Hello Everyone!
Council authorized some document destruction. There's a spreadsheet of the items due to be destroyed in the full agenda (you can find it on the city website). Who oversees that? There's also a company that has been hired to audit. It is not clear as to what exactly they will be auditing. If you check out the amount other cities are paying for their auditing, you would be amazed. As an example, the City of Calabasas spends about $10k/year less than we will be spending. What exactly are we paying for? Are they doing more than the normal scope or are we paying them extra for something else?
The almost $250,000 being paid out to a city manager who was fired, and to be honest should not have been hired to begin with, had no real discussion. Milne was of course upset that he was fired the way he was but the fact that she is mad about tax payer dollars being wasted is ridiculous!
So here is their new strategy: they are going to push to contract out as much of the operations of the water department as possible, if not all of it. This will drive up water costs again. Water rates had not increased in years and apparently it was time. The rate increase was just voted on and passed. We contract out any part of our department and the rates will increase as we all know. What do you think the chances are of a utility tax passing to fund our public safety after our water costs have gone up not just once, but twice?
Honestly, we need to conserve water. Here is what needs to happen: we need to go after grants that will change out our city landscape to drought tolerant/native landscaping. If we are going to have golf courses in the desert, then they should have been watered with recycled water from day one. San Diego is doing this. Anything else is irresponsible. This is not the first time we have had a drought. The fact that water conservation was not taken more seriously is now going to not only burden our water department but everyone's pocket books as well.
Speaking of this valley's water being held hostage...
If you wanted an update on the body contact bill (Diamond Valley Lake) Stone is sponsoring, please continue reading. It is now a two year bill. He is working with MWD to revise it. He maintains that MWD promised economic development in the planning of the lake. MWD maintains the priority of that lake is to provide an emergency water supply to the state. The economic development (aka body contact that was promised) was not completed due to lack of funding. In the event it becomes a body contact lake, the filtration system needed to make that water usable as drinking water is very expensive; millions upon millions of dollars. Even then, the filtration system may not be deemed enough. If MWD did not have the money for economic development, where will MWD receive the funds for the proper filtration system? While this bill is re-worked, that has to be the priority and item 1 on the agenda. Otherwise, we have an emergency water source that is of no use to us. By the way, I called Stone's Murrieta office today inquiring the status of the bill. All I got was that the people were promised economic development by MWD. I feel that the priority has to as an emergency source. I was also told that someone from Stone's office would call me back today with more information. I didn't receive a call back. So what exactly is the motivation? I may not be as concerned if my children were not being raised in this valley and I didn't have a background as a geologist. However, both are true, so I have concerns. I will have updates on this as I receive them.
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