No doubt in the wide wide world of the business of energy, some oversight and regulation is neccesary. Consumers have to be protected and of course a process is a part of the American fabric. That said, I am sitting in a hearing, right now, that has my head spinning. The Solar Milennium project, a decent size solar plant, is proposing to build here in our Valley. This meeting just passed the one hour mark and my headed is swimming in facts of just the process of these proceedings. It reminds me of why the prosecution lost the OJ case. Three days of explaining what DNA was before they ever even got to the actual DNA evidence.

For me this is just an example of what is wrong with the state of California. Bureaucratic bloat. We have commissioners here from the CEC Those commissioners have advisors. Really? Yes really. I can only imagine what it cost for the to travel here.

This isn’t just exclusive to our fair state (insert your 2000 page health care bill joke here) but it just makes me wonder. How did we get here? Who needs to hold THESE guys accountable?

The council chambers are full of people for or against the actual project and here we all sit getting a Bureaucracy lesson.

Are there any elected officials out there who want to put the process on a much needed New Year’s diet?

One of my favorite places in the world, takes on a whole different personality at night. First the ambiance. Much like the people, it depends on where you are…but there are some constants. Driving through Santa Monica with the moon roof open features a plethora of smells I wish I could capture in a candle. Now to many, it might not be too favorable. Growing up in Dallas, the big city has a special smell….of hot concrete, melted tar and car fumes, mixed with the native vegetation. In the L.A. area, There is that, but fold in garlic and other amazing cooking aromas from the many restaurants, a nice pacific ocean breeze and things like eucalyptus and jasmine.

It is truly intoxicating.

And if you meander through the neighborhoods in Beverly Hills, imagine the smell of dewy orange groves for good measure.

Now as you travel….you find the different classes and what they do for their nightlife. There are the Hollywood kids….hanging outside of coffee shops and small pubs. Many standing outside and catching a smoke. Makes me think sometimes of what the early 60’s were like in the very same area which has once again become vibrant.

The Sunset Strip is…well….the Sunset Strip. The businesses have changed but the goal remains the same. A cruise down the strip features sharply dressed men and women wearing gravity defying shoes. The Whiskey is still there and the Roxy too….but many of the new, slick boutique hotels offer designer martinis and a chance to spot a star or two.

The Wilshire district is where the responsible professionals roam. Roam between the huge shopping mall in Century City, some fabulous eating establishments and of course Ralph’s. The same feeling is also felt around Marina Del Ray and it isn’t unusual on a Saturday night to drive by a fitness place and see literally hundreds of these same professionals working out.

We’ve made this loop dozens of times and there is comfort in finding everyone in their place, doing their thing.

Then we head home to the comfort of our High Desert digs, where the nightlife ends as abruptly as it begins, but where we find comfort in the cozy confines of our own homes.

Read a lot this week….not being on the air…had a little time to kill….plus watching some GREAT college football today….

Heard on the ALA-FLA game that Alabama has never had a Heisman Trophy winner before.  I think I know why….going back to the great Bear Bryant, this program has stressed (more than any other) the team concept. It’s the sum of the parts with this school. It’s one of the things missing in sports today. So many other sports, so many other teams, some knucklehead always has to be selfish and make it about them. College use to be exempt from this, but in today’s highfalutin’  recruiting world, egos run a muck.

Speaking of the team concept…following the Cowboys on the DMN blog this week and I have no idea if it will matter Sunday, but the talk coming out of Valley Ranch has been refreshing. About teammates having each other’s backs and remembering as a group what the Giants did in their visit to Cowboy Stadium in September. Oh and nice try Eli in trying to make us think it was someone else’s idea you mark on the walls in the new locker room. For those that don’t know he signed his name and put the score.

In case you missed it, Tom Hicks almost single handedly ran Nolan Ryan out of the Rangers organization this week. One of the groups looking to buy the team would include Hicks, but the owner would want to be owner-president-GM. Yikes. He is THE reason this organization has some respect now.  Hicks needs to be TOTALLY out of the picture and a background players (ala George W.) needs to buy the team. Hopefully MLB who is overseeing the transaction knows the importance of Nolan to this franchise.  Whoever it is, we need to get the papers signed because the off season and possible player moves are passing us by.

Finally, no matter how hard I try, I can NOT be a Mavericks fan. I was for so long, but can’t get over the whole Championship Choke Job against Miami. Try as I might. Windows open for opportunities like that very rarely and they pissed all over theirs. But…that still doesn’t mean I can become a Lakers fan. As long as Kobe is with them….just not going to happen.

Since my two weeks of spending a considerable amount of time on the trash issue, I have been surprised by how many people have stopped by the station to ask about trash. Questions probably better asked of the city or Benz. One nice lady even showed me her bill. Lots of mis-information out there. We have tried to (eventually) correct a lot of it on the air. But the question that comes up most often is…where are we in this mess?

Talking to Councilman Jerry Taylor last week on-air, he said (and I promised to back him on this) “it is what it is” and we just have to try to work with it. Now that’s not to say things won’t change. There is supposed to be a review of things in January. That could mean they might cut back on recycling pickups which might in turn reduce your bill. Yes PURELY speculation, but a possibility.

I haven’t honestly had a chance to talk to this group with the referendum. The best I can tell right now, if they get the signatures it would be on a ballot in our next election which is June 2010. What would it do? The way I understand it, it totally un-does EVERYTHING. With the state mandating some sort of mandatory thing, I guess we would go back to the drawing board. But the question of the decade would be, would YOU be a part of the process this time? You know who YOU are. You heard a little something about the trash thing. In the store or at work. But honestly you didn’t care, or worse, thought the lot of us were being a bit dramatic. That is until that blue bin showed up in your driveway….or when you got that first bill.

Will you be joining us this time? Or will you watch from the sideline.

I, so far, have been afraid to say this on the air…so I thought I would float it here first to see what kind of feedback I would get. What transpired at Ft. Hood was surely tragic. Whether or not it was an act of terrorism in it’s official sense, remains to be seen and I will save for a future post.  What got my attention was how fast the President called for flags to be flown at half staff.  It was certainly appropriate. However….what about the 50 we lost in the month of October, the worst month we have had to date in Afghanistan. So what I think is we need to fly flags at half staff…maybe once a month when the report comes out…or once a week.

We have thousands of men and women in harms way every day. We are talking about sending more (again-maybe another post). Why does it take one tragic event to force us to respect those we lost? Isn’t every loss a tragedy?

It’s a trash company. They have the contract in Ridgecrest. It’s exclusive. They call it a franchise agreement (monopoly partnership). My friends are asking me why I am taking a for profit business to task for doing the all-American thing and making a profit. It is after all capitalism. Ummm…afriad not. It’s very simple why it’s not. Their service is now MANDATORY. Oh, they say, well what about the businesses in Ridgecrest who are gouging? Well, see the way capitalism works….any business that doesn’t take care of its customers, they won’t frequent that business anymore. Then the business goes away. Wonder how the whole capitalism model changes when the city REQUIRES you to go to that business.

Now that trash is mandatory (and why wasn’t it before?), it is much like a utility. A Franchise agreement was something the city had with the cable company. Cable wasn’t mandatory, but the city received some consideration while the cable company provided quality TV service to the town. This is NOT cable. This is more like PG&E or Edison. We have to use it. When either of them want to raise rates, they have to go through the PUC and have public hearings. The trash company? Not so much. They just slap a price on it, admittedly, to expedite the paying off of the new equipment and trash bins. A good business does that. Makes sense. But after we ALL pay that debt, are our rates going down?

Then there’s the matter that slipped everyone’s attention at city hall. The trash company has new revenue streams from our fair city. The money they make on our cans and bottles and plastic. Because diligence wasn’t used in this matter, I was left scouring the net, trying to find some way to get a ballpark figure of what we are talking here. On my numbers (hardly science-but still researched) on cans alone, the trash company will make roughly $900k on our cans. If you want my formula, e-mail me.

It seems our fair council was in a time crunch. The state gave us a deadline or face a $10,000 a day fine. Now time crunches are relative. This one was, by most accounts, 9 months. Now I’m not sure (as previously posted) about the daily ins and outs of running our city “machine”. But nine months seems a sufficient amount of time to request bids for service and find out what kind of money we’re talking about generating with our own trash. It took me two hours to get to my number. But we assumed too much. We assumed no one of value would bid on a contract. We assumed more people take their cans to the local recycle box that not. You are NOT elected to assume. We HAVE a process. Let’s use it.

And for a trash company, which one online site says has annual sales of between $10 and $24 million (a wide berth and I always use the low number) do not on one hand tell us about your public service and on the other hand say you are just taking advantage of what was handed to you. Forget customer service when I call about a problem on my bill. Why not keep 10,000 households here on YOUR side. Do the right thing. Don’t hide behind capitalism. That’s a cop out.

I ranted in an earlier post about an editorial that was in the paper. A couple of things. First…they did NOT bury the lead on that, they missed the point. I thought I would make that distinction. Next, I don’t want to be one of those guys that whines after something negative is in the paper. I would rather use it to inspire more conversation and I certainly don’t want to “pre-whine” wondering what that paper might say. That happens a lot here and it bugs me. Why? Well, except for the editorial page, there is nothing in the paper that is “slanted”. It’s old school baby. They send reporters out and get a story. I can’t stand it when anyone tears EITHER of our local papers down, because no matter what they want to get the truth out and almost to a person, they love this community.

I think it was a little earlier when I wondered why truth wasn’t part of journalism anymore.

I had a couple of council members on the show this morning. Opposing views on whether or not the citizens of Ridgecrest should support a ballot initiative that will tell the council to do ANOTHER ballot initiative that let’s us decide if we want an elected mayor. Oh wait, there’s more. Another group yesterday came out with one that is supposed to address the trash issue. (wonder if the city should have done that LAST November) And finally, we hear that a certain retail chain, trying to get a bigger store in town, might do a ballot measure that might cut the appeal process down. And that is just at the city level.

Every time I am step in to vote I am surprised how long the ballot is. They aren’t cut and dried issues either. On some measure to vote against it, you have to vote FOR it! WTF?!?

For those of you not in California, I hear you don’t have as many as we do and that doesn’t surprise me. Occasionally we vote on rather or not our elected officials in Sacramento get a raise. We vote no, and then they vote themselves one 6 months later. Wanna fix the prisons? There’s a vote for that. Save the whales? Yup, there’s a vote for that. We get these BOOKS every year so we can study, so voting isn’t voting, it’s a test.

The bottom line is, when the process stops working, then, and usually ONLY then, do they take it to the people. Isn’t that backwards?

In Ridgecrest, our government is the Council-manager type of government…more specifically:

Under the council-manager form of government, the elected governing body (e.g., city council, city commission, board of selectmen, or other body of at least three individuals) is responsible for establishing policy, passing local ordinances, voting appropriations, and developing an overall vision for a city, town, or county. Under such a government, the mayor (or equivalent executive) performs primarily ceremonial duties, and is often drawn from and the presiding officer of the governing body.

The elected officials then appoint a professional city manager or administrator to oversee the daily operations of the government and implement the policies they establish. This individual serves the governing body, often with an employment agreement or contract that specifies his or her duties and responsibilities. Ideally, the manager is apolitical.

The council-manager system can be seen to place all power into the hands of the legislative branch. However, a city manager can be seen as a similar role to that of corporate chief executive officer (CEO) in providing professional management to an organization. Council-manager government is much like a publicly-traded corporation. In a corporation, the board of directors appoints a CEO, makes major decisions and wields representative power on behalf of shareholders. In council-manager government, the city council appoints a city manager, makes major decisions, and wields representative power on behalf of the citizens.

This system of government is used in 48.9% of American cities with populations of 2,500 or more, according to the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), a professional organization for city managers.

So when situations (missteps as Steven said about my previous post) happen….who gets the blame? Now blame is probably the wrong word, it reeks. Blame is a bad word, much like calling MISTAKES missteps. So, let’s look at it LIKE it’s a company. Who gets called to the carpet? How do you fix the problem.  How do assure the public that these type mistakes don’t happen again. In our city, most of the time it becomes a “personnel” issue and gets settled in closed session. Regardless of what you call it…to continue to watch it happen, time after time and see it downplayed or covered up, or worse…ignored…it becomes alarming.

I know nobody is perfect. I know mistakes happen. But this seems to be a constant lack of diligence. How did we do a contract with a trash company that’s evergreen. A ten year out? Seriously? We don’t go out for bids on mandatory recycling? We don’t put controls in to make rates competitive? We allow something to come to the planning commission that shouldn’t have then settle the thing with NO public disclosure? We draw out negotiations with Wal Mart (yes I know the ball has been in their court for sometime now but still) and the list goes on and on. As I said earlier, I consider a lot of these people friends, but how can anybody have a job with no accountability? Where are the staff meetings to keep people on the same page. Are they happening? Elected officials, who have full-time jobs put faith in that system and then are dismayed when it doesn’t work?

Who steps up to put this house in order. That is the question.

At its regular meetings, the Planning Commission makes final decisions on requests for special permits. Other issues such as rezonings, abandonments, and annexations will receive a favorable or unfavorable recommendation, which will then be taken to City Council for a final hearing.

So, as the newspaper says, I DO know my place and feel fairly certain the rest of the commission does as well.  Here again, this time with an editorial, they buried the lead.  The story isn’t the Commissioners should know their place…the story is, WHY did this matter (AIC of course) come to us for our “recommendation”? If this was in fact a matter for administration or the Council, then why did we spend a majority of one meeting hearing from residents involved and from the business? In other words…WHY DID YOU WASTE OUR TIME? That my friends is the story. So the newspaper feels it is wrong for us to be upset after we made our “recommendation”? Well I would hope anyone that voted to not give AIC their six month extension would be upset. Especially after we did our due diligence in regard to this. But that too, totally misses the mark.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself in this regard. But for me…it was about perceptions. As much as I hate the term, perception is, in most cases, reality. We have a bad rap for backroom deals. Now a lot of normal city business, even that including developers does get done within the cozy confines of city hall. But in this case, there was evidently a mistake at the beginning (with the Commission taking this matter up), a mistake in allowing AIC to appeal (and in their defense, I’m sure spending valuable time gathering info), a mistake in leading the public again that they would have a say in the appeal…and at the 11th hour pull it from the agenda and make no reference to it in the meeting, even though the matter was solved. Pardon my French…but it is pure D chicken shit.

It led people to believe that first, the Planning Commission has been marginalized, the staff worked behind the scenes and made a “deal” and that the Council, through their silence, must have been covering something up. Strike three.

The biggest thing a candidate calls for, when rallying his support is the famous “transparency in government”. This is exactly what they speak of. The problem with that of course, once most of them get in office, they don’t want us to know the whole story about what is truly going on. I consider myself friends with a few of our Council members (well until this anyway-we’ll see) and same for staff. But we have developed a culture of working as a family, or as a team and supporting each other always. I’m sorry but when it comes to government…that is exactly what the problem is. If staff screwed up by not knowing the Commission should have had this..it should have been disclosed. And screw ups by the staff have happened a lot in the last two years. Now with repeat offenders, I know this has to be an H.R. issue probably not for the rest of us to know. I respect that. But when it puts a huge hole in our PROCESS, then sorry, we need to know who and why.

In case the bosses down at City Hall didn’t know. There is a huge unemployment problem right now, so I imagine filling a job vacancy shouldn’t be a problem. Council members also won’t always speak up when they don’t agree with another. They still like 5-0 votes…showing unity in our government. I didn’t vote for you to sing Kumbaya. I voted for you to support the mission of running a successful government that serves the people.

I hate that song anyway.