Is the City Trying to Pull A Fast One on Sewer Ratepayers?

By Donna Westfall

Tonight’s Crescent City, City Council meeting starting at 6 pm at the Flynn Center will contain agenda item #6, a request to spend $37,500:

• Authorize the City Manager to execute an agreement with Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc in the not to exceed amount of$37,500.00 to install supplemental electrical protection equipment at the Wastewater Treatment Plant.

I received a call from Board members on the Crescent City-Del Norte County Taxpayers Association early this morning asking WHY?

The following email was sent to the City Manager, Gene Palazzo; all council members, City Attorney, Bob Black, and Tom Romesberg, the Utilities Manager:

• Under the consent calendar on tonight’s agenda is item #6 to approve $37,500 to Schweitzer Engrg Labs.
• Ineffective means either the engineering or the parts they put in are inadequate and should be warranted or at least looked into. 
• Before you vote on this item, the CC-DN County Taxpayers Association wants to review the reports, and have them compared in your presence to the original specs for the WWTP.
• We want to know how exactly it would result in a permit violation if all of this stuff was inspected by Stover Engineering?????
• If the electrical company, Colburn Electric put in the wrong parts, or the Engineer, Stover Engineering, made a mistake, why should the ratepayers be on the hook to pay for this?
• If Stover didn’t make a mistake, but the Electrical Contractor put in something inadequate, then the Electrical Contractor is on the hook, not the ratepayers monies.
• Before you rubber stamp this thing, are the parts you are going to put in actually the same thing the original permits called for?
• If the same outfit that was caught and fined by the State for falsifying payroll and not paying overtime was looking to cut costs (Colburn Electric) then did they put in the correct component to start with?
• So, before voting, you need to determine if the correct components were originally put in, etc., in effect answer the questions presented above.

Also on the agenda is to spend more money to Willdan regarding sewer rates.  Their projected $245/month water/sewer rates are sure to infuriate most of our areas users. More on that subject at another time.