the DBOF using a minimized and perhaps combined RFQ/RFP process to expedite. They fired their engineering consultants. They directed staff to manage the process rather than another engineering consultant.

Our City and members of citizens group will be meeting with PERC on the 27th.

What Happened to the Pool?

I have a very close friend who is the Aquatics Director for a high school to the north. The school had a similar situation to Fillmore, pool had fallen into disrepair and eventually abandoned. Once the decision was made to construct a new pool they were swimming within 18 months.

Are there legal issues holding this up or is grant monies?

Forum Moderation

Due to Gayle’s extremely busy schedule, I’ve offered to help moderate the forum and I may even post a topic / question or two.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I will respect that opinion as long as it is expressed in a manner that is free of personal insults, innuendos or unsubstantiated rumors about others. This would also include the name under which you are posting. Any comments that don’t follow this simple guideline will just disappear into the Ethernet.

If anyone has concerns, questions or suggestions: tfennell@rtfsolutions.com

I miss you all...

Dear readers - sorry I've been absent for so long. I've got a dear friend going through chemo and radiation treatments. Taking her to the Dr. and providing some of the caregiver duties has taken a lot of my time.

Also, my mother has had a knee replacement - I'm on overload as you can imagine.

So, as much as I would love to be blogging and sharing information and opinions with you I can only do a little bit right now.

Also, I'm still moderating the comments since the "friends of Fillmore" have continued their attack on me, Patti Walker, Brian Sipes and anyone else considered a "threat" to whatever agenda they are here to promote. I'm not sure what it is - other than destruction. I see comments about Patti - censure and lawsuits. Well, from what I can tell the censure was pretty selective. By selective I mean that Patti was targeted while others were left alone for more egregious offenses.

As far as lawsuits - oooh! such a scary thing! Well, I used to think that but now I see that there are a lot of lawsuits going on but we just don't get the details. I've reviewed the Council meeting minutes since 2001 and I don't think there are any meetings where there is not an executive session for some lawsuit or another potential one. So the "FOF" attacks on Patti Walker over lawsuits is just a political tactic. Particularly since if you run a search on the County website for lawsuits you will not find Patti Walker as a plaintiff on any case. We are so used...the FOF thinks that voters are ignorant.

I hope to be back tomorrow with news of new PERC proposal and upcoming meetings with City staff.