Comment Up
Tonight there is an agreement before the Commission for legal services in the tune of $250,000 (1/4 of a million big buckeroos!). No matter what we do, it seems, we need outside counsel to get us through the morass. And no matter how you slice this cake, it is costly to end up doing the right thing and exiting FMPA's All Requirements.
This is true of every difficult and perplexing contract we have ever entered...they all have cost us millions in spite of legal advice. Of course, it doesn't help grabbing a beach redevelopment contract out of the hands of former mayor Mark Drautz and signing it, unread. And that side of politics wants to blame the Greater Bay law suit on everyone but the right people! This suit continues to haunt us to this day and has been expensive to defend...but I digress.
Energy Advantage Consulting
I thought Sue Hersey was going to help negotiate with a new energy provider. We paid her $413,000. Now this firm, with a bunch of lawyers on the masthead, wants $250,000. It's a good thing that the Vice Mayor "negotiated" the $850,000 settlement with FMPA on the $2.2 million that they owed to us.
What the firm of Gardner, Bist, Wiener, Wadsworth, Bowden, Bush, Dee, LaVia and Wright will advise/do for us:
A wholesale power supply agreement
A generation entitlements transfer agreement
Lake Worth Power Plant capacity and energy sales contract
and what else they might advise/do for us:
renewable energy purchase agreements...feed-in tariffs
reviewing agreements to electric transmission or ancillary services
agreements for provision of energy conservation
possible equipment supply agreements
possible engineering procurement and construction agreements
possible operation and maintenance service agreements
The firm says that it is willing to work with and report to Michael Bornstein (well, I hope so) and anyone our city attorney designates. Let's make sure no politician is included on this list or volunteer citizens from the Utility Advisory Board.
16 comments:
Wow Lynn, you certainly can cover a lot of important issues in a short period of time.
With respect to Mayor Drautz signing the GB contracts, I recall that each contract included the others as Addendums and that Drautz wanted to read all of them three times after review by our current lawyers and the City Attorney. Given Drautz’s inexperience, I’m not sure he would have discovered anything to override the majority vote for acceptance by the commission.
I don’t know who you think are the “right people” to blame the GB lawsuit----but I understand the court will decide soon.
Also, given your statement about Drautz, I don’t understand why you want politicians excluded from the review and research of the alternatives to FMPA.
Well, your recollection is not the same as mine. Let's talk about ALL of the inexperience even on the present dais. What about Lowe who actually signed the Greater Bay contract and ALL of her 10 years of experience. Yes, the Court will decide but I imagine that it was your side of politics that got us into the mess by signing the contract.
Next, as far as politicians and the public, they both have a way of screwing up the simplest of things. Therefore, something that is requiring us to spend $250,000 for expert advice falls into complex...let's stick with qualified people to give us advice.
We must keep politics out of this.
What is Sue Hersey obligated to do for us for her fee?Has she done it?Sorry,I'm really not up to speed on this,but it all sounds like a big ,crooked money grab on the part of the people who are supposed to be"helping" us.
I was there(in city hall) the night Retha Lowe got up and took the contract out of Drautz's hands. Quite frankly,I would have slapped the crap out of that ignorant,rude witch,but Drautz,being used to the behavior of five year olds,did not react that way.Too bad. We might have avoided this baseless slap suit that Greater Bay has brought against us!Katie Mcgiveron
Good question.
I would have to look up her contract.
It seems we have a lot of money going OUT all of the time, and less coming in.
Stop the waste and stop the bad decisions! I am fed up with ineffective government! Lower our prices!
Answering the first post above, this new advisory board on utilities consists of all political appointments. Now why would anyone want them interfering?
If the GB lawsuit is a baseless slap suit why has the city paid over $500k so far to defend the "best commission ever" decision to break a legal binding contract?
As far as who is to blame for the lawsuit? That would be the people that filed the lawsuit against GB because they didn't like the outcome. Who filed the lawsuit against GB again? Lynn you are up on all the city's current events. Please tell us who filed the lawsuit.
Katie McGiveron? Aren't you the same woman that also filed a lawsuit against the owners of the Smith property? So I guess it's going to be someone else's fault when you lose your lawsuit too, right?
It amazes me how many self proclaimed know it alls could live in the same small town but collectively not know crap about anything.
Trying to blame anyone else for your lawsuits is like assigning blame to the person that is cleaning up broken glass and not the person that broke the glass which is typical in bizzaro world Lake Worth.
To the above "wonder"--
NO, Katie McGiveron did NOT file a law suit against the owners of the Smith property.
You know, when you lie so much, it's damn difficult to keep it all straight, now isn't it?
You are one sick SOB and all your reasoning sucks.
Do me a favor, don't come back here. Stay over on your best buds' site and squawk to your heart's content.
To add to the mis-information from 2:33 above--One thing not mentioned, no one filed a law suit against Greater Bay. Please get your facts straight before coming to this blog. I would greatly appreciate it anonymous at 2:33
Hi ,Katie Mcgiveron here. To answer the brain dead piece of fluff at 2:33- Lynn, as usual ,has it right. I am chairman of Save our Neighborhood, a political action PAC that filed a law suit against the city of Lake Worth. Mr Smith,an out of town land speculator, had the luxury of not having to lift one finger.He let city staff and Commissioners do his dirty work for him.Mr. Smith got to use OUR TAX dollars,me and you ,little bit of uneducated fluff,against us.And by the way,fluff,look around. All of those staff and Commissioners who spit on their own citizens (and the ones paying their salaries) are no longer with us. Bye,you little fluffer,you.
The Greater Bay case has nothing to do with Drautz or Retha. It has everything to do with bad legal advice. Getting out of a contract requires good legal advice. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The contract was written and approved by the same firm that represents us in this case. The same firm that is making hundreds of thousands of dollars off the backs of us the taxpayers. Why would we hire the firm that screwed this up to fight the GB case? We have no one with litigation experience working at City Hall and as a result we keep getting screwed.
John, That is GB's strategy...drag it out as long as possible.
We hired the biggest SOB attorney around. I have seen him in action. Who better to know and understand GB? He is the one who gave the opinion to end the GB contract. If you can't trust your attorney, who can you trust?
I stand corrected. Happy face Katie didn't file a lawsuit. THE PAC SHE IS CHAIRPERSON OF FILED THE LAWSUIT. Does that mean us taxpayers won't have to foot the bill, because the PAC filed the lawsuit?
My reasoning may suck but at least it's not revisionist.
Plus- big shocker here- nobody answered my question about the city paying over $500k for a baseless suit? Why would they do that?
anonymous above at 10:53. Let me ask you this--do you have any idea what the law suit was about?
Instead of finding fault that is not there, let's hear all that you know about this suit. Why it happened, etc.
Are you also implying that neighborhoods should not defend their single family residences in LW?
As far as the Greater Bay law suit is concerned, we have not paid OVER 500K. Please do a little research and get your facts straight, none of which have been accurate so far.
All you wnat to do is slap down people. Take a hike and get on a happy face like Katie.
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