Lodi Citizens in Action Blog

Well, I am not only new to this blogging thing, but have not been to many City Council meetings so these observations are not from a seasoned political junkie.

First observation is that PEOPLE NEED TO GO TO THESE MEETINGS AND WITNESS WHO IS AT THE HELM! Sacramento is an insane asylum and only divine intervention and a lot of work are going to stop that train wreck..but we CAN be instrumental in our local government! Know who you are voting for!!

There was a question last night about the bidding procedure and contract procurement of City jobs. I would like to preface this by stating that I think Alan Nakanishi is a very , very nice man, and I have never heard anything negative about Diede Construction. But when I heard Alan Nakanishi state that (not exact words) that he thought that Diede should be picked over a lower bidder because everyone is familiar with them and we know how they work, etc I almost fell out of my chair! Not only is this not within the law, but that is absurd! It is the City Council's job to approve contracts and isn't part of that, to save the taxpayers a little money- not just go with whatever good ol' boy "deserves" the job? That good ol' boy mentality is what cost the Lodi taxpayer hundreds of thousand of dollars with the Water Treatment Plant, and their decision to go with the in-house City proposal.

Next, of interest was Councilman Johnson's statement (again, not quoting- guess I need to take notes) but he was NOT in favor of the City-Middle Management's agreement, in particular in relation to the pensions. Johnson cited statistics stating that pension reform is the highest on the list of concerns of cities and counties and the ramfiications of not enforcing higher employee participation toward their pensions. Councilman Hansen (again, paraphrasing) that the city Of Lodi wasn't in as bad a financial position as other cities, so even though this is a 2 year contract, we should just approve the agreement and wait and see what this "morphs into". Another fall-off-my-chair moment!  So let me get this straight- Lodi is in pretty good shape financially, so let's not take any precautionary steps to keep it that way! Let's throw the dice and hope that in 2 years, we are still in good shape!

Eegads, people- LET'S GET INVOVLED AND START PAYING ATTENTION!

10/20/2011 Letter to City Council and Staff plus Maggie Creamer of the Lodi News-Sentinel follow-up to the 10/19/2011 City Council meeting:

Subject:  Staffing of the new Lodi Surface Water Treatment plant

The council meeting procedure that allows council to have the last word can be irritating for the public, even though I can appreciate the wisdom of it.  In last Wednesday night’s city council meeting, Councilman Larry Hansen’s last word was to state philosophically that outsourcing a service is not the same as outsourcing the manufacture of "widgets."  Further, that an "essential" service similar to the police department should not be outsourced, water being one of those services.  Frankly, Mr. Hansen is wrong.

In fact, outsourcing widget manufacturing is outsourcing the "service" of manufacturing a product, often using the customer's facilities and resources.

Mr. Hansen seems to define an "essential" service as one so critical that the city is the only one that can successfully perform it.  I would suggest a better definition is that an essential city service is a critical service for which the provider must deliver a high quality service at a competitive cost and delivery.  Therefore, someone other than the city could successfully provide that service if the criteria was met.

Mr. Hansen also implied that using value analysis to select the best candidate was inappropriate because water and police are not widgets.  Perhaps an explanation of "value analysis" is appropriate.  Value analysis is a technique developed by GE specially to improve a service or a product from the customer's perspective, not the provider.  Value is made up of cost, delivery and quality and is often represented by a three-legged milking stool.  The analogy is that the seat (“value”) is level only if the three legs (“cost, delivery and quality”) are properly balanced.  I can easily use this technique to evaluate competing solutions intended to staff a police department if Mr. Hansen is interested.

The open question Wednesday night was is Southwest so inexpensive that they will not perform their function with the required delivery, quality and reliability, or does Southwest have a highly efficient model rending the other competitors overpriced?  That this performance attribute was not validated either way frustrated me.

Council and staff understand the need for high quality and reliability but do not seem to understand how to get it other than to default to city staff, the option with the least attractive value rating to date.  Unfortunately, the length of time a company has been in business is not a good indicator of quality nor is a supplier’s claim of quality.  Your concern is not unique; all customers need quality but do not know how to guarantee it when they first look into outsourcing.

The key to outsourcing successfully is the supplier's quality system, and Lodi's lack of understanding of this is another source of frustration.  It is impossible to write into the contract enough requirements and restrictions to guarantee quality.  The dilemma is how one evaluates a potential supplier's quality system beyond their word.

The answer is with suppliers with quality system certifications such as ISO and ISO-like quality systems.  Briefly, ISO is the abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization.  ISO is a family of standards relating to quality management systems and is designed to help organizations ensure they meet the needs of customers.  Organizations must have robust Preventative Maintenance (PM) systems to be certified.  Organizations that are ISO-certified or have ISO-like quality systems are periodically recertified by third-party auditors for conformance and effectiveness.  In addition, internal audits are performed that are often tougher to pass than third party audits.  The idea is to insure an organization delivers consistent, predictable performance over time.  Any supplier organization losing its certification is a “red flag” to its customers and this is considered a violation of the service contract.

To the point that a significant city staff resource would be required to manage an outsource supplier, a robust supplier quality system removes much of that requirement as quality audits and PM metrics provide oversight beyond what a staff member can reasonably do.  This is not to say a city representative should not occasionally perform audits, attend audits, visit plant, etc., but very few hours are required.  The plant is in town and easier to travel to than White Slough.

The point for Lodi is that its competitor evaluation process must strongly consider the supplier’s quality system (including Lodi’s since they are a competitor) to insure that this essential service will reliably be delivered, exceeding water standards at a competitive price.

Shirtsleeve Meeting, 10/18/2011:
Agenda: "Presentation on Climate Action Plans"

This was the response to the council's requirement for city staff to outline requirements and options pertaining to the State of California’s requirement to produce a “Climate Action Plan” which defines the city’s plan for reducing greenhouse gases

Background:  We stopped the vote on the city developing a Climate Action Plan when it first appeared on the consent calendar several months ago.  This was done with an email debunking man-driven global warming and high turnout of folks protesting the issue at the meeting.  At that time, city council and staff thought was a “no-brainer” and were surprised.  As result, they tabled the issue, asking staff to provide state law requirements, options and history of cities resisting.  The important point is that they are now sensitized to the subject and know that there is support within the community against this insanity.

Options:
1.  Do the Climate Action Plan study and development with General Fund money ($120,000)
2.  Do the Climate Action Plan study and development with Federal grant money ($120,000)
3.  Do the plan with Federal grant money and shelve it.  City attorney pointed out that Half Moon Bay did the study then decided not incorporate $50M in infrastructure improvements.  When the state was done with them, they complied at a cost of $170M.
4.  Do not do it and see what happens.  Possible consequences:
- Be forced to comply with General Fund money via threats
- Be sued by the state and be forced to comply again with General Fund money –
city attorney speculated the total cost most likely would be well excess of $120,000.

Bottom-line is most, if not all of the city council members are against doing this (a win for us) but that the state holds all the cards.

The generally agreed upon solution is to:
1.  Use the Federal grant money
2.  Do the study
3.  Limit the plans requirements to upgrading the city’s equipment and property while leaving citizens alone
4.  Execute the plan as slowly as is legal to avoid penalties or funding problems for other needs

This item will be voted on via the content calendar for the 10/19/2011 City Council meeting

10/19/2011 City Council Meeting:

Main agenda items:

Climate Action Plan:
-  The council approved recruiting a consultant to develop a Climate Action Plan per state law.  The council reiterated that intend to execute it to a minimum level.
-  Several people spoke against the proposal and Council Member Nakanishi voted no
-  This a win for us because the council is now sensitized to the issue and are pursuing practical avoidance tactics.

Staff Surface Water Treatment Plant with City Employees:
-  Do not know quite how to describe what happened except to say the city staff presented an incomprehensible justification for using public-sector city personnel to run the new water plant.  When the city waffled on cost that the "wheels came off their case."
-  The proposal was voted down and staff was ordered restart the proposal process.
-  We can count this as a win because we still can make the case for a lower cost, high quality option.

October 25, 2011 Shirtsleeve Session [no meeting]

The City says it is being forced in to developing a Climate Action Plan to the tune of $120,000 which is grant money (taxpayer f of course, no matter what they call it)  What are your thoughts?  Do we take the chance that Lodi will be sued by the state? In which case the suit money would have to come out of the General Fund? Or do we stand up to this Green Machine now, before it gets any worse?

10/16/2011 Email to City Council, staff and many others.  The subject is state of the science of global warming:

Several years ago, I discovered a Canadian website created by scientists concerned about science's reputation after the global warming fraud was exposed. http://www.friendsofscience.org/ This site first made me aware of a theory that sounded more like a Star Trek episode than a legitimate scientific theory.  The gist of this theory was/is that the temperature of the earth is modulated by the interaction between the sun’s solar wind and galactic cosmic rays; i.e., if the sun’s activity is low, more cosmic rays penetrate our atmosphere, decay into particles that create low altitude clouds thereby cooling the earth.  The opposite is also true, high solar activity effectively blocks cosmic rays, less low altitude clouds are created and temperatures rise.  Pretty wild.  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/10/svensmark-global-warming-stopped-and-a-cooling-is-beginning-enjoy-global-warming-while-it-lasts/

Recently, European scientists have been able to validate this phenomenon, http://www.nationalpost.com/Science+settled/5315908/story.html.  For those preferring the original study, here it is  http://www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/315/2011/astra-7-315-2011.pdf.

Anecdotally, NASA temperature data of the troposphere indicates a cooling trend over the last ten years, tracking a corresponding reduction in the sun’s activity.

(from www.friendsofscience.org)

The press has ignored this story, further validating their collusion with the green agenda in my opinion.  Please review this information for yourself and then forward it to everyone you know including your political leaders.  The lie of “man-driven global warming” must be countered with facts even if the press refuses to do it.The CO₂ concentration continues to increase because temperature is a leading indicator of CO₂ by 200-800 years, not the other way around as popularized by Al Gore/Michael Mann.  http://icebubbles.ucsd.edu/Publications/CaillonTermIII.pdf The CO₂ source is the dissolved CO₂ in the oceans and the delay is due to the huge thermo mass of the oceans.

10/17/2011 Email to Lodi City Council and Staff evaluating the various proposals being considered to provide staffing to Lodi's new surface water treatment plant and staff's posted recommendation.  This matter is to be consider in the 10/19/2011 City Council meeting:

(The first paragraph is correcting my mistake)

My apologies, I misunderstood, apparently the city staff is recommending staffing the new plant with city staff.  This is outrageous again because the staff's arguement is not substantive.  The complaint by staff and city council of union benefits growth, etc is no longer creditable with this recommendation.  This was a paperwork analysis and staff's impression.  Sorry, this process has been conducted very poorly.  There is an old adage, "He who buys an IBM computer, never gets fired."  Meaning, rather than take the risk of doing something new, just take the safe route.

On 10/17/2011 4:23 PM, Ed Miller wrote:

Lodi City Council Agenda Item:  Res. I-1 Adopt Resolution Authorizing Recruitments to Staff the City’s Water Treatment Plant and Appropriating Funds ($225,000) (PW)

I must say that I was shocked to read city staff’s recommendation to staff the water plant via a contract with Veolia.  Frankly, it appears that staff has done very little since the original shirtsleeve session and is making a recommendation based on bureaucratic rules, not substance.  Although I could not practically, as a private citizen, survey Veolia (no plants in the area), I could survey Southwest (Mountain House) and did.  Did city staff?  I saw no evidence of that being performed in the staff report.  That someone can outsource a service as important to the city as the water plant without physically validating competing suppliers is beyond my comprehension.

Here is my scorecard to date.  As a citizen, I believe the city should be looking for the best value; i.e., the best combination of cost, delivery and quality.  Here is how I rank each attribute:

Ranking: (1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd)

	Southwest	Veolia	City
Cost:	1	3	2
Delivery	2	1	3
Quality	1	1	3
Score	4	5	8

Lowest score should be the recommendation

Cost Analysis:

	Southwest	Veolia	City
Labor, years 1-3	$1,246,592	$2,136,964	$2,314,967
O/H & Profit, years 1-3	$1,047,774	$1,678,266	$1,389,108
Total:	$2,294,366	$3,815,230	$3,704,075
Delta:	---	$1,520,864	$1,409,709

- That the city is willing to leave $1.5M on the table is not defendable.

- Staff’s belief that it is not plausible to run the water plant with three (3) staff members flies in the face of the Mountain House facility operation.

- Southwest described proactive steps they would take for maximizing equipment warranties; the objective being to save start-up cost by avoiding the cost of inappropriate equipment infant mortalities that the manufacturers should bear.

Delivery Analysis:

	Southwest	Veolia	City
Time to “Normalization” in months	15	8	17

I have no expertise in this area and cannot evaluate beyond the estimates submitted.

Quality Analysis:

I ranked Southwest and Veolia equal based on a brief audit of Southwest’s system and Veolia telling me they are ISO certified.  However, Southwest does everything an ISO certified operation would be expected to do and I could not validate Veolia’s quality system beyond their word.

Quality observations during the Mountain House tour managed by Southwest:

-         10-year old plant very clean and tidy; paint and pipe marking in very good shape – Process Engineering rule-of-thumb:  Generally, a clean process performs well and is reliable; a dirty, unkempt one does not.  Demonstrates operator attitude and corresponding performance.

-         Operator attitude upbeat and enthusiastic, not over-worked or unappreciated by the company; high esprit de corps

-         Quality audits are performed by the state agencies, EPA, internally and by third party with reports to the city

-         Southwest expressed a strong wish to start interacting with the design engineering contractor to insure that “design for serviceability” attributes are incorporated into the design preferably before construction.  Design engineers are tasked with delivering functionality, not serviceability.  Progressive private sector companies use concurrent engineering techniques like this to save cycle time and cost by avoiding changes during plant start-up.

-         Southwest’s PM system is computerized.  This application schedules tasks and generates work orders.  PM metrics go to company and city for on-time performance monitoring.

-         Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) binders present in plant office as is customary – would require a full quality audit to validate beyond this observation.

-         Mountain House have renewed their contract with Southwest after they started-up the plant and sustained operations for some 10-years.  This is a strong statement of quality performance by itself.

I would like to introduce LCA's new post, so that issues can be discussed and commented on by the citizens of our great republic. Remember, "follow the evidence wherever it leads."