Amazed and Confused

I watched the council meeting last night and after all of the outfall on this blog about the Woodman Report and the Yarborough discrepancies coupled with Ford’s emails to Kisela about the zero read meters, you would think that there would be some honest discussion from our elected officials to their constituency about all of this revelatory information that a number of suppressed yet courageous individuals within their organization attempted to get out to them.
Richard Woodman has taken the stand to represent the collective anonymity of those creditable individuals remaining in the workforce that Greg Kisela has methodically attempted to suppress. Woodman has been the voice of decades of institutional experience which has been suppressed in the past by city officials, consulting engineers, and currently the new city politic that is setting up its roots to perpetuate this façade.
Mayor Allen Green, the master of the dog and pony show has master crafted a meeting of sugar coating and cover up by diverting the attention away from these significant issues that need to be aired out in public in favor of a fluff show. He brings in children and student government showcases to appear to be the kind old grandfather. A whole fan-fair of police officers getting commendations for routine duties and a lot of minor issues from citizens to divert the citizens attention away from the major volcanic issues that are pressurizing under the surface.
There was a sophomoric explanation about the sunshine laws to the student government attendees without an explanation about the political obfuscation games that are played in the name of these sunshine laws.
More specifically, assuming the honesty of our councilmen, they are not allowed to have intelligent dialogue about the most important and contentious issues affecting their constituency in private amongst themselves. These issues are to be aired out in public before their constituency so that there are no back door deals or political power blocks formed to circumvent the will of the citizens that elected them.
It works like this: All of the politicians read the city manager read file and they read the political blogs so that they know what is going down unless they are brain dead or corrupt. They come to a council meeting and methodically avoid bringing up or discussing any of the issues. When someone like Ted Noftall tries to force their hand in the very limited window he has to do such, mayor Allen Green shamelessly, and contrary to his fiduciary duty to his constituency shuts him down,
Essentially our elected officials in collusion with the city manager shut down any controversial sunshine dialogue that can potentially take place to air out and hopefully resolve the unsolved problems that exist in our community. This empowers the obfuscating practices of incompetent management that has been imported by the mayor and the city manager to entrench a circuit of reinforcement for their incumbent political agendas. To hell with the citizens of Port Orange they elected us and they are not intelligent enough to be involved in the political process. They abdicated the power to us, so now they have to accept our superior intelligence in determining their fate. If anyone questions us we have a strategy to shut this down so that we will not have to honestly address the issues of our constituency that elected us in an open forum.
Seeing that the mayor and the council methodically avoids addressing the most important issues in the sunshine in favor of fluff, their is never intelligent discussion in public or follow up about the most important political issues. Their is no accountability in city administrative management nor is their any continuity or accountability with our elected officials from council meeting to council meeting. It is nothing more than a dog and pony show.
The only time anything is addressed by the council is when the dog and pony show is unable to contain surmounting problems through diversion or obfuscation. When this becomes a legal issue, when it becomes mainstream news, or when it becomes politically embarrassing for one of our city officials is the only time they do anything that resembles their fiduciary responsibility to their constituency. When push comes to shove and they are unable to cover things up, a politician like Bob Ford goes into a pseudo-intellectual dissertation about issues he obviously does not understands, coupled with his own homespun anecdotal self endorsed wisdoms, and orders a workshop on the matter. Any honest person that follows and archives the city council POG telecasts will realize that these workshops very seldom come to fruition. Its just something that Bob Ford says at the spare of the moment that he thinks will sound intelligent with no accountability or follow-up. Don’t shoot the messenger, I didn’t vote for him!
The bottom line is that week after week our mayor and councilmen avoid the surmounting issues at council meetings in favor of political fluff. They fail to carry out their fiduciary duties by hiding behind the sunshine law and using the council meetings to meet the hard issues facing our community head on. Instead they utilize the council meetings to reinforce their personal political agendas. And when they are unable to contain the issues that should be honestly addressed at council meetings someone like Bob Ford will do political damage control by saying that we need to have a workshop on this, full knowing that it will never come to fruition.
We need to get all of the issues to the forefront again and have continuity and accountability from council meeting to council meeting. If a tough council meeting is on the horizon, Mayor Allen Green doesn’t need to schedule 14 brownie troops that night so the children don’t see the political mayhem. I think he stacks these kinds of agenda items when he anticipates a really nasty council meeting in hopes that people will not address hard issues with kids present.
One of the biggest things that needs to be aired out and quantified is the efficacy of the meter replacement program after a couple of years now. Is finance tracking the revenues relative to production and billing in some professional format? Have we had intelligent dialogue with other cities and their administrators with their challenges and successes with zero read meter replacement programs? There are other cities that have been through this. Their administrators would honestly exchange information with our Finance and Public Utilities administrators and you will probably find out that a successful zero read meter replacement program over a two year period should render anywhere from a financially quantifiable 8 to 15% revenue gain. For the City of Port Orange that would equate to approximately 3 to 5 million dollars worth of revenues a year. Over a ten year period that would be huge for the financial solidarity of the city of Port Orange.
Their is technical assistance from the FRWA, AWWA, FWPCOA and other organizations that have circuit riders and engineers that will help the city through these problems that their administrative staff and consulting engineers have failed to do after millions of tax payer dollars have been expended. Quit catching a falling knife, humble yourself, and simply take advantage of help that prudence and intelligence dictates. Lets once and for all get this problem solved for the citizens of Port Orange.