Thursday, February 25, 2010

Settlement with PB County on Water Contract

The use of the word “advantageous” by the City Manager in today’s PB Post article is stretching it. However, it was a previous Commission that got us into a bad Contract situation with PB County that wanted our wells under the leadership of a part-time Lake Worth City Manager who could have cared less. Anytime we lose money of this magnitude, it is a travesty.

Palm Beach County's water department wanted to regionalize Lake Worth Water into its system. They had their eye on our water for years. They did not give a hoot that we had already invested $14 million into our RO system and they convinced a previous Commission, that had no clue, to enter into a bad contract. Lake Worth is famous for getting into bad deals. It is the same sort of idea of a parent stealing from his own child. Reprehensible.They strong armed the City of Lake Worth, a poor city, for millions and wanted to steal our valuable water wells.

PB County attempted to lock us into a 40 year contract with a built in rate increase, thus forcing us into paying $2.5 million in piping only laid to bring other cities into their regionalization. And there are still really uninformed people out in our community as witnessed by the couple of comments under the Post article.

We are well out of this deal. Thank God we won’t have to see Brian Shields again. The County's settlement agreement was received by the City of Lake Worth on January 20 with the implication, take it or leave it because "we are confident that we could recover the full amount of our original costs should the matter be adjudicated..." The threat of law suits are always part of the game.

My calculations have us paying right under $3.7 mil. Once our RO is built and this contract over in three years, we will then be a supplier of the most valuable commodity on Earth.

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