QLH Consulting Engineers Summary Letter To SJRWMD Agency | Dunlawton Flooding
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Mr. Harden,
The attached letter summaries the discussion with SJRWMD staff regarding potential options and permitting for the berm.
Andy Neff
Public Utilities Director
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St Johns River Water Management District has just said to the highly-regarded and highly-paid engineers at Quentin L Hampton what the non-engineer idiot-activists have been saying all along: removal of the berm is a MAJOR modification of this project. Its removal drastically decreases the ability of the rest of the work to mitigate flooding of Dunlawton Avenue.
The engineers have been saying the exact opposite: removal of the berm is a non-substantial change. Deleting it will have only minor effects on flooding and we will just have to get used to periodic closure of our major east-west evacuation route.
Bob Ford asked a truly relevant and important question of Brad Blais, president of QLH, at last Tuesday’s meeting: if the berm was so inconsequential and ineffective, why did you put it into the plans in the first place? Mr Blais’s answer seems more appropriate to sand-lot engineering than to engineering on a $3-million flood prevention project.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/Fgci4ICInvs?rel=0
What was that he said about his partners at Quentin L Hampton? What does it sound like when someone is kicked under the bus?
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I sure hope everyone in Port Orange who does not read this blog or follow city politics on a regular basis can be told how really huge this berm controversy has become for our future. For the first time I can remember the consulting engineers and city insiders have been forced to operate in the open and they do not like it. In years past (and I have been here a lot of years) everthing they said would have been accepted as fact and used to justify whatever they wanted to do. City Council would just nod their empty heads and vote for whatever the mayor and city manager told them to do. All the money would be divided up behind closed doors.
That is changing now because a rag-tag group of citizen activists have been asking hard questions and digging for facts the power boys want to keep hidden. What they have found out has always come the hard way since the ICCMA hacks in charge at the city and the fat cat engineers all prefer to feed in the dark. The chamber of commerce has been used to bad-mouth them, Sonia Laney ran for city council with the only issue that she was anti-activist, and Don Burnette knifed Ted Noftall in the back last year when he tried to remove him from the Audit and Budget board. Mayor Green looks like he is going to start screaming whenever one of them stands up to speak at a meeting and calls them bad citizens for not wanting to raise taxes! They have even been threatened with lawsuits by the Quentin Hampton boys as well as by the former city manager. Almost forgot–everything wrong with the city is their fault.
The fact that SJRWMD is demanding Quentin Hampton do its job and not shove the berm under the rug with all the past screw-ups is huge. Everyone now knows they have to be accountable to the people who ultimately pay the bills–the taxpayers. Maybe government in the open can become the norm rather than the exception but I do not expect the established culture of business as usual to give up easy. The activists can expect a lot more attacks in the future.
Don Bornette, aka the back stabber, the voice and the guy with his finger in the air has been bought and paid for by BUDDY and the CHAMBER.. They do not like Ted and they directed their little back stabber to partner with Mrs Sonya “the cheater ” Laney to act as they did.
It should be real entertaining when Ted goes after the little back stabber in the Mayors race next year for sitting on Council for the past 6 years and accomplishing nothing.
I couldnt agree more Becky. If I was younger and you was better looking Id ask you for a date. Ted is the only guy who has any good ideas for change except Bob Ford. The rest of them are too busy not rocking the boat to get anything done. Just sign off on what the city manager says like a bunch of robots. One thing for sure is Ted wont handle being lied to by Quinten Hampton for long after being elected.
I have heard that “Becky” is seriously hot PO Oldtimer. Better get in line.