So I've not written much about the city because I haven't had the time to follow up on some things that have really bothered me about the city council actions of late. So I'm going to go over a couple of them here, even though I'm looking at them from one side, and have had no comments from any of the city councilmen.
First was 2 agenda items that were at this months city council. The first was $28,000 (not budgeted) to have a flow study done of the water system. There are problems on the northern end of town for water pressure, and complaints from industry that not only is it causing them issues, but it could be hazardous. The second part of that was $11,000+ for a gis (I believe that was the term used) mapping of the water system.
Now in my simple mind, how are you going to do #1 without having #2? How can you tell how much water flow we have if you don't know what size pipes we have, where they are, how long there are, what valves are in place, etc, etc, etc? Each and every one of those things are factors in your water flow.
So I asked, all I got was "well they are going to have to do part of #2 to get #1, but it's different, we have to spend this $11,000. Really?
Now if they had said, "The format they are going to present it to us won't be usable for anything after the study is done, but since the company will have all the information, they can give us a standardized mapping of our water system for $11,000, and we think after this we can keep it up ourselves, and when we loose employees their knowledge won't go away because we'll have it in digital format for the world to use" I might have at least understood we are paying for the upgrade to the model we just purchased. But the way they made it sound was #1 was going to be magically produced without knowing exactly what our system consist of today. BS!
Second, why did we just 'award' this $40,000 without going out to bid on it? I've noticed a lot of this going on lately. The engineer will say, 'I've got so and so ready to go ahead as soon as you approve this project.....' and no bidding is going out? Why? Oh, it's ONLY $40,000, no need to? Really? Really?
You know last I looked times were tough, and there are some hungry people out there that will work, and do a good job for less money all over the place.
As long as I'm on that subject, I know we're closing in on a city manager. I hope our city council has gotten their head around this. I look and one of the 3 finalist appears to have 'resigned' or was going to be resigned (read 'fired') earlier this year. I have a bad case of deja vue here.
On top of which there are whisperings that the $70,000k range salary that we've paid our last city manager could be doubled, or close to it. There is a 9%+ unemployment rate in this great country, and we're going to double our salary right from the start? Where do we go from there? Do like the last one and give him a 20% pay raise after 6 months? People want to work, and there are plenty of qualified (and I stress the qualified) people who would kill for a $70,000 job right now. They would kill for any job. From $0 to $70,000, yeap, that's the ticket. And even those employed right now, like the interim mayor of I believe Flatonia, knows this is a good job or he wouldn't of applied.
One, we are NOT in the position financially to pay that kind of salary. Second, I believe if you look around, while there are those making that kind of money, it's not a typical salary for our size town. So in this case I'm hoping I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. We'll know shortly though as I believe this weekend the council will decide on someone.
Last, I couldn't make it to the meeting on 7/18 because my wife was in surgery. I found at this council meeting the council approved $120,000 for a financial adviser. What have I told you lately, every time they go in there is another $100,000 in unbudgeted moneys spent. This guy has basically told us we could bond out, and borrow the $5,500,000 with a 20 year pay back of $9,000,000. Using those type of figures, the entire $15,500,000 project will be $25,370,000. How much will they have to jack up rates to cover that expense? Let me tell you they can't jack them up far enough. So once again, I see property taxes going up to pay for this. Oh, and while our city financial has say he thinks we'll have a aaa rating, I'll bet anyone the best we'll get is a Ba rating. Why? Because or finances for the last several years have been in the red, and poorly managed. So what does aaa to a Ba mean? It means that $25,000,000 might not be high enough, because it will cost us more to get the loans (bonds). And for the record, go back about a year in my blog when I first started when I said this would come to bite us in the butt later. Guess what, later is now!
Good luck and Gods speed to our council this weekend as they finish deciding who will be our next city manager. I hope the money we've spend weening them out was worth it, because whoever comes in will have to be a Houdini and pull money out of the empty coffers. I hope they know what grant writing is all about and pull in enough cash to pay for themselves and put our town back on the financial stability, and infrastructure recovery we desperately need in this town.
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
Showing posts with label Gonzales Water System. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gonzales Water System. Show all posts
Friday, August 5, 2011
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
Monday, May 30, 2011
A bit bothered
Ok so I've been sitting since Tuesday night bothered by the last council meeting. Immediately after the meeting I spoke with a couple of the council members about it and was hoping that would calm me after a bit, but it hasn't so here it is.
All of a sudden it's been an urgency that we fix our water system. During the budgeting process we were made aware that we had not planned for any upgrades and the system is 25 years old, but recently it's been "we HAVE to fix it NOW" without any explanation. Have we violated state law? Is there something we know that isn't being shared? Or is it just not optimum?
So here is my problem, it's NOT that we need to fix our system (though I'm a bit upset we haven't planned for it), it's that we're not trying to plan this out, but bulldoze it through on a year that EVERYTHING seems to be urgent and costing us so much. Let me give you a quick run down:
$400,000 - The amount we started out in the hole with the 2011 - 2012 budget
$150,000 - The amount over budget the bid for the sewage in District 4 came out
$ 67,000 - The amount approved Tuesday to 'analyze' our water system
$ 20,000 - The amount added to the budget to find a new city manager
These are literally the things off the top of my head that I can remember. So with just those items we're $637,000 in the red for this budget year. And as the commercials state, "But wait, there's more!" Because we still don't have the final cost on hiring a new person, and what travel and expenses for the interviews are going to be, nor the water repairs (I will expand shortly on this), and I still have a problem believing we did all those slots at JB Wells for $220,000 when we spent $150,000 for GVEC.
Mr. Windwehen made it clear that our water and sewer rates are going to have to be increased to pay for the needed repairs. I'm ok with that, it's how it should work. The problem is that it probably should of been raised a long time ago, so that the increase was a minor increase instead of a major increase on our bills.
The second option the city council is going to have, and wait, here it comes...figured it out yet?....RAISE OUR TAXES.
You see, when we were at the budgeting process earlier this year and I heard for the first time that our water system was needing repair, they mentioned that they figured it would take $6,000,000 for us to replace the existing system. Even if we spread this out over a 5 year plan, that's $1,200,000 per year we have to come up with.
Oh, and if I understand correctly we are a 'no debt' city, so we can't bond these projects, we have to pay for them as we go, so the only way to accomplish this is to increase revenues to the city. I don't see us increasing our water rates that high, so if you own a home, or live in Gonzales (yes, renters home owners pass these increase on to you in rent increases), you better be ready, cause here it comes!
You know, it's been a tough couple of years in our house hold. Business have been off due to the economy, and we've had to make some tough decisions of what we are going to cut in our house hold budget. There for a while we got down to the bare basics. I've not seen our city do the same thing. We've approved needless items like the weather system at the airport. We've approved out of proportioned spending for our animal control. We've continued to allowed our rodeo arena to operate rodeos at a loss to the city. I can go on, but I think you get the idea.
I understand there are things that have to get done in our city. We HAVE to hire a new city manager, as this one will only stay a bit longer (his choice not the city councils). It's my understanding that we were out of compliance with the sewage in district 4, and that had to get fixed. These are like when your car breaks down and you have to fix them to get to work.
But right now our city leaders need to seriously consider what we are spending and how we are doing it. Remember a budget is just what we are anticipating spending. It can be revised up AND down. If we need to fix our water system, then we need to figure out what we need to cut in order to make up that kind of difference instead of dumping the entire burden on the taxpayers of this great city.
As odd as this might seem, I do believe that our water rates are going to have to be increased. Again, they should of been increased years ago so that we would of had the money there for our needs now. That's lack of planning. But we can not expect the water users to pay off these increases in a year or two, which should of been paid over 10 years. It's an unreasonable expectation of the users of our water system.
It's going to be an interesting month ahead as the city council gets their report on the repairs at the July 5th meeting. I hope between now and then they are working hard to figure out where these funds are going to come from.
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
All of a sudden it's been an urgency that we fix our water system. During the budgeting process we were made aware that we had not planned for any upgrades and the system is 25 years old, but recently it's been "we HAVE to fix it NOW" without any explanation. Have we violated state law? Is there something we know that isn't being shared? Or is it just not optimum?
So here is my problem, it's NOT that we need to fix our system (though I'm a bit upset we haven't planned for it), it's that we're not trying to plan this out, but bulldoze it through on a year that EVERYTHING seems to be urgent and costing us so much. Let me give you a quick run down:
$400,000 - The amount we started out in the hole with the 2011 - 2012 budget
$150,000 - The amount over budget the bid for the sewage in District 4 came out
$ 67,000 - The amount approved Tuesday to 'analyze' our water system
$ 20,000 - The amount added to the budget to find a new city manager
These are literally the things off the top of my head that I can remember. So with just those items we're $637,000 in the red for this budget year. And as the commercials state, "But wait, there's more!" Because we still don't have the final cost on hiring a new person, and what travel and expenses for the interviews are going to be, nor the water repairs (I will expand shortly on this), and I still have a problem believing we did all those slots at JB Wells for $220,000 when we spent $150,000 for GVEC.
Mr. Windwehen made it clear that our water and sewer rates are going to have to be increased to pay for the needed repairs. I'm ok with that, it's how it should work. The problem is that it probably should of been raised a long time ago, so that the increase was a minor increase instead of a major increase on our bills.
The second option the city council is going to have, and wait, here it comes...figured it out yet?....RAISE OUR TAXES.
You see, when we were at the budgeting process earlier this year and I heard for the first time that our water system was needing repair, they mentioned that they figured it would take $6,000,000 for us to replace the existing system. Even if we spread this out over a 5 year plan, that's $1,200,000 per year we have to come up with.
Oh, and if I understand correctly we are a 'no debt' city, so we can't bond these projects, we have to pay for them as we go, so the only way to accomplish this is to increase revenues to the city. I don't see us increasing our water rates that high, so if you own a home, or live in Gonzales (yes, renters home owners pass these increase on to you in rent increases), you better be ready, cause here it comes!
You know, it's been a tough couple of years in our house hold. Business have been off due to the economy, and we've had to make some tough decisions of what we are going to cut in our house hold budget. There for a while we got down to the bare basics. I've not seen our city do the same thing. We've approved needless items like the weather system at the airport. We've approved out of proportioned spending for our animal control. We've continued to allowed our rodeo arena to operate rodeos at a loss to the city. I can go on, but I think you get the idea.
I understand there are things that have to get done in our city. We HAVE to hire a new city manager, as this one will only stay a bit longer (his choice not the city councils). It's my understanding that we were out of compliance with the sewage in district 4, and that had to get fixed. These are like when your car breaks down and you have to fix them to get to work.
But right now our city leaders need to seriously consider what we are spending and how we are doing it. Remember a budget is just what we are anticipating spending. It can be revised up AND down. If we need to fix our water system, then we need to figure out what we need to cut in order to make up that kind of difference instead of dumping the entire burden on the taxpayers of this great city.
As odd as this might seem, I do believe that our water rates are going to have to be increased. Again, they should of been increased years ago so that we would of had the money there for our needs now. That's lack of planning. But we can not expect the water users to pay off these increases in a year or two, which should of been paid over 10 years. It's an unreasonable expectation of the users of our water system.
It's going to be an interesting month ahead as the city council gets their report on the repairs at the July 5th meeting. I hope between now and then they are working hard to figure out where these funds are going to come from.
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
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