Finally: Water & Sewer Investigation Report Reveals Disfunction

Professor Douglas Rae Investigation of Water & Sewer: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1OYjxtLEgUweUYya3A1b2I3cnc/edit?usp=sharing
Subcommittee Findings: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1OYjxtLEgUwa2FCcUZwUjlBTTg/edit?usp=sharing
Water & Sewer Attachments: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1OYjxtLEgUwTHFCbjVEV0pDeG8/edit?usp=sharing
Water & Sewer Sub Committee Findings:https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1OYjxtLEgUwYUpaaUFqME9PTGc/edit?usp=sharing

The Water & Sewer Debacle:

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2008: In 2008 $100,000 had been spent to overhaul the department including a reorganization plan that according to Mayor Giuliano, was never enacted by W&S Director Guy Russo as ordered.W&S was supposed to have made as of 2008 after the department had to be taken over by then Finance Director James Reynolds due to lost of funds, had still not been implemented. In addition to the extreme departmental debt and numerous warnings to basically fix things before they hit the fan, an  unprecedented number of grievances by employees were filed at this time and on the job accidents spiked leading to the logical conclusion that at the very least management needed to  be scrutinized

2009: Candidate Dan Drew stated on record in an interview with the Wesleyan Argus that:"Not to mentioned our city's sewer department is in dire straits financially. If it were privately owned, it would declare bankruptcy. We don't know where we're going right now."

In 2011 the Common Council voted to investigate the Water & Sewer department “to investigate

The underlying basis which led Mayor Sebastian N. Giuliano to order moving the Water and Sewer

Department’s administrative staff from headquarters on Berlin Street to City Hall.” This “investigation” was in response to a letter from the WPCA (Water Pollution Control Authority) objecting to this move. Apparently, the WPCA did not believe that the mayor had discretion to move the Director and Deputy Director to City Hall.  A firestorm of debate ensued with the end result being $10,000, yes, 10 thousand dollars being spent on this matter!
 

The Charter, Chaper 111 sec. 8, provides the Council to conduct an investigation; Council-not a consultant.  Disregarding the Charter, Professor Douglas W. Rae was hired by the sub-committee, Councilwoman Kasper, Councilman Bibisi, Council Klattenberg and former Councilman Bauer, to assist in the investigation by conducting preliminary interviews with key department and personnel.  The backstory is that there was and still continues to be management issues within the department.  The problem was not former Mayor Giuliano moving staff it was the incompetence of the “management team” and the grievances filed.

So, the Council decides to spend $10,000 because a Mayor moved staff, the investigator never interviewed all the employees of Water and Sewer and the $10,000 conclusion, “Water and Sewer’s central administrative spine is broken” according to the final report.  In the end, nothing changed, management has yet to withdraw from the Teamsters Union (Mayor Drew deciding not to adhere to the recommendation of the report), management HAS NOT received any training as indicated necessary in the report. 

 In conclusion, $10,000 was spent and NOTHING has been done.

 
The public needs to be aware that the report was done “illegally” because Council did not perform the investigation. Water and Sewer management continue to manage in the same “broken” manner with the same problems still present.  And, the public should demand to know why former Mayor Giuliano’s move of the director and deputy director set the stage for a $10, 000 report yet Mayor Drew has moved people and offices without so much as a peep from the Council. 

 
The entire Water and Sewer Investigation Report dated March 5, 2012 is posted for your review. The $10,000 question-“Was $10,000 wisely spent or squandered?”

2013: Several requests to get this report via FOI were made and dismissed.http://www.middletowninsider.com/2013/01/wilson-foi-results-transparency-not.html

How many cycles do water bills have to go out with wrong information before anything is done?

"No Colored People" Sign Causes Stir at Wesleyan

(Wesleyan) University’s first official celebration of Holi took place Friday, April 27 on Foss Hill...Holi, known as the Festival of Colors, is a celebration of spring...“Holi is celebrated by people throwing colored powder at one another,” said Katherine Yagle ’12, a member of Shakti who helped organize Friday’s event. “[During the festival] in India everyone is intoxicated. There is a lot of dancing, music, and general chaos. People use water balloons and water guns to douse each other with color.”

Last Friday, during the HOLI festival on Foss Hill, several members of Shakti, one of the groups that organized the event, put up signs on the doors of Usdan University Center (Usdan) that prompted broad student criticism and discussion. The posters were intended to prevent festival attendees from entering Usdan while coated in the colored powder that is flung during the event.

(Wesleyan's) President Michael Roth, in an all-campus email, commented on the objectionable content of the Shakti signs.

“Wesleyan’s campus is a place of great multi-cultural learning and festivity,” wrote Roth. “The Holi event is a wonderful example of this. The campus can also be a place of vulnerability and misperception, and the signs posted on Friday for many evoked patterns of injustice and violence that our society has not yet left behind.”

Roth wrote that the incident would be recorded in the Campus Climate Log, and that he had requested that the Student Affairs offices and the Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships help in the wake of the posting of the signs."

Much ado about nothing? Your comments please. Read more at:
Middletown Ct Patch : http://patch.com/A-sVhx

Wesleyan Argus

Wesleying

The Idiot Wind of Know-Nothing Anti-Intellectualism

"By bringing intelligent conservative discourse to our campuses, we will increase our capacity to combat the idiot wind of know-nothing anti-intellectualism that is all too prevalent in our political culture. I am hopeful that Justice Scalia's lecture and discussion will contribute to this capacity."
                                        (Wesleyan U. President Michael Roth; Huffington Post, March 1)



   Two events concerning the U.S. Constitution and our Bill of rights will occur on the Wesleyan campus today. The first event, two performances of Neely Bruce's "Ten Amendments in Eight Motets" (see Middletown Insider, March 7) in the afternoon, will be followed in the evening by presentation of the Hugo Black lecture by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Justice Scalia's lecture is titled "The Originalist Approach to the First Amendment". All events will take place at Wesleyan Memorial Chapel on High Street.

By  his "idiot wind" comment President Roth surely was not referring to the storm of protest being prepared by students, off campus agitators, and others to "welcome" Justice Scalia to Wesleyan. However, the winds of anti-intellectualism have been blowing fiercely in the pages of the student run Argus newspaper.
Sample:

But Scalia’s arrival, and the moral imperative to confront him and “Occupy” his time at Wesleyan, can only go so far in the struggle to dismantle the oppressive institutions which have created a world of massive institutional violence, wealth disparity, environmental degradation and systematic erasure.  The next step is to turn our dissent inward, confronting the underlying institutionalized values which have allowed for this despicable event to occur in the first place.  We need to go beyond “Occupying” our campus.  The time has come to Decolonize Wesleyan.

Or:   

Let us never stop simply at “Occupying Scalia,” because Scalia, though a powerful individual, is really just a puppet in a larger system of domination embedded into the framework of the United States, which has seeped into the administrative attitude of Wesleyan.  We must confront his violence, certainly.  But we cannot stop there.  More conversations about envisioning a decolonized Wesleyan must occur, and we need to begin to understand how the ideologies spouted by bigots like Scalia are in full force, in less obvious ways, here at Wesleyan.                       

Mindless blather and slogans to be sure but, at the same time, dangerous. The hatred and contempt directed at our Founders and our founding documents is palpable.

Sample below of Neely Bruce's "First Amendment" score. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Why tonight's lecture may be quite interesting:

(Scalia's) writing style (and hopefully his speaking style) is best described as equal parts anger, confidence, and pageantry. Scalia has a taste for garish analogies and offbeat allusions—often very funny ones—and he speaks in no uncertain terms. He is highly accessible and tries not to get bogged down in abstruse legal jargon. But most of all, Scalia's opinions read like they're about to catch fire for pure outrage. He does not, in short, write like a happy man. (Wikipedia)