Too Much To Do Tuesday

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*}

Tomato Tahmahtoe Schlomo ....

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?

Tuesday Trivia

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.

Yet Another Tuesday

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!

Tooting Tuesday

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.)

Christmas is almost here ...

... and I just got home from the last city council meeting of this year. We had to meet tonight to have the second readings and public hearings on a couple of items that needed to be signed and in force before the end of the year. Mostly contract related. We also allocated some remaining funds for projects that can be done with money from this year next year. One of them is an eagle scout project in one park, another is an expansion of the seating at the veterans memorial in another park, and the last is the minimal buildout of a curb cut on a state highway whose permit will expire if not built shortly. Pretty much standard end of the year stuff.

You know you live in a small town when ... someone asks your mother if you are OK since you didn't blog last night. Just to alleviate any concerns, I am fine. I was busy working on some computer stuff last night and it was too late to post by the time I finished up. But thanks for the concern. Mom called this afternoon to finalize plans for Christmas Eve and she mentioned that she had been asked about the absence of a blog post and was I OK? That is encouraging to me for several reasons, not the least of which is that there are actually people reading what I write. I always have the underlying fear that my blog bears a closer resemblance to post-nasal drip of the brain than a readable flood of interesting words. It is also nice to hear that people care!

I am waiting for my wife to get home from the mountains as I write this. It will be so nice to have her home for a few days. This time of the year can feel very lonely when you are batching it. But at least I got most of the cleaning done and tomorrow we can finish decorating the tree for the group gathering tomorrow night. Christmas will be pretty low key here at the homestead this year. The son is up in the mountains working over college break, so it will just be L, Molly, and me along with our moms and maybe a few other guests that would otherwise be alone over the holiday.

Tomorrow doesn't look to be too busy. I'll get up and walk down to the radio station for the radio show early in the morning. Speaking of which, I sometimes think that people care more about the radio show that about the city council actions it features. I can't believe the number of people I run into that tell me that they heard the show and really look forward to it each week. That is amazing on several counts: 1) they actually listened to the show rather than turning that dial, 2) so many of them don't live in this town,  3) the topics that they heard on the show prompts them to ask questions, and 4) they will at least listen to the radio show even if they don't attend the council meetings. I was talking to the president of the local community college the other day and he was very complementary on my use of the radio show to keep the community informed. I found it kind of amusing. I do it because I like to hear myself talk! {*grin*}

After the radio show, I'll walk back home and get some last minute wrapping done.  Then I need to start our traditional Christmas Eve oyster stew cooking so it can simmer and be ready to eat early. There is the church service for people to attend and then the gathering of people here to snack and talk and await Santa. Any more, the number of Santa unaware kids has shrunk to a few, so I doubt Santa will show up here at the house. He'll catch them overnight at their own houses. On Christmas day we are migrating over to mom's house for Christmas dinner. My MIL and mom worked it out amidst themselves so Thanksgiving was at MIL's house and Christmas Day will be a mom's house. (It pays to live in the same town as your mom and MIL - there is some else to cook!)

Well, Molly seems to think she hears a car so L must be here. Later.

YATA

Yet Another Tuesday Again. The acronymic titling just keeps on coming.

Today I spent a few hours at the prison listening to the gang intelligence unit. Some interesting stuff and some stuff that leaves you scratching your head and going huh? Probably pretty normal for a non-gang person listening to stuff about gangs and gang members. They covered the gamut from bloods to crips to seranos to nortes to kkk to war ... Colorado is interesting in that the prisons don't segregate by gang like California and some other states do. They practice a zero tolerance "you are all prisoners" strategy and isolate only trouble makers. Doesn't make some of the gang members real happy.

The gang that was the strangest to me was the Juggalos. The key for membership seems to be a liking of the Insane Clown Posse, often acronymized as ICP in signs and tattoos, and a preference for hatchet or ice pick violence, and/or a liking in general for the music akin to ICP like Dark Lotus, Twiztid, Anybody Killa, Jumpsteady, Psychopathic Rydas, etc. They are one of the rare gangs that accept all religions and races and even allow concurrent membership in other gangs amongst their members. What makes them troubling is that they are a small subset (est. 15%) of all the people who follow ICP in a manner similar to the Deadheads that followed the Grateful Dead. That 15% subset is the actual violent gang, the rest are just somewhat demented music followers. It is also troubling that they are one of the fastest growing gangs in Colorado and in the prison population. The gang logo is a dread locked running hatchet wielding man, often stylized with dripping blood, etc. The iconic image of hatchetman looks like this

This gang is also troubling in that it has a strong middle school  following. The members like to dress in black, wear hatchetman regalia, have tattoos of ICP and the hatchman, and wear clown makeup. Not exactly an inconspicuous crew.

The city council meeting was of the normal variety.  We went through the agenda in a business like manner, had a brief discussion on a couple of upcoming topics, and adjourned. I did try to convince the reporter for the weekly news paper who arrived after the meeting was over that she missed the wildest meeting of the year. I told her that the entire council had stripped naked and danced the can-can on the council bench. She didn't believe me. She just said that she was really happy she missed it and proceeded to quiz me about the agenda items one by one. Oh well. Maybe I just need better lying skills.

And now ...

The city council meeting last night was not too bad.  It ran a little long, but it didn't turn into a 6 hour marathon like they sometimes were before I became mayor. Thank heavens for small miracles!

Today was a Wednesday, and like every other Wednesday, I have a show on one of the local radio stations early in the morning. I am a brave soul and take all callers on an open mike (live, no less) about issues or complaints in the city.  Generally tends to be pretty quiet since things got under control a few years ago, so now I mostly use it to keep the community appraised of what happened in the council meeting and the issues of interest to the area. I am not noted as being one to call a spade a "portable entrenching tool" and my approach seems to work well with the people here.

The League of Women Voters gave a program on the ballot issues this year at a local church this evening. I was there to address the charter amendments for the city on the ballot this year. This is one of the longest ballots in local history with initiatives and proposals covering 46-59 and L-O on the state part of the ballot and a similar number of items related to the city charter on the municipal side. Add in the presidential, congressional, and county commisioner races and the ballot is beyond hefty.

One major concern is that people may not be able to complete their ballot in the statutorily allotted 15 minutes. We are all encouraging people to take their crib notes with them to the polls, utilize early voting, and use mail in ballots. Because of the presidential race, local congressional races, and all of the above, voter participation may be very high (some predictions in the >90% of all registered voters range.) This should be interesting. I'm certainly glad I'm not a county clerk who has to make sure all this runs smoothly and certify the results rather shortly after the vote.

I'm off to make my crib sheet for the election before I forget all the good information from the League analysis. {*grin*}

Busy Season

This is the busy season for town councils in Colorado and ours is no exception. That is because there are statutory time frames for approval of the town budget here and the time is is now. So we all get really busy for a bit here.

The process at the council end is straight forward, if lengthy.  The budget is officially presented (in our case tonight) and then a public hearing is scheduled for 2 weeks hence. That is when the public gets their chance for direct input and to lobby for their favorite programs. Then the council must haggle it's way come to agreement and approve the budget for the coming year.  We are required to have the public hearing no more than two weeks after presentation and are also required to make the presentation essentially in this time frame. A lot of the hassling and adjusting have already been done through the discussion of preliminary and unofficial trial budgets before today. But tonight's council meeting may be lengthy as each council member tries to make the case to change the official presentation to their preferences.

Needless to say, it is an interesting time for financial affairs in general and the city in particular. It is complicated in our case this year by the requirement to undertake an upcoming project that will likely be in the $14-20 million range. Since the annual budget of the town is less than $20 million, we will have to bond the project. We have to start the project planning this year before the bond can be brought forth to the voters next year, so we have to find $480,000 in the budget to pay for the engineering studies that need to commence this year. This is a federally mandated project, but guess how much money they are supplying?