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Crisis Mode
You've let the political panderers distract you to a point of severely limited capacity and an essential EPA shut down. Now emergency legislation and a plan the EPA says will take 6 months to a year and a half to develope is a mandate? Everybody saw this coming and yet it happened. Now under the guise of we need it for commercial developement we act. You were set up.
By Lead, Ted
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WWTP on track
Apparently I am running into someone not willing to sign their name and not willing to produce any facts to back up their claims. The fact that the city hired Malcolm Pirnie to help us decide how to proceed in the building or the expanding of the Pickerington WWTP then that somehow relates to that we didn?’t give them a chance to design the plant. Frankly that makes no sense to me. The fact that they didn?’t score high enough with the criteria put in place BEFORE the RFQ was sent out doesn?’t say they are a bad firm or does it say they are lousy engineers. It probably says they put forward a proposal that didn?’t measure up to their competitors and our needs.
It was pointed out to me that DLZ had some issues with the City of Steubenville, Ohio. I called the City Manager, Bruce Williams, and spoke at length with him. I also talked with the Vice President of DLZ to get his side of the story. I am not going to get into a he said, she said, discussion here because I also had similar conversations with other cities around the state about other companies on our list. In fact, all of the ten companies seemed to come with some negatives. I would caution those still lobbing for your favorite company to do this design contract you should step back and hope the process is fair and objective when they apply again. I would also hope that the selection of a firm in the future doesn?’t turn into a popularity contest. The process this time was fair and objective. For those objecting at the eleventh hour they should have stepped forward months ago if they had something constructive to add.
As for the capacity left in the WWTP. We have over 350,000 gallons per day of capacity left in the plant. For the future we will need around 160,000 gallons per day of capacity to serve the commercial that is on the horizon. Our problem is what is projected by the Ohio EPA and what is actual in the remaining capacity of the plant. Over the last few years we have adjusted the actual/projected numbers and that normally brings them down from the 1.97 MGD approved or projected to a lower number. Showing the EPA that we are moving forward is important and I am not going to apologize for doing that.
Here again the $8.8 Million for construction was a ball park estimate from Malcolm Pirnie. We will NOT know the final number until the design is completed and it goes out to bid. So if the that 8.8 million estimate goes up then I am sure the 14 million estimate will also go up.
Finally the pace of this design and the future of the Pickerington WWTP will proceed. That is not to say we will NOT run into problems. Almost any projects encounters unforeseen events that need adjustments along the way. The staff will be responsible in managing that process and not allow it to get out of hand. They have done a very good job to this point and I an very confident that they will continue to perform well in the future.
By Ted Hackworth
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Y--A--W--N
Oh my gosh! Is this the way of the upcoming campaign season? Are we going to have to be bored into a coma with the technical details of a sewer plant? Come on, my toilet flushes. It goes somewhere and I am happy. I am sure we will all bear a part of the cost of this expansion but isn't that pretty normal? Even if we hear that new users will pay the cost we know we all will have to pay something for all this wonderful technology of poop.
You know what I read between the lines in the postings above? I read that council and committees have been so engrossed in pettiness and finger pointing and name calling over their disputes with the township and (dreadfully) each other that they forgot to pay attention to running the city. The sewer plant slipped between the cracks and now we are behind the 8 ball, which I recall is where we always are with the sewer plant. We have to pay a whole lot more for something that might have been cheaper if it had been addressed earlier.
I am not sticking up for Hackworth here but consider this. He is in the minority of the service committee. He is not chairman any more. Could it be that the majority of that committee and their sympathetic (or pathetic) city manager just let things go for a reason and never informed Hackworth that this doom was imminent? Let?’s face it, the Manager, service director and the person pretending to be the city engineer are all in the pockets of the majority of council and the famous mayor. If they were told to keep this quiet, they would without hesitation. After all, these people know which side of their bread is buttered. We have heard numerous instances of where city employees were threatened with their jobs before under this administration. Could it be that they have known about this sewer issue for quite some time and were told to shut up? After all the behavioral issues we have seen in the mayor is it really a leap to think he has a hand in this? I seem to recall he was the biggest proponent of the massive expansion the council of 2004 inherited.
Anyway, if this slipped between the cracks while no one was looking over the last 2 years, it makes me nervous as to what else has.
Hopefully we will be able to hear more important issues in the coming campaign season than this potty issue. But wait, this council hasn?’t actually done anything else over the last 2 years have they???
Dash my hopes!
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Dear Ted
Since we have the old guard on here in spades, I want to thank you for doing your homework and not being some political HACK... no pun intended. I know you, I know you put your heart into this for the right reasons. Do not let Parker et all posting on this site get you down.
They have nothing better to do now but throw stones, think of this, that is a good thing!!!!
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