Friendly Fortuna at it's finest...

early days of General Plan update

Another wonderful example.  

River Lodge filled again to make sure a tank didn't go in Rohner Park...

Last year was a different story...

(thanks Doug for trying)

The project they decided not to discuss?  
A new tank down the street from Vancil reservoir, where twice the storage of the proposed tank is sitting unused. 


However, rules are rules, 

so here's two years of information gathering whittled down to three minutes: 

 Why are we building a new tank?

Planning for the future is great, but first there's an obligation to spend the money as promised.  

I think Mr. Glaser has forgotten about Resolution 2006-25 passed and adopted by the City Council in 2006 to justify the rate increases.  It says the money's for

"projects that are required to fulfill the City's current operational responsibilities and are not driven by future development." 
  
Vancil reservoir was built in 1963.  We've spent more than $1/2 million to reline and upgrade it, but a new pipeline and larger pumps are still needed.

Isn't it time we use it?
Ironically Vancil has twice the storage we need today. 
So this reservoir can also provide for future city needs. 


The Council needs to know we are concerned that money raised for current needs is being spent on a project we may not need for 20 years or more. 

The Council needs to hear from you.

More on the tank issue...

Jan 18 meeting

If you saw Doug Strehl at the Dec 7th Council meeting suggest to the Council a public meeting on the tank issue, give him a call and thank him. Even if you didn't see it, call and thank him anyway. The difference between a hearing and a workshop is that the rules for public participation are more relaxed. It appears to me to have been a valiant attempt to provide a time to actually look at the tank issue, to hear what people think about it.

The Mayor agreed with the idea, even suggesting extensions of time could be allowed. He then asked the City Manager his opinion, and it looked like a go. They didn't ask the other three council members. But that isn't necessary because the City Manager, consulting with the Mayor, sets the meeting schedule. That task is delegated to him. Somehow, somewhere the idea got dropped. At the early January meeting, it was back to making both decisions at one meeting (to certify the negative declaration and approve the next step in the process). When the final agenda came out it is now just one agenda item. That means only one public hearing. What a wonderful time saving idea. I called and checked. There will be no extensions of time for speakers, no electronic images, and no expressing the opinion that the new tank isn't necessary. Anyway, that's the rules for the public. Except the last one, that one violates the Brown Act.

In any case, Doug Strehl deserves our thanks for trying to open the process up. Please call him, serving on the council shouldn't be a thankless job. He's in the phone book. I would save you the time, but I fear those little webby information gathering devices would pick up the number and put him on some call list.

If you have a bit more time call another member of the council and ask what their views are on public participation. Ken Zanzi, Mel Berti, Pat Whitchurch and Dean Glaser are all in the phone book.

Monday is the meeting. I know that one voice carries no weight, especially when that voice is saying something they don't want to hear. But I'll be there, a martyr to free speech and public participation. Please don't pity me, I hate pity. Understand that I believe in it. It actually can be fun. Come on down Monday, I could use some company. Oh, yes. It is at 6pm at the Courthouse.

Here is the link to my visual presentation I won't be showing. I checked the box for no sign-in required, hope it works. If you would like a hard copy leave that in a comment. I'll try to have one for you at the meeting. Also, I'll be giving a hard copy to the Council members, so it should be available at City Hall after the meeting. This is about the project, because that is what is on the agenda. The city reservoir at Vancil is not on the agenda.

Wondering what this is all about?

Heidi sums it up nicely.

Change, one step back, two forward

I want to thank Mayor Whitchurch and Linda Jensen. Yes, Mayor Whitchurch because although he flicked the switch he stopped short of actually stopping me from speaking at the March 9th meeting. Can this mountain be a molehill again?

Linda Jensen deserves grand kudos for defusing the situation at the beginning of the March 16th meeting. Back in August as I handed the Council information before a meeting, Mayor Campbell asked if I had a copy for staff, which I did. Between then and last month I switched at Mr. Rigge's request to leaving information with staff to give to council. I sometimes had a few extra I put on the table with the agenda copies. On March 16th I noticed something in the minutes. I assumed only a Council member could take the minutes off the consent calendar so I typed up my thoughts. Before the meeting I confirmed with Mr. Rigge the process and then gave him a copy. As I moved to hand copies to the Council I was told I had to have copies for everyone in the room or could not give anything to Council. As I hesitated, wondering at the moving target of Council process, Linda Jensen got up and made some copies. I finished giving the Council their copies and life goes on. Thank you!

FYI dear readers here is CA Gov Code 54957.5.(b):(b) Writings that are public records under subdivision (a) and that are distributed during a public meeting shall be made available for public inspection at the meeting if prepared by the local agency or a member of its legislative body, or after the meeting if prepared by some other person.
So, while I was technically correct, I apologize that due to a shortage of time and ink I did not have copies for the other members of the public at the March 16th meeting.

OK, Maybe I was a little optimistic about change in Fortuna

March16, 2009 Fortuna City Council Meeting

Agenda Item: Oral Comments from the Public

At the last City council meeting those watching on TV did not hear my
closing remarks. At the time, the Mayor had indicated I only had one
minute left, then after a bit I noticed a movement and thought to
myself, “Is the mic still on?” But I continued because I
had worked long and hard to gather the information and then try to
condense it down into 3 minutes. Also, I could have just
misinterpreted what I saw. By the end of the meeting, after several
gracious acts by the Mayor allowing others to speak out of order, I
felt that probably I was mistaken about what I saw.

When I was told that in fact the mike was off at the end of my comments, I
laughed. So,the Mayor doesn’t appreciate my endeavors, he has
control of the switch, I was out of order; really just a minor
disappointment in my life right now.

But when I saw it on TV, it gave me a different perception. I no longer
saw it as a personal problem. The question became what do people
think when they watch this happen? Would they feel welcome to come
speak at Council meetings? Is public participation, especially by
those with a different perspective, welcomed?

When someone is ruled out of order, it is government regulation of speech.
It is at times necessary to insure that you can get done what needs
to get done, but the regulation needs to be applied evenly. And I
would not want such tight regulation that the praise of Mr. Rodriquez
would have been ruled out of order before it had a chance to be given
or that the question at the end of the meeting could not have gotten
a response.

We have a governing principal. It says, “We May Disagree, But We
Will Be Respectful of One Another, All Comments Will Be Directed to
the Issue at Hand, and Addressed to the City Council, Personal
Attacks are Unacceptable.”

I respectfully suggest that this be the guide for ruling people out of
order.

I would like to now restate what was not broadcast two weeks ago.

I hope this information provides you with a clearer historical
perspective as you continue planning for the use of our water rate
revenues.

My apologies for going overtime and thank you for your patience.

Note: The remarks of March 2nd are posted as Historical Summary at fortunacitizen.

The envelope, please

A pretty simple, wonderful thing. I walked in, told her I thought there was an envelope I was to pick up at the front desk and she handed it to me. Or at least she tried to, I then asked if she would mind a picture. With some understandable hesitation (I am not found of pictures, myself) she happily agreed.
Only as I was leaving did I think to ask her to thank Mr. Rigge, I hope she did because I am truly thankful. I could have many bones to pick with him, but he is the City Manager and he is responsible for making public records available and yesterday he did his job. Isn't that what we want from City employees? Cheerful, without a hassle, that's very nice, too.

I took a look in the envelope yesterday evening. Of the 62 pages 26 are the staff report; 11 pages listing (identifying) articles/ sections/ chapters of Title 22---the drinking water regulations; and 4 pages with copies of sections. All very confidential stuff. Silliness. I should edit some of this out for the sake of kindness, but I need it; it shows that sometimes finding nothing is very helpful. Or in this case just a little bit.

I now know that they did do some investigation of using Vancil. As I remember, the Council asked about Vancil at one meeting but made no comment. So I think it is a fair assumption that the City Manager has a lot of discretion or was getting direction from Council outside of public meetings. Either way, I am thankful to find some investigation. I will have to do more than a page count to see if there is anything here to qualify as a show stopper. It was fun to note a star next to a section of the law I had been looking at. Competent minds think alike? I am aching to check my notes to see if we were looking at the same time. But on to other things. If I can, I'll post what I picked up at fortunacitizen In the meantime, check out some of the historical info there.

Please join me at the upcoming workshop on the Capital Improvement Projects for the next 5 years. If I understand correctly, this is the process to approve spending money on the Water System. It is this Monday, the 9th, 6pm, City Hall. For more information, click here: friendlyfortuna.com Pass it along.

Photo by Susan K. Campbell

Change

I am so happy I can hardly type. In a few minutes I'll be going to City Hall to pick up a packet of information that will, hopefully, fulfill my California Public Records Act request. I am very hopeful that this is, indeed, a sign of change. The reason I am so hopeful is that I understand that there are only 50 pages. To me this means that there are no games being played. The game one would expect is the city copying everything remotely (or not) related and thus burying any useful information, wasting both staff time and my time.

Is there a chance that something may have been overlooked? Yes. But that can be easily remedied with a future request.

To all those who helped bring this happy result, both the decision maker(s), the record gatherers, and copiers: A very warm thank you. Have a good weekend.

Let the sunshine in!

Change in Fortuna--solar power?

Back at the May '08 meeting, where the overflow crowd made clear their concerns about cutting a hole in the Rohner Park Forest for a water tank, there were public comments asking City staff to explore using alternative energy for pumping water. The staff at that time was quite dismissive of the idea. Information was given to the Council. By the January 12, 2008 Special meeting staff had made some progress, acknowledging that in fact solar does work in Humboldt County. However, staff stated solar was only used in the private sector and by homeowners, then questioned if and how cities could use solar.

A couple weeks ago it was so pleasant to receive a thank you email from the City Manager after I forwarded an email from Mayor Madrigal of Willits with this information:
Our solar program with the City of Willits was somewhat unique. Rather than buy the system ourselves, which is cost prohibitive we contracted with another company to purchase the eventual energy at a set amount below market rate. The company secured the financing( no cost to the city), constructed the project ( no cost to the city) and handles all the maintenece. We buy the electricity from them at a rate that will always be less than what we would get from PG&E. The system is located at our Water Plant and feeds directly into the grid.

Mr. Rigge went on to say he had been in Willits in January and made contact the Program Development Director of the Renewable Energy Development Institute there. He also indicated that there would be follow-up on the information from Mayor Madrigal and exploration of the information with the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, which Fortuna is a founding member of.

Maybe there will be report to the City Council soon?

Change in Fortuna 2

I attended last night's informational meeting "to describe the anticipated design and construction process for the Stewart Street Replacement project" (formerly the Tank in the Park). The paper didn't mention it was a neighborhood meeting, but no one seemed to mind that a few non-neighborhood folks showed up. I want to note that the fact that it was publicly noticed is a positive change for a neighborhood meeting in Fortuna. Last spring the Friends of Rohner Park "crashed" a meeting on Stewart Street when they heard about it through the grapevine. Three months or so ago a Council member remarked "now that the cat is out of the bag" he'd like to hear how the meeting with the Vancil neighbors went. I'd say things are getting better, thanks city staff.

At the beginning of the meeting the neighbors were told staff was trying to understand the issue as if they were neighbors and at times it was acknowledged, "I truly hadn't seen it that way before." This seemed to come when some of the prepared response seemed to miss the mark, but some credit goes to the neighbors as they did a good job of repeating and rephrasing until their concerns were acknowledged. Hopefully after the clarified concerns have been "considered" the dialog will continue or at least they will receive a more definite response. But compared to the cold shoulder the Friends of Rohner Park got this was refreshing.

I have to say I felt a bit uncomfortable at times when the staff spoke for the "ratepayers" to remind the neighbors that the cost of their requests needed to be considered. The neighbors' concern that the switch from the park meant the construction impact cost shifted from the many to a few seemed legitimate to me (the speaker noted no ill-will toward those concerned with the park). But of course I'm biased, this ratepayer requested they make changes to the project which would have reduced both the project costs and the impact on the neighbors substantially so I have little sympathy for staff speaking on behalf of ratepayers interested in costs. But, I'll give staff the benefit of the doubt that I'll soon see the error of my logic when I review the preliminary records.

Anyway, back to changes. The Friends of Rohner Park struggled through seven months of meetings tentatively set and then canceled and requests to know results of investigations, or to have an explanation of process, ignored or denied. What a true joy to see a written "Anticipated Chronological Project Task List" handed out. Had I had such a list perhaps I could have met the city's illogical demand that I ask for specific records in my requests for information on using Vancil reservoir. This list is a positive change.

And lastly, there have been meetings, on the General Plan and last August on the tank issue, where no public comments were allowed. I have heard that city staff and some council members attended a Brown Act training last fall. I would bet last August was the last meeting to allow no comment. That's positive change. And those records? Any day now.

Change in Fortuna

Good news this afternoon. Got a phone call from Paul Boylan, the attorney handling the Public Records Act case. He called to let me know that the city may be ready to give me copies as early as Friday. This is wonderful news.

I am a bit apprehensive, as the word is they are copying the whole Stewart Street Reservoir Replacement Project file. It goes way beyond what I asked for and could take a lot of time to sort through. But I agreed to that as a compromise assuming that otherwise staff time would have to be used to sort through it, and it might need to be someone with some familiarity with the project to distinguish which records were pertinent to my request.

A week ago the city released the first record, which was part of the first request I made back in September. Having finally figured out how to make it more readable than the earlier pages I posted on FortunaCitizen today.

For a little background on this read comments at Sohum Parlance

Rate Chart Provided by the City of Fortuna.

Came across this website, thought I'd share it. Here is how the owner described it in an email:

Although your blog and my website represent the way the current city counsel governs without consent, the blog and website have very different purposes. My website serves as a protest to the rising water rates and also serves as a warning to those considering moving into the area. If anyone googles Fortuna Water Rate, an estimate of the cost of a the monthly water bill they will have to pay can be seen. This is useful information for people planning a budget.

My website also shows how the city budget was in the black, which the current city counsel branded as the, "pay as you go" system. Now, for the first time, Fortuna is in the red by tens of millions of dollars of debt, and a portion of our water rate money that we pay, and our local tax dollars go to pay interest on the debt that our current city council put us in. This is why our water rates keep rising, and are scheduled to keep rising. We could have funded water projects slowly over time, without getting our city into debt. We get nothing for the interest we now pay out to municipal bond holders.

And my two cents: I remember there were those who felt we didn't need to borrow money (issue bonds) to repair the water and sewer infrastructure. Perhaps we should have heeded the warnings back when the bonds were issued.
Now we need to make sure the the money is used wisely. Unlike the Tank in the Park, which is simple to understand, talking about the water system is harder for people to get excited about. But building a new 2 million gallon reservoir is at least $4million project and we need to look at it closely. My investigations point to using the existing Vancil reservoir and spending more on piping/pumping improvements. But there are other ideas floating around...

Left out of the process

This blog was created in response to this comment to a post on Fortuna Citizen.
"I run into a lot of citizens who feel as though they are left out of the process. You are really onto something, as there are several huge issues coming down the pike and citizens can debate different perspectives on the issues."

I started Fortuna Citizen as a place for information. I think that sources of information need to be identified so I felt a need to moderate it more than I think is healthy for open discussion. So here is a place for frank, candid, outspoken, straightforward discussion. There are many reasons to remain anonymous so do so if you wish. However please don't use anonymity to be abusive to others making comments.