tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723709701684173708.post2165025496877937902..comments2024-03-28T17:55:31.180-04:00Comments on The Gossips of Rivertown: Tuesday Night at City Hall: Sewer SeparationCarole Osterinkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010623982526286408noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723709701684173708.post-23668167932272130062015-05-21T15:40:14.543-04:002015-05-21T15:40:14.543-04:002. That's dishonest, but how do you fight it?...2. That's dishonest, but how do you fight it? You fight it by denying the thing they obviously want and need most, the continuing bad counsel of the Delaware engineers. Why else are these inappropriate advisors being invited back to explain themselves? Who cares about their reasons for getting it wrong, and wrong on their own terms. <br /><br />Do the alder(wo)men care? I sincerely doubt it. Mostly it's Mr. Moore who'd like to interview Delaware again, possibly to help make them towards a less accident-prone engineering firm. He should definitely do that, but on his own time. Every single block grant for municipal infrastructure offers funding for an environmental review. Just find out why Hudson's grant doesn't cover this cost and you'll discover something more troubling than a conflict of interest. As long as these individuals will not admit the alleged requirement for the project they claimed in the grant application was totally bogus, then they're perpetuating an impropriety every day. By dropping this same claim about the requirement of a Consent Order the city implicitly acknowledged that it was untrue, yet they're still willing to send it around to Saratoga and god-knows-who-else as if it is true! <br /><br />So it's not a conflict of interest, but something worse which impels these engineers to gloss over their errors and miraculously find no adverse impacts as they stumble towards completing their contract with us. As the R-S story makes clear, Messrs. Perry and Moore's interest depends on retaining Delaware Engineering for its ecological advice. Delaware has become the hub and the pivot of this entire narrative, as will any engineering firm who replaces them. (They follow a cultural code of honor; just watch when next Delaware will produce another firm who'll do the 2o minutes of work pro bono and miraculously come to the same conclusions.) For the North Bay, everything may depend on finding an appropriate and disinterested party to conduct the three-and-a-quarter page form. On Tuesday we had another small coup that went unnoticed. Following criticism of Delaware's chemical data at the April Informal Meeting, the engineers corrected the figures the following day in a letter to Mr. Moore. On April 14th, Mr. Moore quietly filed these corrections with the Clerk, but it was only thanks to a comment by Alderwoman Ohrine Stewart that Mr. Moore admitted the corrections at Tuesday's council meeting. From my perspective, the behaviors of Messrs. Perry and Moore look like abuses of power.unheimlichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00204285837938988668noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723709701684173708.post-54190324010330679012015-05-21T15:40:04.231-04:002015-05-21T15:40:04.231-04:001.
We should reject the convenient conflation of ...1.<br /><br />We should reject the convenient conflation of an EAF with the matter of an exemption. Just because they're both SEQR-related doesn't mean there's any meaningful connection between them. DPW Superintendent Rob Perry conflates them by saying that “Don Moore reached out to Saratoga Associates and asked them to review Delaware Engineering’s recommendations.” Wrong! That's not what was asked. Saratoga was asked to review potential adverse impacts to the environment, period. In Mr. Moore's letter to Saratoga he asked them "to consider an agreement with [the City] for an EAF," and that was all. Mr. Perry's conflation prepared him for the last word in the argument: “Everytime they [the public] get an answer they don’t like, they ask an entirely different question.”unheimlichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00204285837938988668noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723709701684173708.post-8018794273959468872015-05-21T13:22:08.978-04:002015-05-21T13:22:08.978-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.unheimlichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00204285837938988668noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723709701684173708.post-86605460129073887842015-05-21T13:20:49.303-04:002015-05-21T13:20:49.303-04:00We should reject the convenient conflation of an E...We should reject the convenient conflation of an EA with the matter of an exemption. Just because they're both SEQR-related doesn't mean there's any meaningful connection between them. DPW Superintendent Rob Perry conflates them by saying that “Don Moore reached out to Saratoga Associates and asked them to review Delaware Engineering’s recommendations.” Wrong! That's not what was asked. Saratoga was asked to review potential adverse impacts to the environment, period. In Mr. Moore's letter to Saratoga he asked them "to consider an agreement with [the City] for an EAF," and that was all. Mr. Perry's conflation prepared him for the last word in the argument: “Everytime they [the public] get an answer they don’t like, they ask an entirely different question.” That's dishonest, but how do you fight it? You fight it by denying the thing they obviously want and need most: the continuing ecological counsel of the Delaware engineers. Why else are these singularly inappropriate advisors being invited back to explain how they got it so wrong? Who cares what their reason is! <br /><br />Do the alder(wo)men care? I sincerely doubt it. Mostly it's Mr. Moore who'd like to interview Delaware again, presumably to help make them create a less accident-prone company. Well he should do that on his own time. Every single block grant for municipal infrastructure offers funding for an environmental review. Just find out why Hudson's grant doesn't cover this cost and you'll discover something more troubling than a conflict of interest. As long as these individuals will not admit the alleged requirement for the project they claimed in the grant application was totally bogus, then they're perpetuating an impropriety every day. By dropping this same claim about the requirement of a Consent Order the city implicitly acknowledged that it was untrue, yet they're still willing to send it around to Saratoga and god-knows-who-else as if it is true! <br /><br />So it's not a conflict of interest, but something worse which impels these engineers to gloss over their errors and miraculously find no adverse impacts as they stumble towards completing their contract with us. As the R-S story makes clear, Messrs. Perry and Moore's interest depends on retaining Delaware Engineering for its ecological advice. Delaware has become the hub and the pivot of this entire narrative, as will any engineering firm who replaces them. (They follow a cultural code of honor; just watch when next Delaware will produce another firm who'll do the 2o minutes of work pro bono and miraculously come to the same conclusions.) For the North Bay, everything may depend on finding an appropriate and disinterested party to conduct the three-and-a-quarter page form. On Tuesday we had another small coup that went unnoticed. Following criticism of Delaware's chemical data at the April Informal Meeting, the engineers corrected the figures the following day in a letter to Mr. Moore. On April 14th, Mr. Moore quietly filed these corrections with the Clerk, but it was only thanks to a comment by Alderwoman Ohrine Stewart that Mr. Moore admitted the corrections at Tuesday's council meeting. From my perspective, the behaviors of Messrs. Perry and Moore look like abuses of power.unheimlichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00204285837938988668noreply@blogger.com