San Angelo's Water Czar unilaterally made two decisions for City Council in October. The first one was to keep pumping water from Twin Buttes South Pool. A press release stated the item would be on the Council agenda for October 5th.
The City has been pumping water from Twin Buttes’ south pool to its north pool. Those pumps have been shut down to save on expense until the City Council decides Friday whether to continue the pumping operation.
Council did not take up the issue, as promised. City Council went off Level III Drought restrictions in that meeting, so the urgency to pump was gone. With elected leaders abdicating their publicized responsibility, Will Wilde unilaterally decided to keep pumping.
On October 17th City leaders tried to sneak $100,000 of already purchased and installed furniture by the rest of Council and the public. It became clear Will Wilde perpetrated the furniture buy (inferred from comments made by city staffers).
Stranger was the soft pedaling on the unauthorized purchase by Mayor Alvin New and Councilman Kendall Hirshfeld. New looked like he was caught trying to sneak the item through on the consent agenda. His usual style of summarizing and directing disappeared into super-sized silence.
Hirschfeld tried to justify the purchase by the "wise reuse" of Water Department furniture, but even that line of questioning turned ugly. At the end, Mayor New said council was a policy body, apparently one that doesn't enforce its own policies. New tried to evoke an image of budget justice, but it came off as "just us" good ole boys, watchin each others' back.
Something smells bad. It has the distinct odor of hubris. San Angelo continues to surprise, thanks to Will Wilde and a council which seems to willfully follow his dictates.
2 comments:
I have started a petition requesting an audit of the Water Departments Billing and Purchasing department. Clearly you can understand the obvious issues here.
http://www.change.org/petitions/city-of-san-angelo-water-department-call-for-an-audit-of-the-billing-and-purchasing-department
Thank you ,thank you. This has been a long time coming,the arrogance of the water department is a sore point with me. We had a bill that was three times as much as it should have been,we took the last year of bills down to the water department, long story short we were ignored and told thats to bad we would still have to pay the amount on the bill. I could go on. and on. Hope the Mayor and council will take heed,but
i'm not hopefull.Thanks again.
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