OK, our education system is not something I write about. I don't follow the school board like I do the city, and normally am not up to par as to what's going on. I do however have 4 boys, one of who has graduated GHS, 2 in high school, and a 4th starting Jr. High. I think I have a clue as to how our schools are functioning. And with the release of the current status of our local schools where GHS and LHS along with others received unacceptable ratings, along with Nixon and others dropping in their ratings I thought it was time to pipe in.
So what do I think of our educational system? I'm going to tell you they are crap. Now before I hear about all the great teachers and staff and all I want to clarify. Our system is broken. It's a crappy system we have. I don't believe that any amount of 'fixing it' will do a bit of good. It's a true Humpty Dumpty.
We have some OUTSTANDING teachers. How do I know? Because as anyone who has had one of my boys can tell you I'm very involved in their education. I believe I have met almost every teach my boys have ever had, and generally several times over the course of them teaching my boys. That goes for the administrators too, I know EVERY administrator for all the schools my boys have attended. Out of all of those involved, I can think of 4 teachers I'd rather not teach one of my children ever again, and in all fairness I believe circumstances were involved with one of them, two I think possibly were good teachers but needed to retire, and the 4th just shouldn't be a teacher. But with all the kids teachers that's pretty good odds.
But we have this notion that our children are to be taught one or two (sometimes more) test that they need to pass every year. That these test are the entire focus of education system. Wrong! Our goal in education should be to teach our children to think/reason and to give them a trait that they can take into the world awaiting them and be productive members of society.
For those who don't know, I'm the Scoutmaster for Troop 262, so I see boys from the age 10 1/2 to 18, and hopefully beyond. Out of those I've met several boys that would NEVER go through college. They will make good welders, good mechanics, good ranchers, good carpenters, good plumbers, etc, etc, etc but they will NOT be a PhD. They aren't even going to get their BA, BS, or any other letters behind their name. So why are we spending money teaching them things like English in their later years of High School? Why are we teaching advanced sciences to those who honestly won't use them? Or Social Studies? or or or or....Why aren't we instead doing what we need to and that's give them a skill?
To think that every kid can or should be taught to be a Doctor or Lawyer from kindergarten is nuts.
Don't misunderstand me, I think it would be sinful to not make sure our kids know how to read, write and do math. It's a must at almost any job you will ever have. And to expose kids to variety of activities so they can learn where their aptitudes truly are, be them in science or dentistry, or forestry, or mechanics, or...you get the idea, is what both schools an parents need to so do our kids figure out what they want to do in life.
This morning when reading Christina Moers blog, Welcome to my brain, she posted a video from a conference, Ted2010. In it Sir Ken Robinson (yes a Brit) discusses how our educational system is messed up. It's a 20 minute video, of which 16 is Sir Robinson. It is well worth the time to watch this video.
I would love to hear what other parents and employers think of this. Why employers? Because they are having to deal with the results of our educational system. So put in your 2 cents worth and let's see, am I the only one that believes we have a broken system that we need to trash and start from scratch with?
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Catching Up With Times
I believe I've mentioned a couple of these things before, but I think it's time to reiterate them, as we are winding down the interim city manager, and should be close to getting our next city manager. Now part of these pet peeves is because I'm an IT guy, and know how easy some of this technology is to implement. Part of it is because of the pain I know it is to obtain information sometimes about our city.
And before I go on, I'm not saying any of this is standards any other city uses. Honestly I don't know one way or another. But I'm saying they are standards that are readily available to us that many industries are using to assist in their issues of getting information to those that use it.
So first is an RSS feed. This is a way that the city would passively notify anyone who was interested in keeping up with meeting notifications. By law the city must notify us when they are going to have a meeting. They do this by letting newspapers and radio stations know, and in our case they also put it on the city website.
If you choose, you can go to the website every night and know what meetings were posted. What an RSS feed would do is allow me to be notified when the website is updated. How? My computer knows that I want to watch the city's page, and every time I go online it will check to see if there have been any changes made and if so let me know. There are many of you (over 200) that have RSS feeds tied to this blog. It would work the same way. I wouldn't have to go to the website to see if anything has changed, and yet as soon as it does, I know I can go check it out. This is inexpensive to set up, and honestly you would use existing code to update the website.
Second thing I would like to see is documentation put into electronic format for the public. What the heck am I talking about? Have you ever noticed the books that our councilmen carry to the meetings? These are documents of information given to the councilmen so that they can make informed decisions. The news medias also receive these packages approximately 72 hours before the meetings.
Now to print these documents are something. They are nothing shy of small books at times, and when things like the budget get put in them, they are large books. You may request a copy and pay a small fortune for them, but honestly, why would anyone want to waste that much paper?
It would take nothing for the city to 'publish' these documents in pdf format and place them on the city website up with the notification of a meeting. Why should they do this? Well to start with its nothing that's suppose to be hidden in the first place, all open for public dissemination. The 'Freedom of Information Act' insured that. Second it would eliminate a lot of questions the public has as to why some things have happened. After looking at some of the information presented to the councilmen over the last year I know why they decided some things, even though I think had I realized that's what they were looking at I might have been able to shine some light not in those little booklets.
Want to know what's happening on GEDC? Board of Adjustments? City Council? These 2 very readily available technologies, would make those available to the public. I'm almost certain that we already own and use the technology to scan and put documents to PDF, as most current copiers do this. And our website would take a minimal of adjustments to make it RSS Feed capable.
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
And before I go on, I'm not saying any of this is standards any other city uses. Honestly I don't know one way or another. But I'm saying they are standards that are readily available to us that many industries are using to assist in their issues of getting information to those that use it.
So first is an RSS feed. This is a way that the city would passively notify anyone who was interested in keeping up with meeting notifications. By law the city must notify us when they are going to have a meeting. They do this by letting newspapers and radio stations know, and in our case they also put it on the city website.
If you choose, you can go to the website every night and know what meetings were posted. What an RSS feed would do is allow me to be notified when the website is updated. How? My computer knows that I want to watch the city's page, and every time I go online it will check to see if there have been any changes made and if so let me know. There are many of you (over 200) that have RSS feeds tied to this blog. It would work the same way. I wouldn't have to go to the website to see if anything has changed, and yet as soon as it does, I know I can go check it out. This is inexpensive to set up, and honestly you would use existing code to update the website.
Second thing I would like to see is documentation put into electronic format for the public. What the heck am I talking about? Have you ever noticed the books that our councilmen carry to the meetings? These are documents of information given to the councilmen so that they can make informed decisions. The news medias also receive these packages approximately 72 hours before the meetings.
Now to print these documents are something. They are nothing shy of small books at times, and when things like the budget get put in them, they are large books. You may request a copy and pay a small fortune for them, but honestly, why would anyone want to waste that much paper?
It would take nothing for the city to 'publish' these documents in pdf format and place them on the city website up with the notification of a meeting. Why should they do this? Well to start with its nothing that's suppose to be hidden in the first place, all open for public dissemination. The 'Freedom of Information Act' insured that. Second it would eliminate a lot of questions the public has as to why some things have happened. After looking at some of the information presented to the councilmen over the last year I know why they decided some things, even though I think had I realized that's what they were looking at I might have been able to shine some light not in those little booklets.
Want to know what's happening on GEDC? Board of Adjustments? City Council? These 2 very readily available technologies, would make those available to the public. I'm almost certain that we already own and use the technology to scan and put documents to PDF, as most current copiers do this. And our website would take a minimal of adjustments to make it RSS Feed capable.
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
Saturday, July 16, 2011
JB Wells - Still an issue
This week has once again brought to light what I've been ranting about for a year, the lack of controls our city has when it deals with money, in particularly at JB Wells. Both the Gonzales Inquirer and the Gonzales Canon posted storied about theft happening out at JB Wells, and one employee losing their job already.
Now a couple of things comes to mind. First is, why after a year of being in the spot light have we not made changes in our processes out at JB Wells. This was one of the first issues I ever wrote about. How we have no checks and balances out there. How we don't do proper and constant inventories. How we don't use the cash register to have an account of what we have done in a shift/day.
Why don't we ask how money is collected for the trailer rentals for those staying out there right now.
Speaking of the trailers, I've just learned that someone, not our city council, increased the rates at JB Wells for the oil trailers from $350/month to $500/month. So not quite, but close to a 50% increase in rates.
I don't know what the going rate is around town, but I know a couple of things. First there are several other RV parks popping up in Gonzales County, so there is competition. First thing I know about competition is that prices rarely go up when there is competition.
Second, I can't imagine anyone who is renting anything being told their rent was going up 50% is going to tell the landlord where they can put their place. I'm surprised there are any trailers still out there, but it sure appears to me that we're no where near our 110+ occupancy.
Now if the going rate is $500/month, then having new people moving in at that rate I totally understand. And raising the rate to to maybe $400/month and over a period of time moving it up to $500/month. There is nothing saying that everyone has to pay the same price. And if someone has already worked on the deal at $350/month we need to be respectful of that.
So I'm going to back to my a previous blog on outside management at the JB Wells and/or getting a committee together to look at the management procedures out at JB Wells. I still believe if we are going to continue to have rodeos and run this then we need to put a committee together to list generally accepted practices to get our arena in line. The committee would go back to the council for them to decide what practices to accept.
When are we going to realize that our city is not a mom and pop business, but is yours and my money that is being wasted, yes I'm going to call it like it is, wasted. This is big business. So big even that back during budgeting we were promised that JB Wells would be set up into it's own separate account division, so it would be easier to understand profits and losses. As of the first of this month it was not done. Water, Sewer, and all the other profit centers are separated out, but not JB Wells.
Last year we lost over $200,000 at JB Wells. So once again I'm going to call for our council to take the appropriate steps to get JB Wells under control. Set procedures in place so that it is properly managed, and things like checks and balances are put into place.
Please let's not go another year and have to come back to this point again!
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
Now a couple of things comes to mind. First is, why after a year of being in the spot light have we not made changes in our processes out at JB Wells. This was one of the first issues I ever wrote about. How we have no checks and balances out there. How we don't do proper and constant inventories. How we don't use the cash register to have an account of what we have done in a shift/day.
Why don't we ask how money is collected for the trailer rentals for those staying out there right now.
Speaking of the trailers, I've just learned that someone, not our city council, increased the rates at JB Wells for the oil trailers from $350/month to $500/month. So not quite, but close to a 50% increase in rates.
I don't know what the going rate is around town, but I know a couple of things. First there are several other RV parks popping up in Gonzales County, so there is competition. First thing I know about competition is that prices rarely go up when there is competition.
Second, I can't imagine anyone who is renting anything being told their rent was going up 50% is going to tell the landlord where they can put their place. I'm surprised there are any trailers still out there, but it sure appears to me that we're no where near our 110+ occupancy.
Now if the going rate is $500/month, then having new people moving in at that rate I totally understand. And raising the rate to to maybe $400/month and over a period of time moving it up to $500/month. There is nothing saying that everyone has to pay the same price. And if someone has already worked on the deal at $350/month we need to be respectful of that.
So I'm going to back to my a previous blog on outside management at the JB Wells and/or getting a committee together to look at the management procedures out at JB Wells. I still believe if we are going to continue to have rodeos and run this then we need to put a committee together to list generally accepted practices to get our arena in line. The committee would go back to the council for them to decide what practices to accept.
When are we going to realize that our city is not a mom and pop business, but is yours and my money that is being wasted, yes I'm going to call it like it is, wasted. This is big business. So big even that back during budgeting we were promised that JB Wells would be set up into it's own separate account division, so it would be easier to understand profits and losses. As of the first of this month it was not done. Water, Sewer, and all the other profit centers are separated out, but not JB Wells.
Last year we lost over $200,000 at JB Wells. So once again I'm going to call for our council to take the appropriate steps to get JB Wells under control. Set procedures in place so that it is properly managed, and things like checks and balances are put into place.
Please let's not go another year and have to come back to this point again!
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
Monday, July 11, 2011
Just saying....
So the city finally purchased the land between the soccer fields and the baseball fields. It's 11 acres, and I don't know the story of how we had both sides and not the middle, but that's how it's been since I've been here. Now with the oil industry here, needing to get water out right there, it was safer, and in my mind a prudent move for the city to purchase that piece of property to prevent 100+ 18-wheelers a day running through our parks. Especially since the engineers had figured on running them in and out of our main entrance to Independence Park.
What I don't understand is how, in today's environment where land is going for a premium, did this land depreciate by 25% in the last year. For a refresher on this let's look in the 90asign.com archives....oh there it is David Huseman on Behalf of GEDC how could I forget?
Mr. Huseman signed a contract, 'on behalf of GEDC' for $60,000 for that same piece of land, so how is it that we purchased it for less than $45,000? Land prices aren't going down last I looked, especially with all the oil folks in town.
Something here just doesn't sound right....just saying.
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
By the way if you were looking for the rest of the $100,000, here's part of it. We still have more though...keep reading.
What I don't understand is how, in today's environment where land is going for a premium, did this land depreciate by 25% in the last year. For a refresher on this let's look in the 90asign.com archives....oh there it is David Huseman on Behalf of GEDC how could I forget?
Mr. Huseman signed a contract, 'on behalf of GEDC' for $60,000 for that same piece of land, so how is it that we purchased it for less than $45,000? Land prices aren't going down last I looked, especially with all the oil folks in town.
Something here just doesn't sound right....just saying.
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
By the way if you were looking for the rest of the $100,000, here's part of it. We still have more though...keep reading.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
$5,000,000 or was that $15,000,000+
I have to give it to Mr. Windwehen, he calls a spade a spade and I like that about him.
In last nights meeting after the presentation by LNV on our water system he gave his review. In short, and this is my condensed version, 'you failed to plan 7 years ago when this was brought to your attention, so now you have no options but to go outside for money. If you'd done your job, you would of raised rates then in anticipation of this, and had capitol to pay for it, but you didn't.' Yeap, that's a spade. and as far as I can tell there were 2 on our council back then when this happened.
If you haven't read my blog from May 30, 2011 - A Bit Bothered click on the link and brush up on where we are.
So LNV came in and gave a proposal to replace our filters to gravity filters, which are much new technology and apparently something TQEC are wanting us to do for compliance. They listed several areas that needed addressing on our 90 year old water plant.
In short to 'fix' the plant is just over $5,300,000. But fixing the plant just delays the inevitable, and that's that our plant needs to be replace at just over $15,000,0000.
There were a couple of other items that honestly I'm not sure I totally understand. We have 2 free standing pipes that hold water if I understood correctly that apparently have issues with the water not churning properly, and to fix those are just over $150,000 each.
To fix the Hwy 97 well is still being evaluated, but they expect the sulphur remove would be automatic if run over a chiller tank, so they are testing that out, but to run that would be around $200,000. We would then have to see what problems would be cause by mixing ground and surface water, so we don't really have a final there.
So get ready, because you are about to hear the words 'bonds' come up to pay for this. Even a 20 year bond would be $1,000,000 a year in payback.
I want to make this clear, I'm certain our water system needs work/replace. I'm upset that over the last 10 years we haven't been planning for this, and for the record that went way before Mr. Huseman, he just continued to let the ball sit in the corner and ignore it. I'm upset that instead of all those who have used the water over that time, didn't pay for this, so not only do we have to pay for this now, but if we are going to be good citizens we have to start planning for the future and putting some aside for the next go around. What a horrible burden to be place on those of us living here right now.
In the next couple of days I'll write about our streets and the situations there. But once again, a lack of planning, poor city managers, and our city councils over the last 15 years or so lack of action has brought us to this point.
For those of you who don't know, almost every Tuesday night there has been a special called meeting of the council trying to clean out the cobwebs in our closets and cleaning up the mess left by previous administrations. They have meet at least 3-4 time a month since February. Honestly, it's not what they signed up for, but it's what it's taking to try to clean up some of this mess. I can't tell you how lucky we are that Mr. Windwehen came along when he did. I'm afraid it would of been to late for many things in our city if we'd of stayed status quo much longer.
The 'we'll get around to it' or sweep the problems under the rug attitude that previous administrations have worked under have gotten us here, under funded, broken down, and overwhelmed.
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
In last nights meeting after the presentation by LNV on our water system he gave his review. In short, and this is my condensed version, 'you failed to plan 7 years ago when this was brought to your attention, so now you have no options but to go outside for money. If you'd done your job, you would of raised rates then in anticipation of this, and had capitol to pay for it, but you didn't.' Yeap, that's a spade. and as far as I can tell there were 2 on our council back then when this happened.
If you haven't read my blog from May 30, 2011 - A Bit Bothered click on the link and brush up on where we are.
So LNV came in and gave a proposal to replace our filters to gravity filters, which are much new technology and apparently something TQEC are wanting us to do for compliance. They listed several areas that needed addressing on our 90 year old water plant.
In short to 'fix' the plant is just over $5,300,000. But fixing the plant just delays the inevitable, and that's that our plant needs to be replace at just over $15,000,0000.
There were a couple of other items that honestly I'm not sure I totally understand. We have 2 free standing pipes that hold water if I understood correctly that apparently have issues with the water not churning properly, and to fix those are just over $150,000 each.
To fix the Hwy 97 well is still being evaluated, but they expect the sulphur remove would be automatic if run over a chiller tank, so they are testing that out, but to run that would be around $200,000. We would then have to see what problems would be cause by mixing ground and surface water, so we don't really have a final there.
So get ready, because you are about to hear the words 'bonds' come up to pay for this. Even a 20 year bond would be $1,000,000 a year in payback.
I want to make this clear, I'm certain our water system needs work/replace. I'm upset that over the last 10 years we haven't been planning for this, and for the record that went way before Mr. Huseman, he just continued to let the ball sit in the corner and ignore it. I'm upset that instead of all those who have used the water over that time, didn't pay for this, so not only do we have to pay for this now, but if we are going to be good citizens we have to start planning for the future and putting some aside for the next go around. What a horrible burden to be place on those of us living here right now.
In the next couple of days I'll write about our streets and the situations there. But once again, a lack of planning, poor city managers, and our city councils over the last 15 years or so lack of action has brought us to this point.
For those of you who don't know, almost every Tuesday night there has been a special called meeting of the council trying to clean out the cobwebs in our closets and cleaning up the mess left by previous administrations. They have meet at least 3-4 time a month since February. Honestly, it's not what they signed up for, but it's what it's taking to try to clean up some of this mess. I can't tell you how lucky we are that Mr. Windwehen came along when he did. I'm afraid it would of been to late for many things in our city if we'd of stayed status quo much longer.
The 'we'll get around to it' or sweep the problems under the rug attitude that previous administrations have worked under have gotten us here, under funded, broken down, and overwhelmed.
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Flew Right By
Ok, so we have 30, yes that was the report given, 30 planes a month that land for fuel in Gonzales. So let's spend $100,000 in funds to build an apron at Gonzales International Airport. Now in all fairness, $50K is coming from a grant, but $50,000 is coming out our our money!
REALLY??? OMG!!! We average 1 (uno, ein, un, jeden, one, singular) plane a day fueling in Gonzales and we're going to spend almost $10 for every man, woman and child in our town for this? Where is the return on investment on this?
So a plane has to wait to refuel, it's not like we are talking about a 4 hour wait here. This is not AUS or IAH, we're talking about Gonzales!
Look, I love that we have people flying in here. I love that we have people from outside out town flying in. But how, especially in todays' financial situation, can we even consider this expenditure.
OH WAIT THERE'S MORE...cause you see, we approved this because we got the $50,000 grant and had it budgeted for $50,000 (a wash), and honestly if someone else wants to pay for this I'm very OK with it, but nope, so remember that post I made last month about all our cost, and every time I go to a city council meeting there's another $100,000....well this was $50,000 of that $100,000 from this meeting. So once again we're our already deficit budget is going deeper and deeper into the red.
Come back later this week, and I'll let you know where the rest of that money went.
In the mean time GRAB ONTO YOUR WALLETS because one way or another you and I are going to pay for EVERY SINGLE DIME SPENT!
On a quick side note, those of you in District 4 were once again not represented, as Councilman Logan has decided that umpiring baseball was more important that our city business. I understand his desire to help, but he made a commitment to be at these meetings, and missed presentations by LNV and our city engineer about MILLIONS of dollars worth of expenditures. This was a regularly planned meeting. He also missed last weeks meeting where 50 applicants were whittled down to 9 candidates. Nothing important like the entire future of our city here.Let's get our priorities straight Mr. Logan, either that or give up your seat to someone who does care about this city!
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
REALLY??? OMG!!! We average 1 (uno, ein, un, jeden, one, singular) plane a day fueling in Gonzales and we're going to spend almost $10 for every man, woman and child in our town for this? Where is the return on investment on this?
So a plane has to wait to refuel, it's not like we are talking about a 4 hour wait here. This is not AUS or IAH, we're talking about Gonzales!
Look, I love that we have people flying in here. I love that we have people from outside out town flying in. But how, especially in todays' financial situation, can we even consider this expenditure.
OH WAIT THERE'S MORE...cause you see, we approved this because we got the $50,000 grant and had it budgeted for $50,000 (a wash), and honestly if someone else wants to pay for this I'm very OK with it, but nope, so remember that post I made last month about all our cost, and every time I go to a city council meeting there's another $100,000....well this was $50,000 of that $100,000 from this meeting. So once again we're our already deficit budget is going deeper and deeper into the red.
Come back later this week, and I'll let you know where the rest of that money went.
In the mean time GRAB ONTO YOUR WALLETS because one way or another you and I are going to pay for EVERY SINGLE DIME SPENT!
On a quick side note, those of you in District 4 were once again not represented, as Councilman Logan has decided that umpiring baseball was more important that our city business. I understand his desire to help, but he made a commitment to be at these meetings, and missed presentations by LNV and our city engineer about MILLIONS of dollars worth of expenditures. This was a regularly planned meeting. He also missed last weeks meeting where 50 applicants were whittled down to 9 candidates. Nothing important like the entire future of our city here.Let's get our priorities straight Mr. Logan, either that or give up your seat to someone who does care about this city!
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
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