Saturday, July 4, 2015

Westerly WaterMetergate Scandal Story

http://www.westerlynews.ca/local-news/tofino-s-1-million-water-meter-mistake-1.1989268

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

So none of you households who paid approximately $1500 instead of the four resorts for their water are entitled to be even slightly annoyed by serial incompetence?
does anyone else find it odd that no decimals were misplaced on our water meter readings?
and who was the person who decided that Pacific Sands was so good at conserving water there is no need to investigate why their water bill was about the same as a normal household?
Move On. forgive and forget. it was an honest mistake. staff gave away $1 million of our money to 4 resorts. no big deal.
the idea that these things happen because the DOT has such a poisonous atmosphere that no one can think right is ludicrous.
anyone that pays the taxes would like to see them spent responsibly with care and respect for the people who pay the taxes. if citizens wondering where their money is going are questioning how it's being spent are treated with dishonesty and various spins why wouldn't they be adversarial?
getting away with things has no place in civic government or anywhere else for that matter. but you gotta admit there's no consequences here

Anonymous said...

When I read the comments of the Administator and Coucillor Baert there is clearly an attempt to manipulate public opinion, history and the truth. Blaming this on an unsafe work environment, changing staff, on old council disagreements, the unruly public, whatever.

Why can't they simply say somebody screwed up, didn't understand what they were doing, didn't do their job. Things won't get better in this town until staff and council can speak and deal with the truth.

In Orwell's 1984, a novel about a totalitarian nightmare, everthing was blamed on Goldstein, an agitator outside the system, but no one relly knew if Golstein actually existed. Big brother always said it was Golstein's fault. It must be true

Anonymous said...

Finally some accountability. Kudos to Bob MacPherson. Boo-hiss to the excuses. Only 'reasons' are welcome. Reasons can be corrected.

Anonymous said...

9:11AM....if the resorts had kept quiet and not asked for a reduction in their rates, this scandal would likely have not come to light or at least brushed over. The kudos should go to the current council who forced Bob MacPherson to fess-up. As for accountability time will tell!

Anonymous said...

Regarding Council persons comments about the poor district staff and the horrible nasty public I would like to remind those counsel persons in the past staff were actually fired because of some transgression of job duties or another. there was actual responsibility attributed to a screwup. in a case that I'm thinking about the person lied on more than one occasion to everybody about something that was their responsibility to have done.
later, on another occasion that sticks in my mind, the entire Council, Mayor, and public works foreman lied to the public about a very crucial water issue. no one was fired or reprimanded or even felt guilty about it when confronted with their lies.
if these types of things are to be brushed off as minor inconsequential little transgressions within the district office by staff etc.
is it any wonder that the public tends to view the elaborate explanations of wrongdoings within the DOT with great suspicion?

Anonymous said...

OMG! Call the consultant's quick! were running out of water. the sky is falling

Ralph Tieleman said...

Coun. Greg Blanchette said fluid is tough to measure accurately.

“I, as a graduate engineer, looked at those meters and I couldn’t tell you where the decimal place goes,”
Fluid is easy to measure . Gas stations measure it every day. So do all the bars and restaurants in town.
You can measure water with a water meter . There's one hooked up to my house.

Ralph Tieleman said...

"“Maybe it’s not excusable that these misreadings happened but there was so many factors at play,” she said. “One of the things is the revolving door in staff that happened because I don’t think this was a particularly safe environment to work in.”

Baert, who is currently serving her third term on council, said the district dynamic has changed for the better.

“There was infighting at the council table, there was infighting in the district office, people were under relentless assault from vocal members of the community, sometimes very targeted and not necessarily based on anything that was actually happening, and sometimes legitimate complaints,” she said.

“It really was not a very functional municipality."

Baert says that The District staff didn't have a particularly safe environment to work in.....that's true ....she voted to fire Sally Mole without just cause ! That cost the taxpayer $100,000.......this vocal member of the community would like to note that the staff in question have been at their jobs for five years.Not exactly a revolving door !!!
I'm sure if one of her staff was renting kayaks at 10% of the going rate they wouldn't get a raise and a group hug !! WTF ???

Ralph Tieleman said...

McKinnon was also an engineer....

Ralph Tieleman said...

Baert was also not supportive of Jennifer Robb or Roberta Martell when they had the run put on them ......both good workers

Anonymous said...

So, what's needed is a class action lawsuit on behalf of the taxpayers of Tofino, against the District of Tofino, the four resorts, the district staff who screwed up, and all the mayors and councillors who sat during the span of the debacle....... file the claim, and let the courts sort it out. We, the people, want our million dollars back!!

Anonymous said...

Tofino needs affordable housing so we can attract more unemployed homeless graduate engineers

Ralph Tieleman said...

Many people are upset about WaterMeterGate and the lack of accountability. They are upset about the raises and the culture of entitlement. They are afraid to speak out . Some need occupancy permits , some have illegal suites or illegal signs . Some need rezoning or something.Some have learned that critical Facebook posts will be deleted. We have become a small town with big government.
Having said that even Harper no longer blindly defends Duffy or Brazeau. Here they would have got a raise !


Anonymous said...

Council represents staff , not the electorate.There are some great staff here and there are some real problems. Sort it out.

Anonymous said...

1046 are you Nuts? council represents staff? so back to feudalism it is. council is elected to own the staff as their private serfs. is that why sally mole, jennifer robb, and roberta martell were so rudely done away with?

tr

Anonymous said...

1047 council represents staff? sure.. I'm sure they have friendly chats... as long as the union shop steward is involved.

Anonymous said...

Okay Goldstein so this whole million-dollar water giveaway boils down to somebody unknown reading the meters of four resorts and consistently misplacing a decimal point. sounds logical. and honest mistake. meter reader didn't have his glasses on. got too excited, new on the job, thought they were measuring gallons instead of cubic meters, a dog was barking in the background etc.
well, despite Mr. Blanchettes assertion that fluids are very difficult to measure, I believe that many fluid measuring devices, like the gasoline pump, measure in tenths of a liter. therefore if the gasoline meter reads 120000 L and if there is no clearly defined decimal point there's only one place it can go: two places to the left. so 1200 L
unless for some unknown reason it's measured in hundredths of a liter so then it would read 12 L if you move the decimal point over two more places to the left.
this gets absurd. a nearsighted workman without their glasses and a cigarette in their mouth consistently moves the decimal point four places over instead of two.... but only on 4 meter readings.
didn't do it on mine, not even occasionally.
no, our residential bills are consistent roughly. $100 per quarter until the painful quarter when it is $400. every year.
it's convenient explanation, the bouncing decimal point, but I'm afraid Goldstein is pushing the limits of how stupid we are.

Anonymous said...

It gets better than that when on the Tofino Trading Post on Facebook the other day someone claimed to have TOLD the district/council of the day that the resort they were working for was getting funny low water bills but was blown off as being too young and didn't know anything.

That was 10 to 15 years ago and she brought it to the district's and council's attention because the council of the day was having trouble with a budget shortfall.

Just wondering how many staff knew and did nothing.... I wonder if the council meeting minutes from back then kept records of questions
that were asked or if a letter was written in.

Was Robb turfed because she was going to expose this fiasco way back when? I wonder what Kevin Drews remembers from council meetings back then when his online reporting business was going and he sat in on them.

Anonymous said...

@6:31
At the last Council Meeting on youtube there's a member of the public who claims that he can do *hand stands* in front of council mayor & staff but no one will listen to his concerns. Some councillors completely ignore his presence and pretend to be to busy playing with their iPad and the Mayor attempts to cut him off. Tofino public engagement at its best!

Anonymous said...

With these bs excuses for losing over a million dollars of our money comes the reassurance that everything is better now. Back then departments didn't talk to each other???? Now departments can talk to each other!!!! Yippeee, WOW, This is exciting stuff. How can we bring about such a significant change. First count the number of departments. Does anyone really know how many there are. What kind of meetings should they have? Who needs to attend? Better figure out who works here. Who will spearhead the initiative and report back to senior mangment. Who will review and monitor the implementation.

I have long thought that in our ever expanding municipal bureaucracy too much time was being spent on inner department meetings, the sending of memos, the receiving of memos, is it time for coffee yet. How foolish I was. Now departments are to talk to each other. You mean I am to talk to that person who sits over there. How can the modern worker cope?

We need a new hiring. "Manager of District Integrated Sustainable Understanding. Don't worry about the costs. The average taxpayer would be challenged to comprehend the complexities of such a situation Time for a complete overhaul. We need a bold new way. TIME FOR A MANAGMENT CONSULTANT

Anonymous said...

I hope someone is monitoring/metering water use at the beach washrooms. Are there three of them? with showers? On the weekend the one at the north end of Chestermans Beach was going almost continuously. Lots of washing out of wetsuits, surfboards and beach toys as well as showering. It kinda choked me to see what a great deal this is for visitors, free parking, limitless water. That water would cost me a fortune. I thought we were all to save water. I guess that's just for locals.

Anonymous said...

10:28AM, you are not playing the game. You are supposed to shut up and pay your water bills without questioning the inequalities.

Aren't many of the users of those showers surf school students? Why don't the surf schools pay for that washroom water? Hmmm they take up all the parking and use all the water..... is something wrong with this picture?

The showers should be shut down now given the rumor we only have a month's worth of water unless it starts raining soon.

Anonymous said...

I still don't understand why, as the mayor says, there is no mechanism for recovering the underpaid water obligations. I have never dealt with any government agency or business who did not make me pay after the fact if they undercharged me. Why does there have to be a 'mechanism'? Just seems like a fair way of dealing with the matter. You underpay for a long time and you have to make it up when the error is discovered.

Anonymous said...

I would like to know a lot more about the young woman's claim that she inquired as to why the water bills were so low at the resort she worked at.Who did she inform,and why was she ignored? By the Mayor? Council? Office Staff?

Anonymous said...

@9:27...the Irony is that if the District were sued to recoup the money we paid in lieu of the 3 Resorts in question...we'd end up paying the legal bill and probably end up paying even more :/
About the comment that Coun. Greg Blanchette made, saying fluid is tough to measure accurately. Really?? that's crock...Maybe I should first fill that liter of fuel in a bucket and make sure it's really a liter? a Meter is a Meter for a reason, to measure accurately. What gets me is that when a possibility of an error was brought to Council, that Council stuck their heads into the sand and didn't bother to at least have it looked at...after all the numbers are on paper/computer chart and could easily have been compared!

Anonymous said...

1:38pm, the public showers are being turned off on Thursday when we go to stage 2

Anonymous said...

More could be argued by adding this article and from what I read, raising residential water rates, adding a base rate and tier. Commercial rates would remain all in as is. The message to Residential users is to force some sort of conservation, but Resorts wouldn't have to be part of that. What kind of equality is that...here we go again?
http://www.westerlynews.ca/local-news/tofino-mulls-lower-proposed-base-rates-for-residential-water-users-1.1990460

Anonymous said...

yah kinda weird eh ? resort owners, most who don't live here, rake in millions every tourist season , pay minimum wages to most of the service industry type workers, many who don't live here year round , and we subsidize the water bills to keep this machine going! and RMI tax monies generated can only be used to promote more tourism and be spent on initiatives that benefit the tourists . Might be appropriate that at least half of the RMI monies go directly towards the general tax paying public of Tofino, some of whom might not actually be in the tourism industry, to provide compensation for the craziness we deal with every summer. Then perhaps there might be some funding for indoor recreational facilities or to provide some forms of affordable housing ( not to seasonal employees ) but to young families who actually live in Tofino year round. Tofino is an amazing place to live however Mayor and Council need to do more to ensure the erosion of basic quality of life in the summer is balanced by more tangible benefits for all year round residents.

Anonymous said...

Anyone remember that years ago Jacqueline Windh was desperately trying to tell everyone that the private households were paying more for their water than the resorts? Please take a moment to go to https://tofinoresidents.wordpress.com/category/water/. It was all there in 2009 but nobody listened! What a shame!
We absolutely need ACCOUNTABLE GOVERNMENT and consequences for mismanagement, not salary increases!!!
How about in the name of fairness the resorts who benefited from this "error" would offer to pay a little more now so that the private household can pay a little less to get reimbursed for subsidizing the resorts for so long? The resorts must have known that their water bills were ridiculously low!
While the resorts make considerable income using our precious water and on top of that can claim water bills as an expense private households do not have that luxury!
Tofino residents need to get reimbursed!

Anonymous said...

7.51 Ralph... it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...! I loved my job, was passionate about it, but the last few years of my 20 years were pretty damn awful. Putting a strong voice to council on behalf of the community (the chesterman roundabout is one instance) had me classed as poisonous, deceptive, and on. Doesn't lead itself to reporting discrepancies within the municipality. The hourglass model magnified all that was happening and all that was being imposed on staff. I saw what happened with Jenn, who refused to sign off on the Olympic spending scandal, and Roberta, who had strong but new suggestions that maybe didn't align with certain higher ups. Good, good people, lost, and at what cost?.... All due to poor leadership.... In short, you can lead a very thirsty horse to water, but only if you check with the horse hand, the water bearer, the barn care taker, and if you get through those checks, hope that the horse isn't dead. To that end, there are still awesome staff in Tuff I know and miss, and some I don't really know. I'm happy to see my former staff happy and growing. I miss them, and I miss my work and my friends! Sally