What's Old is New Again

The five meetings held by the City last month to introduce its new Office of Neighborhood Initiatives and the conceptual framework for its mission, revealed something interesting and important about the City:

Long time residents located their fondest memories—“better days”-- somewhere in the past, and wanted to recreate a City and neighborhoods where good things happen like they used to in the old days. To some extent, they lamented change because they saw its negative consequences.

More recently arrived residents described the virtues of the City as it exists today and said what attracted them to Geneva is what it is now, how little it has changed—compared to other places they know, blah suburban McPlaces or big cities seemingly losing their warmth and given over only to the pursuit of wealth.

What is critical is that both groups valued quality of life and community, and both expected Geneva to be a place where they can be found. That suggests a powerful, intergenerational alliance might be formed between them today, and that should be an important aspect of the Office of Neighborhood Initiatives, trying to harness a commonality of purpose between some of Geneva’s longest, and shortest-term residents. That commonality exists in what the older residents say they remember about Geneva and what the newer residents say brought them here by a recent choice.

The Office of Neighborhood Initiatives may strike some as a new effort with a lot of new faces, but at its core, it is a revival of the traditional community values which are, themselves, the most progressive concept to hit Geneva in decades.

Maybe Geneva Needs a "Kamikaze Council":Listening to the Drumbeat of the Numbers

Our most recent appearance on Ted Baker’s Finger Lakes Morning News focused on the City of Geneva’s 2010 budget, its multi-year financial plan, and the economic climate’s effect on municipalities in general. If the City maintains a “business as usual” approach, it will lead to business unusual, as in bankruptcy.

We believe that one thing New York State has done correctly with regard to cities has been to require the filing of multiyear financial projections with the State Comptroller’s office. While these are only non-binding financial models, Capraro points out that they at least force cities to consider scenarios beyond the present. They reduce the possibility that cities can claim to be taken by surprise when faced with reduced revenues and increased expenses. In essence, multi-year planning forces elected officials to do one of two things:

1. Nothing: i.e., pass the problem down the line, and hope it either works itself out or blows up after your term is up.

2. Something: i.e., accept the reality, prioritize expenses, seek out new revenues, change the way business is done to make the business model work. Make a decision.

As Ted rightly pointed out, changing the way the City does business is politically risky. Things are done the way they are because someone benefits. As we’ve pointed out ad nauseam in multiple posts, the existing structure is set up to benefit economic development through tax exemptions, to administer city services without strategic deployment of resources, and to privilege vested special interests.

A new and more dynamic approach would see City government as a partner of the people, using sensible and effective means to meet critical needs. This new way of doing business may leave elected officials on the outs with the outspoken minority, but it would bring government back to the people in a way that is both useful and affordable.

In short, Geneva doesn’t need a Council that takes unnecessary risks, but it does need strong, focused, creative leadership to right the ship and make Geneva shine! Ted suggested the image of a “Kamikaze Council” that might go down in a blaze of sacrificial glory for the cause. Capraro reminded us the drum beat of the numbers is relentless. Click here to listen.

"Business As Usual" Will Put the City Out of Business:Thoughts on the Multi-Year Financial Plan

The New York State Comptroller requires municipalities to file multi-year financial plans that look at 3-to-5 year projections for revenue and expenditures, and the likely corresponding impact on property taxes.

In 2007, the City Council held an in-depth work session on the City’s first such planning document. In it, were projected huge deficits, an annual property tax increase of 3%, and a virtual depletion of the City’s fund balance (think of the fund balance as the City’s savings account).

At that time, NoStringsGeneva declared , “City Manager’s MultiYear Plan is a MultiYear Disaster” and urged Council to assert itself as the governing body. The business model leading us towards a financial abyss had to be corrected. But 2007 was an election year, and budget discussions took place in the midst of the primary battle between then-Mayor Don Cass and his challenger now-current Mayor Stu Einstein. Rather than confronting the reality building on their watch, the former Council (or at least the majority of the former Council) decided to leave the fiscal mess for the new Council to sort out.

The City’s budget woes became a true political football, with the former Mayor and his Council running-mates vowing to “protect jobs” and “increase services” rather than promising innovation and financial responsibility. The needs of the taxpayer were sacrificed to the perceived desires of the voter, and the debates, particularly the Mayoral debate amongst the three candidates, became an exercising in defending—rather than challenging—the failing status quo.

Fast forward to the present day. It is 2009 and the City’s latest multi-year financial plan looks nearly identical to the previous one.

On the revenue side, City staff project a slight increase, about 1%, in overall revenue. Property tax revenue, attributable to a slight increase in property values, will increase. Sales tax will decrease for two years and then trend upward. State aid will likely plummet from just over $2,000,000 to just under $1,800,000.

On the expenditure side, surges in personnel costs—contract salaries, health insurance premiums, and mandatory state retirement contributions to cover the cost of defined benefits for retired City workers—will be responsible for a nearly 10% increase in expenses over the next five years.

The City manager was careful not to aggregate his data, but we can do the math. Over the next five years, he projects revenue to increase by 1% and expenditures to increase by 10%. Assuming a currently balanced budget, with money incoming and outgoing the same, in five years there will be a deficit of 9%. With a current General Fund of $16,600,000, that amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars in deficits! Somewhere around $1,500,000.

With some slight changes in employee health insurance plans, a significant scaling back of capital improvement projects, and a freeze on the equipment amortization fund, the current administration was able to forestall financial woes, but not to avert the financial disaster on the rapidly approaching horizon.

This time, though, we are cautiously optimistic that the new City Manager and the Council have come to embrace a point of view that we urged a long time ago, namely that ‘business as usual’ will put the City out of business! Things must change!

There are still a handful of Councilors who disagreed with a “zero percent” property tax increase for 2010. In their words “everything goes up, our expenses go up, so property taxes should go up, too.” But that is no longer the majority view. We are starting to hear City Councilors talk about innovative ways of delivering services, about creative cost-sharing arrangements. In short, we see some movement towards a new view on City government.

As City Manager Horn stated (in three separate instances) in the MultiYear document, a failure to significantly change business practices will result in revenue decreases, increased expenses, and “significant deficits, not supportable by tax increases alone.”

To be clear, he specifically stated that tax increases were not an acceptable solution, even if they were capable of solving the problem, which they are not. He emphasized the fact that tax increases would be unable to meet the City’s challenges in the coming years. That’s because the problem lies primarily in what and how we are spending.

The City Manager’s conclusion, which we believe City Council must adopt wholeheartedly and with a more united focus than any other task they face, is to approach city operations from a “solutions-driven” standpoint. What does Geneva need and how can we best meet those needs? One thing the city needs is a lower tax rate, to help motivate investment.

We can no longer accept the status quo. We can no longer hold ‘sacred cows’ that keep us from evolving our business model and doing things better and more responsibly. We can’t do what was done before, as we discussed in our previous post, and throw up roadblocks to the conversation, to stall and create diversions. This is the most critical issue facing City government today, and it’s a game changer.

Should a Councilor Ever Have to FOIL?Say It Ain't So, Mr. Manager and Mr. Attorney

Some of her colleagues on Council took Augustine to task for using FOILed records (i.e., records obtained under New York’s Freedom of Information Law) in our recent post on filling it up at the City pump. One of our readers expressed the same concern in a signed comment to the post: “Forgive me for being rude, but the City of Geneva appears to function in a unique way. It is not common for Council members to have to file a FOIL request to talk to their own comptroller about the budget.”

We agree that it’s probably not common for Council members to file FOIL requests for public records available to any ordinary citizen for the asking. But there’s a reason we FOIL documents, thanks to an absurd protocol established by the previous City Manager and supported by the legal opinion of the previous City Attorney. In fact, that very issue is one which helped to launch NoStringsGeneva, back in March 2007. In our March 25, 2007 post, titled, “Shouldn’t City Councilors have Access to Public Documents?” we described the difficulty Capraro and Augustine had in getting a simple copy of the total compensation spreadsheet for then City Manager, Rich Rising.

Our request for the record was blocked by then-City Attorney, Clark Cannon. According to Cannon, an individual Councilor’s request for a public document was a violation of Section 13.2 of the City Charter. According to Cannon, “neither the City Council nor any member thereof shall give orders to any subordinate of the City Manager.”

Capraro, who was then on Council and made the request for the document in question, was being told by the City Attorney that he could not ask the Comptroller for a photocopy of a record! Of course, any member of the public, simply by filing a FOIL request, would have been given the record on demand. Instead, the Attorney told Capraro that the request should be made by “the entire Council” and only “in consultation with the City Manager.”

At the time we thought it sounded quite ridiculous for City Councilors to have less access to public records than members of the public not serving on City Council. We also thought it was quite ridiculous for City Councilors to have their requests mediated by the City Manager, presumably so that he would have a chance to ‘explain’ things before Councilors asked too many questions. We still believe that unfiltered, direct access to public records by all people is essential to government accountability.

Since 2007, we have used documents gained through FOIL requests in several posts. We posted public documents about the County Revolving Loan program, about the City’s Wastewater Treatment plant performance, about attorney’s costs. Usually they are simply the fact basis for our fact-based point of view, but sometimes, as in the case with the NYS Attorney General’s investigation, FOILing turns up records that reveal the secrets of City business, unknown to Council itself, such as the bill for legal fees for Rising’s proffer agreement.

Because we rely on only publicly available information, FOIL requests over the years have ensured that we have never violated our ‘no leaks, no gossip’ policy. While we do believe that City Councilors should have unimpeded access to city records, and therefore not be required to file FOIL requests, we want to make it clear that when City Councilors challenge Augustine’s use of the FOIL, their anger is misplaced. If Councilors and the public want City Councilors to refrain from FOIL requests, then the policy requiring it should be lifted. We believe the City Manager and the City Attorney and, by consent, Council itself can clear up this matter by announcing an end to the information lock down of the previous administration and allowing unmediated, direct access to the public record by Council members. In the meantime, we’ll continue accessing public records in the way clearly allowed and promoted under the law.

Fuel For Thought: Readers and City Manager React to Gas Post

In response to our post on fuel consumption and the City budget, we received two signed comments that raised interesting points or questions that warrant more discussion:

First, we agree with Mark that the main point of our post was to suggest that the City’s published budget is virtually impossible to follow, that the numbers just didn’t seem to add up, for whatever reason.

Our attention was first drawn to line items relating to fuel consumption (revenue and expenses) when the City announced that by mid-year 2008, the City had used up all of its allocation for fuel, thanks to a spike in the price of gas. Council budgeted for 2009 and then the price of gas went way down. Wouldn’t that create a budget surplus and effect the budgeting for 2010?

Every member of the public has the right to read the city budget, in its entirety, and to view the records that support the various budget line items. We did just that, and found the documents to be cumbersome and unnecessarily vague when it comes to reconciling various line items.

Yet, Mark goes on to state, and, again, we agree, that a reader who is unfamiliar with general municipal operations might get the impression that we were suggesting “something funny” is going on. That must be what happened when some Councilors read the post and accused Councilor Augustine of attacking staff “from the bushes.” Not only was the post not an attack on City staff—we went out of our way to express how cooperative staff had been-but we’re not sure how a signed blog entry on the internet could be more public: if there was anyone hiding in the bushes it wasn’t us. So rather than indulging those who like to jump to conclusions, we want to take some time to respond to the real questions raised by our readers, who apparently, like Mark, understand general municipal operations.

Tom also concluded that we were not claiming to have “hit on some kind of conspiracy, but a system of payment and accounting that was set up years ago and never adjusted.” There is value, he states—and we agree-in looking at these systems closely to make sure that what City government is doing today meets the City’s current needs, rather than simply doing things ‘as we’ve always done them.’

We point out that after the post appeared, the City Manager drafted a memo to Council
addressing the question of apparent discrepancies in the City’s published budget.(We’re not sure if it was his own response to our post or a response to other Councilors who may have read the post and asked for an explanation.) Our post had been on revenue and expenditures for 2006 and 2007, but the City Manager addressed figures for 2008, so we’re not sure how that clears things up. Also, in the same memo, he indicates that in order to reconcile figures for 2008 he had to use a “figure different than the 2008 figure represented in the budget documents,” so, actually, he’s acknowledging the same problem: the numbers don’t add up in the published budget documents. Again, he’s not exposing some conspiracy, but commenting on the numbers generated by the accounting system that’s in place.

Mark’s comment also addressed outside agency use of City fuel. While we don’t disagree that support of critical agencies is a nice thing for the City to engage in, we cannot agree with the implication that the City must do this, or should continue to provide gasoline at cost. Consider this: if the City purchases gasoline from the state contract at $2/gallon and the price at the pump is $3.50/gallon, for example, that is a significant savings for any agency that is billed at cost. But the City incurs a cost to maintain the gas station facility, to generate the bills and do the associated accounting. Even if the City were to charge a $.50/gallon surcharge, the agencies would still see a great benefit and the City would see some actual revenue to cover those costs. There is the additional question of whether the Geneva Housing Authority, which already receives substantial subsidies from the City for services that might not be wholly consistent with the City’s strategic imperatives, should receive additional City assistance for their County-wide operation.

The question of outside agency gas usage has been raised on the floor of City Council before, but never taken up for discussion. We hope that it will be now, given the City’s tight budget constraints.

And that leads us to the last question or concern that our post generated, both on the blog and at the most recent televised Council meeting. Our readers say that Councilors should not have to file a FOIL request to speak to a department head or to receive records. It seems that many on Council share this view, but as we will discuss in an upcoming post, the standing policy prohibits that—as one of our first posts back in 2007 discussed. So, perhaps our post raised yet another ‘old system’ that’s in need of a change.

City Manager's 2010 budget proposal is a call to action

It will be impossible for the City of Geneva to sustain year after year of zero per cent property tax increases AND retain its current administrative structure AND current service-delivery model. City Manager Matt Horn sent that message loud and clear to Council and the citizens of the City of Geneva in his 2010 budget proposal.

In our view, Horn’s challenge is not a threat to raise taxes, but a call to action. Council must respond with bold, decisive choices following directly from the mission, vision, and priorities for the City it has already declared. In other words, it’s up to Council to now walk the walk, after talking the talk.

Horn’s proposed budget holds property taxes to a zero per cent increase for 2010, through a series of interdepartmental line items, and by refusing to bond for capital projects and foregoing an installment to the equipment amortization fund. In effect, he is allowing Council until the next budget cycle (which should begin the day after the 2010 budget passes) to deal with the long-term, structural challenges to the budget.

And the challenges are many. New York State faces massive debt, thanks to unrestrained spending and severe cuts in revenue attributable to the recession. State aid to the City, never guaranteed, is, therefore, in even more doubt. In addition, cities across New York State will likely receive, in 2011, a bill to cover shortfalls in the State pension fund to cover the costs of benefits for retired City workers.

And though the City will realize some cost savings for health insurance coverage for current employees in 2010, thanks to a change in plans offered, this does not eliminate all benefit increases. Even with some measure of health care reform at the federal level, policy premiums are projected to rise. The City can also expect further declines in sales tax revenue, the second highest source of revenue after property taxes.

Those are the challenges. But Horn, undaunted, says Council has already developed a framework to address them; the “strategic imperatives,” passed by Council in 2008: (1) “value for taxpayers,” i.e. giving tax payers their money’s worth in services; (2) “enhancing neighborhoods,” i.e., following through on the neighborhood initiative; (3) “engaged governance, i.e., better communication and deliberation; (4) “economic development,” i.e., investment and job creation.

His budget document, page after page, hammers home the priorities. The question is, “Exactly how will those priorities address the challenges?” That is for the City Council to wrestle with.

"Follow The Money"Bloggers Resume Talk Radio with Ted Baker on WGVA

After a late summer’s hiatus of a few weeks, we resumed blogging with a fact-based point of view on the City’s own gas station, “Filling it up at the City Pump,” and resumed our regular time slot on Ted Baker’s morning radio show. Ted spoke with us about that post and other financial matters as the City ramps up for the 2010 budget process. Our effort to reconcile what the City spends on gas with amounts of gas departments actually use is a matter of accountability and transparency in government.

But the other hot financial topic of the day was the grant money for lakefront development secured—or not—by State Senator Mike Nozzolio. Remember that this money was first announced last year in the midst of the Bergmann study of the highest and best use of City-owned lakefront property. At that time, we questioned the wisdom of dropping money for a predetermined project into the middle of a process that everyone had been assured had no predetermined outcome.

Now it seems that the pressure to do something, anything may have been rooted in some fiscal realities that are none-too-flattering for the state legislators who made all those big ticket promises in the lead up to the last election. Nozzolio had initially indicated that a total of $5 million was earmarked for the City. In reality, $4 million of that was specifically dedicated for the City, but the remaining $1 million is uncertain, with budget deficits in Albany and a funding source which is not clear. So other guests on Ted Baker’s morning radio show, from the Senator himself to local special interests have been saying that the City must “hurry, hurry,” leaving many to question if the money is really ready and waiting for the City to draw down or if was a premature appropriation that never found its legs?

We also looked ahead to the bigger picture of the City’s budgeting process, stressing the need to address long-term structural stressors on the budget and alternatives to property tax increases for new City revenue. The idea, we think, is to “follow the money,” i.e., to get a better handle on what money is coming in, and where it goes out.

So take a listen and give us some feedback on what issues, fiscal or otherwise, you’d like to see us dig in on in the coming months!

System of a Down Isn't the Only Group Concerned About "The Toxicity of Our City"Water Quality and WasteWater Treatment Loom Large In Many Minds

Our readers may recall that as the question of the composition of leachate and the general quality of Geneva’s drinking water loomed large this past summer, we discussed City of Geneva public works director Gordy Eddington’s guest editorial in the Finger Lakes Times. (You can reread that post here) We wrote, “Eddington’s piece was really not about leachate at all, but, rather, the reported performance of the City’s wastewater treatment plant. The City’s plant and our water, he says, are in compliance with various regulatory requirements.” Eddington’s guest piece came on the heels of a Finger Lakes Times series on landfill and leachate issues. In addition to the fact-finding efforts related to that series, the local environmental group Finger Lakes Zero Waste was filing a series of Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests for data including the City’s own water quality analysis.

That editorial piece was intended, we assume, to put the public’s mind at ease about the quality of the City’s wastewater treatment system and its ‘effluent’ (discharge) into Seneca Lake. Our post tried to point out that compliance with permits should be seen as the minimum criterion on which we would evaluate the willingness and ability to accept and treat runoff from the area landfills that have become regional (and in some cases, international) dumping grounds. We focused on the need to consider pollutants not currently tested for, but that might pose health hazards if passed untreated into Seneca Lake, the source of drinking water for many in the Finger Lakes region.

We stated that Eddington’s desire to provide public reassurance about the wastewater treatment plant’s compliance was understandable and appropriate, but we urged him to make data from the City’s internal testing of the leachate public-- to improve the fact set available to Council, and the public, before the work session dedicated to the topic.

Finger Lakes Zero Waste has reported that the City has been slow to produce the records requested under FOIL. But it is a different set of FOIL requests, in a different venue, that have provided all groups interested in this topic with a better set of reliable data. The new group inquiring about this topic? Not the Finger Lakes Times, but the New York Times, for their series, “Toxic Waters.”

The second installment in that series, an article entitled “Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering” discloses violations of the Clean Water Act that, while reported in a central database, have gone largely unaddressed by state and federal regulators.

The New York Times offers maps and tables which fill in additional details and provide more information for a better analysis of the big picture of water quality compliance. One map of registered “pollution points” in New York State (this includes any user who discharges material into groundwater, including waste water treatment plants, industries, farms, etc.) shows there are 4,606 facilities in New York State that fall under the EPA’s direct supervision.

The New York Times ranking of polluters, by violation, shows the City of Geneva’s Wastewater Treatment plant (Marsh Creek WWTP) as #22 in New York. In other words, of the 4,606 facilities in all of New York State overseen by the EPA, only 21 had worse EPA violation statistics than Geneva. (Click here for the chart)

If anyone wanted to check things out for themselves, the New York Times piece provides direct links to the EPA’s online data reports for each facility. So, of course, we took a look at the City of Geneva’s report to find out the details behind these rankings. After all, the article said that some ‘violations’ were merely administrative issues, like missing reporting deadlines, and not necessarily violations of the issued permits. Unfortunately, it seems that Geneva has more than a mere administrative problem. Based on the chart, “Three Year Compliance Status by Quarter,” the City of Geneva’s Marsh Creek plant suffered from non-compliance for 12 out of 12 quarters, including the most recent reporting quarter ending March 2009. (Click here for full details)

According to the chart, “effluent violations are displayed as the highest percentage by which the permit was exceeded for the quarter. Bold, large print indicated Significant Non Compliance (SNC) effluent violations. Shaded boxes indicate unresolved SNC violations.”

Geneva has bold, large print entries in three of the ten criteria: Chlorine, Settleable Solids, and Total Suspended Solids. In the last reported quarter (January-March 2009), Settleable Solids exceeded the permit by 233%; Total Suspended Solids by 109%; and Chlorine exceeded the permit by 70% earning a designation as an “unresolved” significant non compliance effluent violation.

On a brighter note, we should point out these numbers actually appear to be an improvement over the noncompliance statistics from previous quarters, perhaps due to recently completed upgrades at the facility. For instance, the same time last year (Jan-Mar 2008), Settleable Solids exceeded the permit by 13233%. That’s not a ‘typo.’

The June editorial piece left an impression of compliance, but we believe more information is needed with regard to this database of noncompliance. In terms of handling leachate, it would be good to know how much of this noncompliance is due to events that occurred as a direct result of the leachate, or when leachate was present in the city system. But even if the leachate stream ‘dries up,’ it seems that Council and the appointed Green Committee should discuss the way in which local monitoring and oversight can track with the monitoring done by the epa, so that future results don’t come as such a surprise, and so that we can more assuredly answer the question posed in a previous post: “How Clean Is Our Water?” To answer these questions, it seems that City Council and its Green Committee should echo our earlier request to the Director of public Works to please “show us the data!”

Filling It Up at the City Pump (Part I):Why Doesn't the Amount Coming In Equal the Amount Going Out?

The City of Geneva maintains its own little filling station, consisting of two pumps which dispense gas and diesel fuel to designated City vehicles. Certain City workers, and some staff from two other, non-City agencies (the Geneva Housing Authority and the Geneva Business Improvement District—more about that in Part II) are authorized to fill it up at the City pump.

The City purchases the fuel from distributors at a price determined by a state bidding process, which helps to keep costs down. In January 2005, the City paid $1.64 per gallon for diesel and $1.24 for gas. Three years later, by the first half of 2008, prices had climbed to $3.66 for diesel and $2.81 for gas, and then peaked that summer. That was back when the national average for a gallon of regular gas was at $4.06 (retail). In the meantime, it’s come back down, to $1.77, in January 8, 2009, and, currently, to $2.72, in our area.

In 2006, the City spent $231,037 (actual) for fuel. Last year, 2008, at budget preparation time, City staff said that as of July 31, 2008, the City had exhausted its entire fuel allocation for the 2008 budget year. In reaction, the 2009 budget, passed by Council, included an increase of approximately 90% in spending on fuel, bringing the appropriation to a whopping $376,617! If that figure tracks directly with the usage records at the Comptrollers office, it would mean actual fuel costs for the City have risen about 63% in the three years from 2006 to 2009. That’s an increase of more than 20% per year for the past three years.

As an aside, we note that with gas half the price it had been when the budget was being prepared, there ought to be substantial savings for that line item in 2009. But, it’s not quite that straightforward. The price of fuel and the amount used fluctuate in any given year according to variables that include weather, number of fire calls, etc. With the snow that hit us earlier in the year, we’ll have to see what happens to actual spending.

According to records maintained by the City Comptroller, the vast majority of fuel is used by two departments: Highway and Police. The Police department uses exclusively gas, while Highway uses both gas and diesel, which has always been more expensive than gas. We submitted a Freedom of Information Law request (FOIL) for these records. According to the City Comptroller, in January 2005, Highway used a total of 3,348 gallons of fuel; Police, 1,753 gallons. Four vehicles in City Hall, counting the then-City Manager’s company car, used 458 gallons. For the entire 2005 year, Police used a total of 19,996 gallons of fuel. City Hall used 3,411. For 2006, Police used 19,581, while City Hall used 466 gallons.

According to the City Comptroller, City departments, such as Fire and Police, are billed by the City itself for the fuel that department has used. Those departments have a “gas and oil” line in their individual budgets that they transfer to the General Fund as payment for those bills. The money received from those departments appears as revenue in the City budget. (What the City had spent initially for the fuel is listed as a budget expense.)

You would think that “gas and oil” revenue would, therefore, equal “gas and oil” expenditures. It seems like a principle of Accounting 101 that the amount coming in should equal (or, better yet, exceed) the amount that went out. For some reason, it doesn’t. And we don’t know why. In other words, if the City buys, in bulk, $100 (actual) worth of gas, then revenue (actual) coming back in to the City from departments for their share of that gas that they used, ought to be $100, or thereabouts. It’s not.

For example, in 2006, the City spent a total of $167,514 (actual) on “gas and oil,” but took in only $83,200 (actual) in corresponding “gas and oil” revenue (p.2). Looking at another year, in 2007, the City spent a total of $231,037 (actual), and took in $83,200. So, for 2007, the actual “gas and oil” revenue to the City was $83,200, yet the 2007 actual amount spent for “gas and oil” was $231,037. Increased cost (represented by the amount the City spent) should track with increased reimbursement (represented by the amount received), but the City received the same round number each year. Going line by line through the actual expenditure of each departmental budget, the police spent $36,000; fire, $10,499; buildings and grounds, $68,966; and, “miscellaneous,” $115,572. The total of these four line items was $230,937, not $83,200.

We are wondering why there is a discrepancy between actual amounts spent at the departmental level and the corresponding value in the revenue column. Capraro met with Comptroller Tara Clark to review the results of the FOIL request and to get answers to these questions. While the Comptroller was extremely cooperative, we never really got to the bottom of the discrepancies, so we will keep working with City staff to sort them out.

In fact, the records we FOILed reveal other sorts of gaps and curiosities. In September 2005, and from late 2007 through early 2008, there were big jumps in the price of diesel; for gas, the increase was slow and steady, but the price of gas did rise dramatically that August from $1.63 to $2.59 per gallon. From August, 2005, to December, 2005, City records show “pump not registering” and so departments were charged for only “average” use. Actual usage, by department, for that period has never been ascertained.

Then there’s all sorts of City vehicles being driven home by City staff. According to the City Comptroller, City department “supervisors” and their assistants are allowed to use a City owned vehicle for transportation to and from work. Those vehicles, too, fill it up at the City pump.

So, if a City worker has a City vehicle and is allowed to take the vehicle home, and say home is 20 miles away, that’s a commute of 40 miles a day, 5 days a week, or 200 miles per week. At 20 miles per gallon, that’s about 10 gallons of gas a week, and at $3.00 a gallon, that’s $30 per week, times 50 weeks a year, the bill to the taxpayers runs about $1,500, for that one worker.

We note the Mayor of Rochester has recalled numerous City-owned vehicles used by workers to commute, at a substantial savings to Rochester tax payers. This not only saves the City money, but helps employees by saving them the headache of filling out cumbersome IRS documents related to calculating this benefit as income. The IRS requires that take-home vehicles be calculated as ‘compensation’ and therefore be considered with regard to taxation. To fail to report such use is a serious offense.

Finally, there is use of the City pump by non-City agencies-- the Housing Authority and B.I.D. As far as we have been able to determine, this practice goes back many years. Question is, why are they allowed to fill it up at the City pump? It’s apparently a good deal for them. Gas is cheaper for them and they have no overhead to worry about, including maintaining facilities, ordering product, billing etc. But why is the City favoring those agencies and why is the City picking up the tab for the overhead? And, by the way, who is keeping track of the gas budgets on their end, in their own organizations?

Vacation's All We Ever Wanted

Readers, please be advised that Capraro and Augustine are taking advantage of a summer lull in City government activity and will be taking a break of our own.

We will be devoting the remainder of our summer to researching and writing major posts which will appear this Fall.

As always, we appreciate your support of NoStringsGeneva, Geneva’s fact-based point of view, and we’d love to hear what you, our readers, are most interested in seeing covered by the blog. We welcome any feedback as to the direction you’d like to see us take. We look forward to the resumption of our posting when things pick up in September!

Gordy, Just Show Us the Data

The Sunday (June 7th) edition of the local paper featured a guest appearance by Geneva City Director of Public Works, Gordy Eddington, presumably prompted by all the talk around town about leachate. However, Eddington’s piece was really not about leachate at all, but, rather, the reported performance of the City’s wastewater treatment plant. The City’s plant and our water, he says, are in compliance with various regulatory requirements.

While that’s an important subject, it’s not what everyone has been talking about. Sure, we operate a treatment system that discharges effluent in accordance with our operating permits. But Eddington’s article leaves the impression he is answering the question, “Does leachate exceed the City’s regulatory permit requirements?” That’s not a question anyone has been asking.

It seems that the public has taken it for granted that the City plant is doing its job, that its job is only compliance, and not a more prudential approach to sustainability. However, as this EPA primer for municipal wastewater treatment systems states: “Progress on abating pollution has barely kept ahead of population growth, changes in industrial processes, technological developments, changes in land use, business innovations, and several other factors….[that] can greatly alter the amount and complexity of industrial wastes and challenge traditional treatment technology.” (click here to read it yourself)

This gets the crux of the question that Councilor Cosentino asked at the most recent Council meeting: “What’s in it [the leachate]?” The real question, if we may expand on Cosentino’s blunt inquiry, is what is the complete chemical composition of the leachate and what chemicals may be going untreated, or minimally treated, into our lake—the source of our drinking water. It may be the case that the ‘complexity’ of the waste, as the EPA points out, is far beyond our system’s capacity and we may not realize that we’ve failed to abate significant pollutants from our drinking water.

Unfortunately, Council discussion has not brought about much clarity about the leachate treatment issue. According to the Mayor, Council will convene a special work session in the coming weeks to discuss the issue in more detail, but first he asked each Councilor to submit questions that s/he would like answered about the topic. We hope that Council is moving toward a decision based on those gathered facts, but the first order of business might be getting a clear statement of what is really being asked of the City Council.

Last month, Council was considering a resolution to authorize the City Manager to renegotiate a contract with Casella. Council had a preexisting agreement with Casella to potentially stop the practice of trucking in the leachate in favor of the more controlled and, in the long run, less expensive, dump-to-plant pipeline for delivery. However, that agreement required Casella to foot the bill for the pipeline. That’s why Casella was seeking to have Ontario County do the financing through the creation of a new municipal sewer district.

But Ontario County Supervisors were (rightly) concerned about incurring almost $10 million of debt simply to facilitate Casella’s compliance with a requirement to treat the leachate. Instead, the County desired to create a standard residential-commercial sewer district where Casella would be just one of many ‘tie ins’ along the route between the landfill and the City line. To do this, the existing City-Casella agreement needed to be modified to both: (a) allow a third party (the County) to finance the construction of the line; and (b) abandon the commitment to a ‘dedicated’ flow system in favor of a standard sewer line.

In the course of those discussions members of the public, and Councilors, began to wonder why we have to take any leachate via any transportation method, and suddenly the contract resurfaced. It showed that not only had the former City Manager negotiated the leachate line, but he had also obligated the City to receive leachate from Casella for at least 10 years.

Although we recommended in our post on the issue, that Council table the resolution, it quickly became clear during the Council meeting that there was no good argument for agreeing to the contract modification. Not one. But Council agreed to table the motion pending “more information.” In an upcoming post, we would like to attempt to sort out what questions are actually before Council and how those questions about what to do should shape the public understanding of what we should know.

We don’t fault Eddington for publishing his piece, presumably with the OK from Matt Horn, the City Manager. It is perfectly appropriate for public officials to reassure citizens about such matters—if reassurance is warranted. Problem is, reassurance given regarding one aspect can easily lead folks to believe that all is well, everywhere, now and for the future. That is not necessarily the case.

There is lots more work to be done on leachate. In the mean time, Eddington should post all the data he has on the composition of the leachate on the City’s website, and let the sun shine in on it.

‘Mount Trashmore’ Could Give the Visitor’s Center a Run for its Money:Recapping Our Recent WGVA Appearances with Ted Baker

For those of you who missed our last two regular appearances on WGVA radio with Ted Baker, we thought we might re-visit what we covered by connecting two seemingly disparate issues in one post: the Visitors’ Center and leachate. Our purpose is to keep our readers thinking about the public policy priorities of our region, and, more importantly, how they ought to be determined.

Back in April, Ted talked with us about the realignment of Geneva’s elementary schools, which we viewed as a done deal, following from a flawed process, with a pre-ordained outcome orchestrated by school district officials. We had run a series of posts concerned with the objective research on the likely negative educational outcomes of realignment and the rapidly eroding public trust in the wake of shaky, shifting arguments given by the district in support of its decision.

At the close of the interview, Ted asked us about the $4 million member item that Senator Nozzolio earmarked for some as-yet-to-be-determined destination project on Geneva’s lakefront. It appeared that the project had shifted from the Chamber of Commerce’s initial proposal for enhanced offices and Visitors Center-- unveiled to the public as Building 12 of the infamous Bergmann Report-- to a true regional attraction with a direct tie-in to the lake.

Despite word from the Senator’s staff that the money had been ‘frozen’ in the midst of the State’s fiscal crisis, the City Council named a community-based planning committee to review the project ideas and bring their recommendations back to the public. What emerged was a proposed partnership with the Finger Lakes Boating Museum, a group dedicated to showcasing and in many cases, reviving the art of boatbuilding in the Finger Lakes tradition. In taking this step, the committee has clearly endorsed the policy (recommended in the Bergmann plan) of promoting Geneva as a hub of regional tourism.
While we still expect the Council to exercise due diligence in examining the feasibility, financials, and visitor projections of the Museum as proposed, we find it at least conceptually, to be a major improvement over the idea of an exclusive tower of condos. on the lakefront.

In our May appearance, we talked with Ted about the proposal of Ontario County and Casella (who leases and operates the County landfill) to construct a direct sewer line from the City’s system, through the Town of Seneca, to the landfill to pipe in leachate. Once again, concerns about transparency and accountability arose when a long lost contract between the City and Casella to treat leachate mysteriously appeared just hours before a vote on the project.

On air, we pointed out the inherent tension, if not an outright contradiction, in pursuing leachate treatment, and thus promoting the waste management industry which threatens the perception and the reality of the Finger Lakes as a major tourist region. To put it another way: promoting the growth of the County landfill would seem to inhibit the growth of tourism. Will Geneva be seen as a ‘Gateway’ to the Finger Lakes, or to the landfills?

(By the way, we believe Geneva should retire the ‘Gateway to the Finger Lakes’ slogan anyway, because it suggests that one should only pass through Geneva on the way to some other destination, but we’d prefer that it be given up in favor of something more flattering, not less!)

But, wait—maybe there’s an angle we’ve been missing here! In Virginia, the State Tourism Board does an excellent job of promoting “Mount Trashmore” as a premier destination. According to their website, “World-renowned Mount Trashmore Park is 165 acres, 60 feet high, over 800 feet long, and was created by compacting layers of solid waste and clean soil. Recognized for its environmental feat, the park features the Water Wise demonstration garden that boasts xeriscaping where you can learn how to create a beautiful garden with minimal water requirements.” There’s a picnic area, playground for the kids, basketball court, and more. They even allow fishing in the ponds!

Now perhaps we’re being unfair to Virginia. After all, you may say that they’re just making the best of a bad situation. That may be true, but there is a lesson to be learned here: A failure to set and maintain community priorities and standards can lead to the pursuit of mutually exclusive endeavors.

Either we want to protect our water, our vistas, and the wine/tourism industry they support or, we want to pursue any and all revenue sources, even if they are linked to industries that are inconsistent with our community vision. Either we want to be known as the community that understands and promotes sustainability, or we want to be the place where people send their waste so they don’t have to deal with it themselves. Either we want to be Geneva, a community that invests in its downtown-lakefront amenities, or we want to be Mount Trashmore, inviting people to fish on the land where their garbage is buried.

It’s all about good public policy and transparent, accountable decision-making. Take a listen to the radio interviews and take a moment to think about it.

How Green Is Our City (Part 1):How Clean Is Our Water?

How Green is Your City? (2007), written by Warren Karlenzig, features the “SustainLane US City Rankings” for “urban sustainability” of the 50 largest cities in the country. The City of Geneva is not on the list, but we felt Geneva ought to conduct its own assessment of just how green we are.

Karlenzig defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the quality of life of future generations.” (p. 1) There are 15 factors used to generate the City Rankings: city commuting, metro public transit, air quality, tap water quality, solid waste diversion, planning/land use, city innovation, housing affordability, natural disaster risk, energy/climate change policy, local food and agriculture, green economy, knowledge base, and LEED (green) buildings.

In light of all the discussion about leachate and gasification, we thought a ‘green assessment’ should take up the tap water quality issue first. The Karlenzig report relies on the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) December 2005 US city drinking water database. The EWG, in turn, relies on tap water testing data from state water offices, which ‘collects it from drinking water utilities,” as required by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act (1974/1986/1996).

We checked out data for our own City of Geneva, and you can, too. (click here for site)

Here’s what it says about the City of Geneva tap water: A total of 14 contaminants were detected (arsenic, barium, chromium, mercury, nitrate, selenium, antimony, thallium, chloroform, bromoform, bromodichloromethane, dibrromochchloromethane, total trihalomethanes, alpha particle activity).

Breaking down the 14 by their source-- where they come from-- the largest category of pollutants was “industrial pollutants” (9), followed by “naturally occurring” (6), and “water treatment and distribution byproducts” (5), and other categories. (A contaminant may appear in more than one category.)

The EWG then looked at these contaminants from a health perspective, assessing “health based limits,” which “include enforceable drinking water limits (called Maximum Contaminant Limits, or MCLs) as well as governmental, non-enforceable health guidelines, such as Maximum Contaminant Limit Goals (MCLGs), lifetime health advisory levels, one-day and ten-day advisory levels to protect children from non-cancer health endpoints, and other government-established health guidelines for tap water contaminants.”

The EWG health summary identified “health effects or target organs of contaminants found: Cardiovascular or Blood Toxicity, Cancer, Developmental Toxicity, Endocrine Toxicity, Immunotoxicity, Kidney Toxicity, Gastrointestinal or Liver Toxicity, Neurotoxicity, Reproductive Toxicity, Respiratory Toxicity, and Skin Sensitivity.”

About arsenic, the EPA says:

“Arsenic is a semi-metal element in the periodic table. It is odorless and tasteless. It enters drinking water supplies from natural deposits in the earth or from agricultural and industrial practices.

Non-cancer effects can include thickening and discoloration of the skin, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting; diarrhea; numbness in hands and feet; partial paralysis; and blindness. Arsenic has been linked to cancer of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidney, nasal passages, liver, and prostate.

EPA has set the arsenic standard for drinking water at .010 parts per million (10 parts per billion) to protect consumers served by public water systems from the effects of long-term, chronic exposure to arsenic. Water systems must comply with this standard by January 23, 2006, providing additional protection to an estimated 13 million Americans.

Sources of contamination
Erosion of natural deposits; runoff from orchards, runoff from glass & electronic production wastes”

Ironically, the percentage of pollutants over “health based limits” was highest for the water treatment category; 4 out of 5 pollutants in the water treatment category were over EWG health based limits. Is what we add to the water to keep it clean itself a health risk?

From the EWG perspective, “The top contaminants of concern for the City of Geneva are: arsenic, bromodichloromethane, and thallium.” For all three, levels exceeded EWG health limits but not legal limits. According to EWG, across the nation, they found “over 90% compliance with enforceable health standards,” but, unfortunately, the problem is “the EPA’s failure to establish health standards and monitoring requirements.” Combining all nationwide data, EWG finds 260 contaminants in the drinking water, with 141 of the 260 unregulated, i.e., without any safety standards, by the EPA.

Here is EWG summary of the situation in Geneva:

“An Environmental Working Group analysis of tap water tests from 2001 through 2002 shows that customers of Geneva City drank water containing up to 14 pollutants. Geneva City is one of 65,000 water suppliers across the country wrestling with treating water polluted by sprawl, sewage, factory.”

The EPA maintains a “Consumer Confidence Report” website with annual drinking water quality reports from water suppliers who voluntarily list themselves. The City of Geneva is not on the list.

Before you run out and buy water from another source, know that most bottled water, for example, is not legally required to be tested, and when it has been tested, it has been shown to be not necessarily safer than tap water. Instead, we point out that the conclusion of the Assessment of National Tap Water Quality is “utilities need more money to monitor for contaminants and protect source waters.” In the context of the leachate discussion, where the nature and quantity of pollutants entering our treatment plant and exiting into our source of drinking water is not clearly understood, this seems wise counsel for the City Council.

Setting the Table For a 'No' Vote:25 Unanswered Questions About the Leachate Contract

Last week, a motion was brought forward for Council to authorize the City Manager to enter into negotiations with Casella for a possible leachate line from the Ontario County Landfill to the City of Geneva Waste Water Treatment Plant. In our previous post, we had called for a tabling of the motion, and, Wednesday night, it was tabled.

At the time, the table seemed the only responsible vote for Council-- at least in light of the last minute disclosure of a contract between the City and Casella that had been assumed not to exist. The City Attorney and City Manager had told both the public and Councilors that no contract existed in the weeks leading up to the proposed ‘renegotiation’.

Turns out, there are so many unknowns, and so many risks, and so many questionable aspects, for this whole deal that the resolution ought to be simply voted down—defeated. Period. To prove our point, we came up with 25 questions—actually, we stopped at 25- that individually raise enough doubts to call the whole thing off, and collectively warrant calling the whole issue a ‘fiasco’:

1. Why in the world would anyone allow a garbage dump to pour its leachate into the water they drink without knowing for sure what is in it?
2. Does the City have any existing policy for environmental sustainability?
3. Why would the Council, in 2005, authorize the City Manager to “negotiate and execute” a contract, but not hold a discussion of the provisions of the contract?
4. Was the 2005 contract in the City’s best interest?
5. Why did the City never provide the specific “parameters” for the chemical composition of the leachate it received from the landfill, as it said it would in the now-found 2005 contract?
6. What, exactly, are the current parameters, including all substances tested for and amounts?
7. What toxic substances are not tested for?
8. What toxic substances should be tested for, given known composition of landfills?
9. What is the comparative cancer rate for the City of Geneva?
10. Must the City accept leachate from the Casella under any conditions?
11. Does the City have to agree to a sewer line for the leachate if Casella calls for one?
12. Why would the current City Attorney not know of the existence of such a contract?
13. Why would the current City Manager not know of the existence of such a contract?
14. How could anyone be talking about authorizing the current City Manager to enter into negotiations with Casella about a leachate line and have no knowledge of the current contract?
15. Where was the current contract found?
16. Who found it?
17. Why was it not brought forward sooner?
18. What other unknown contracts are there?
19. Why did it take sustained community based inquiries to bring all this to light?
20. Why do citizens appear to be doing more due diligence on these issues than the elected and appointed officials?
21. Why was there so little outrage expressed about the missing contract by Councilors at Wednesday night’s meeting?
22. Who in the administration is accountable for this fiasco?
23. Why is that not one private citizen came forward at the meeting to speak in favor of the leachate deal?
24. Why is that City staff and Casella seem to be the only ones in favor of the leachate deal?
25. What are the exact, net revenue amounts, per year, for the City of Geneva from Casella? (This means taking what’s billed and subtracting the costs of treatment, including chemicals, energy, staff, and administration costs in appropriate, proportional amounts.
    

Councilor Alcock put it well: “No one wants this, so why are we even discussing it?” Given the justifiable public outcry, and the mountain of missing information, there is lots more to discuss in terms of accountability and the leachate itself. Let’s put a moratorium on leachate until these 25 questions, and all others, are answered to the community’s satisfaction.

Contract Garbage and Leachate and Gasification--Oh My! (part II):Rising's 2005 City/Casella Contract Locks Geneva Into Multi-Year Deal

Despite numerous statements that no such contract existed, a 2005 contract (click here to read the contract) signed by former City Manager Rich Rising, released to the public today, locks the City into a 10-year agreement to treat leachate from the Ontario County Landfill.

The contract stipulates that the leachate may be transported to the Doran Avenue (Geneva) treatment plant (WTP) “via truck or sewer line” and that Casella “may elect, at its sole expense, to construct a sewer line to convey leachate directly from the Landfill to the WTP.” It appears that the City is obligated to take the leachate.

The contract goes on to say City may re-negotiate the price, if the City experiences additional operating expenses involved in treating the leachate. The contract also specifies, under the “sampling and monitoring requirements” section, “the leachate will be sampled and analyzed for parameters to be provided by the City.” It would appear that, in light of serious concerns about the composition of leachate directly or indirectly from a new, untested “gasification” process-- also in the works at the landfill—Council ought to take a hard line on those parameters. Specific parameters are not included in the 2005 contract.

Until yesterday, it appears, the City Attorney (David Foster), the City Manager (Matt Horn), and the Director of Public Works (Gordon Eddington), were unaware that such a contract existed. According to local attorney Sam Bonney, Foster’s original response to Bonney’s request for a copy of the contract was that such a contract did not exist. Likewise, an inquiry from Council to the current City Manager turned up no documents. Yet, the day before the Council vote, the contract surfaced on the City’s website.

Where was the contract found and who found it? The public and Council are owed answers. (File that under “TRUST.”) The answers will say much about how well City government is functioning, when in the weeks long build up to a major Council decision related to the leachate, Councilors and staff did not have their hands on a critical document, namely, the current leachate contract.

Our most recent post on the Ontario County landfill, operated by Casella Waste Systems, began with a reminder to our readers that regional awareness and activism are appropriate and, in fact, necessary, to prevent the deal-making that might well lead to the long term environmental degradation of our city and Finger Lakes area. It is an outrage that our elected officials leave it to activists to do the due diligence that ought to be their own, as the elected representatives of the people.

As we emphasized in that post, overall, the best choice the County could make at this point would be to terminate the lease arrangement with Casella altogether! This would return what has become an international garbage extravaganza to its more humble origins as a local municipal waste repository.

After all, what will we do with our own garbage when the County landfill is full, in part, with “long haul volume from both Eastern and downstate markets” (Casella’s own characterization of their work in Ontario County, as documented in this report to their shareholders, page 8).

Hardly likely they’ll dump Cassella, so, it seems the least the County Supervisors could do as stewards of the public interest is to reject ‘gasification’—a Star Wars garbage plant that would serve only to import more garbage from across the galaxy—and for Casella’s profit, not the common good--- and export potentially toxic emissions (at the County’s, which is to say, the tax payers,’ expense).

Sure, the County could make a quick buck on the project, but at what cost—our long term health and safety? This is not exactly a ‘Sophie’s Choice.’ There is no moral dilemma here. The simple answer is that greed must not triumph over common sense.

Likewise with deliberations at the City level—here in the City of Geneva—about treating the landfill’s leachate, from both Ontario County and Seneca County. For years, leachate treatment has been discussed at the City level along the following lines: How much do we charge per gallon treated? How well are we cleaning it before being discharged into the lake? How do we get it from their site(s) to our plant in the most-efficient, least-dangerous way?

But why are we even talking about the how’s when we haven’t ever dealt with the why’s? Underlying all of these concerns is the implicit assumption— implicit and affirmed on a regular basis by former City Manager, Rich Rising, and the current Director of public Works, that the City was somehow legally obligated to accept the leachate. While that turns out to be true, the terms of the contract were never known to Council members and the public until today: the day of the vote. Current City Manager, Matt Horn, who according to the local paper, supports the sewer line for the leachate, has said that he could find no contract, no agreement, not even a gentlemen’s agreement that Geneva has to take the leachate.

Thus Council waded through truck traffic vs. a dedicated sewer line, the cost to treat vs. the amount charged to the source, etc., hammering on the how the City of Geneva might handle the leachate, rather than the critical question, “Should the City of Geneva handle the leachate?”

This explains why, in 2004, City Council unanimously supported a plan for Casella to construct, at their own expense, a dedicated sewer pipe from the landfill to the City line, complete with City-controlled shut-off valves in case of emergency. The idea was to eliminate additional truck traffic generated by the need to haul the material daily from the landfill to the wastewater treatment plant.

This plan culminated in the March 2, 2005 vote to enter into an agreement to treat leachate coming to the city via a dedicated line. Again, from the presentation made at the beginning of the meeting (detailed in the minutes available here), the primary concern was safety of transport and reduction of truck traffic.

The point was then made that this leachate had been coming to the city for years, and this was a new opportunity to deal with it in a safer, less offensive, more efficient manner. It was presented to Council as a way to modify an existing agreement, not a fundamental decision about whether or not an agreement was a good idea in itself.

To be fair, a case could be made that, if charged at an appropriately high rate, the leachate treatment could prove profitable to the City of Geneva. A steady stream of revenue in hard times to help keep taxes down. And it’s true that the City of Geneva has treated leachate for almost 30 years. But what began as part of a local effort at local municipal waste management has morphed, through contracts with private trash importers, into an industrial operation in support of private enterprise.

The total operation brings in less than $150,000/year (see budget page 82) or about 5% of the sewer fees paid by City residents. Total leachate treatment net revenue for leachate received from Ontario County in 2007 was approximately $80,000; for 2008, approximately $118,000; for 2009, so far, about $48,000.

We think it’s an uncontroversial claim that no contamination of Seneca Lake is the only acceptable position. While household waste, the normal ‘sewage treatment’ that such plants are intended for, is not an entirely ‘clean’ process, we think it is also uncontroversial to say that household sewage + landfill leachate is less environmentally-friendly than household sewage alone.

So the question is this: What price tag, if any, do we put on clean water? Is $150,000 our asking price for potential long term contamination? Is any price worth the risk?

Instead, the obligation Council has is to the health and welfare of the people of Geneva, and to some extent the larger region, and that obligation must remain at the forefront of their decision-making. In light of these new disclosures, Council should hold a public discussion on the issue of leachate, but take no action tonight.

Garbage, and Leachate, and Gasification-- Oh My! (Part I)

In September 2003, Ontario County was well on its way towards executing a 25 year lease with Casella Waste Systems that would forever alter the character of the landfill in the Town of Seneca. While not officially ‘privatized,’ because title (and environmental permits) for the dump remain in the County’s hands, what was once a 1,000 ton/day (or less) operation has turned into an international waste operation of over double that amount.

While the article in the Finger Lakes Times at the time focused mostly on the heated exchange between then-Mayoral candidates Don Cass and Vince Scalise and County Supervisor, Don Ninestine, the real ‘meat and potatoes’ of the discussion hinged on an examination of Casella’s track record in other communities and the environmental impacts on the immediate and surrounding area that the change would bring.

Augustine was one of the “audience members” that the paper noted brought information concerning Casella’s lawsuits, missed payments, and environmental infractions in the company’s other host communities. But just two days after that meeting, County Supervisors held their public hearing on the transfer of operations, which was approved shortly thereafter.

Much like the ethanol plant discussions of 2008, Augustine was chided for ‘meddling’ in the affairs of communities outside of Geneva’s borders. After all, she was asked, “Isn’t there enough in this City to worry about without trying to tell other people what to do?” In our opinion, regional thinking has been, and will continue to be a sensible, sound, and smart exercise for City Councilors to engage in. And now, six years later, we see all too well the direct, negative impact provincial thinking can have on a community.

As predicted at that 2003 meeting, the landfill has been expanded at a rate that is unsustainable in the long term. A permit modification in 2007 (which some City Councilors also voiced opposition to) raised the annual cap on dumping over 300,000 tons (from 612,000 to 917,000).

Not only will we run out of space to store other people’s garbage (which is the Casella business model), but we will be forced to pursue other avenues for our own trash. So, while the County may be bringing in millions of dollars from the Casella contract at present, there does not appear to be much contingency planning for the future of solid waste in Ontario County.

Although Casella has not made its most recent large payment to the County (to the tune of $850,000), we do not hold out much hope that County supervisors will determine Casella to have breached the terms of the lease and reclaim management of the landfill. And thus the focus of this series of posts is not on that most-prudent of all options, but rather to look at the other matters under consideration with regard to the Casella enterprise.

In the 1980s, the County landfill was a proposed site for an incinerator. An incinerator, as the name suggests, is a facility that burns trash. It was soundly rejected by the community. What Casella is proposing now is not technically an ‘incinerator’, but rather a ‘gasification’ project—which is expected to heat trash to convert it to gas which they allege could be harvested as energy. But whether it’s heated in an oxygen-rich environment (incineration) or oxygen-poor environment (gasification), the environmental concerns are virtually the same: The byproducts of heating streams of trash are toxic emissions and toxic ash. As if that wasn’t enough of a reason not to proceed, Casella is asking the County to help fund this experimental project, by foregoing the previous lease provision that a first-class hydroponics center be developed.

This site, from another gasification firm in Idaho provides an interesting overview of the concept and concerns.

While the Finger Lakes Times has virtually ignored the issue, much has been written in the Canandaigua Messenger about it, and the Finger Lakes Zero Waste Coalition maintains a robust public information campaign and website with additional information. We will not hold our breath for more local coverage before a decision is made, but in the meantime, check out these links to learn more about the proposed project and the effective, mounting opposition:

Messenger post articles on gasification:
http://www.mpnnow.com/archive/x180634229/Boating-group-opposes-Casella-plan
http://www.mpnnow.com/archive/x549599691/Five-things-you-dont-know-about-the-Ontario-County-landfill
http://www.mpnnow.com/archive/x1092982690/Landfill-operator-will-soon-pay-county


Finger Lakes Zero Waste Coalition: http://www.fingerlakeszerowaste.org/FLZW/Welcome.html

One explanation for the local paper’s virtual silence on the matter may be that of the Geneva City Council, which has not yet taken a position on the issue. With regard to the ethanol scare, City Council had made its concerns about air and water quality clear well before the project had gotten to the point that the proposed gasification plant finds itself at. One worksession devoted to the topic generated a list of additional unanswered questions and concerns. At that meeting, and a subsequent Regular Council meeting, Supervisor Evangelista fielded questions but did not make clear if and when the City Council would be formally consulted on the project. At the April 1st meeting, Evangelista and Mayor Einstein agreed that a joint meeting between City Council and the County Solid Waste committee was in order. Either that meeting has not yet taken place or it was not reported on, but the next Council meeting at which a formal position might be taken is rapidly approaching (May 6th). In our next post, we will discuss the issue of ‘leachate treatment,’ what it entails and what connection the issue has to both the gasification project and the international waste management operations happening to the east (Seneca Meadows) and west (Casella) of the City’s borders. We will also look at how a Council position on the issue might be framed within the larger context of the City of Geneva’s ‘green’ initiatives, spearheaded by the newly formed Green Geneva Committee.

The Price of Democracy: What's a Councilor Worth?

City Councilors and the Mayor are paid employees of the City. Currently, City Councilors are paid $4,000 per year and the Mayor receives $7,500. They have not received a raise in almost a decade. On the one hand, we wonder if they should be paid at all. After all, the School Board, the Planning Board, and the Zoning Board of Appeals are not paid. On the other hand, if there are good reasons for a salary, we wonder what a fair wage would be.

By the end of 2008, the new Council had met over 40 times since being inaugurated on January 1, 2008. To put that in perspective, it’s about a dozen more meetings than the former Council had in 2007, almost twice as many meetings as were had in 2006, and over two times the amount Council met in 2005, when only 18 meetings were held during the entire year.

And not only has the frequency of meetings increased, but the overall time spent in meetings has increased as well. On a rough average, Council meetings in 2008 were about 4 hours in length. That means that City Councilors, assuming they attend every meeting, have logged about 160 hours governing the City, as body.

In addition to the Council meetings and work sessions, Councilors have numerous other responsibilities: e-mails, phone calls, interacting with constituents, attending meetings and events of other groups and committees, reading reports and preparing for meetings, and researching and studying various issues. These activities would fall under “engaged governance,” which was identified by Council as one of its new priorities, described there as what Councilors do “in between meetings.” A truly engaged Councilor, who does all of these things, is likely spending somewhere close to 20 hours/week on City-related business.

So, let’s say a Councilor does only the bare minimum--showing up at meetings (again, we’ll assume perfect attendance). For 2008, this means that Councilors received roughly $25/hour before taxes (none of the positions are eligible for retirement or health care benefits and therefore do not have those items withheld). Someone who makes $25/hour at a full time job would earn, at an annual rate, $52,000/year.

On the other end of the spectrum, someone who is very engaged, well prepared, and committed to serving the public whenever and wherever needed, is being paid at a rate of about $8/hour. That’s comparable to a full time job that pays less than $20,000/year. (But remember that Councilors do, in reality, only receive a total of $4,000 in annual compensation).

Now, let’s look back on 2006, a year when many interesting things were happening in the City, certainly not a bright spot for open and accountable governing. Again, assuming that each of the 20 meetings was about 4 hours long, that means that the ‘bare minimum’ Councilor earned about $50/hour, a rate that would pay over $100,000 as a full time job.

Not too long ago, the Finger Lakes Times reported that the governing board of the Town of Geneva gave itself a sizeable raise. Unfortunately the local paper created a great deal of confusion by stating “Town Councilors” had received an increase and were divvying up a one-time lump sum retroactive payment. The Town of Geneva is governed by a Town Board whose members are called Board Members. The City of Geneva is governed by a City Council whose members (8) are called Councilors and a Mayor who has equal voting rights. To set the record straight, that article was about the Town, not the City.

We’re NOT advocating for a pay raise for City Council. What we want to point out is the disparity in pay for activity and inactivity. Under the previous administration, Council gave most of its decision-making power over to the appointed Manager, and they didn’t even complete the annual performance evaluations that would have given at least a modicum of accountability to the post. This created what we termed an ‘inversion of power’ and it was bad business for Geneva. But with this inversion came less work for Council, and at the same rate of pay, it meant that Council was essentially earning more money for doing less.

It seems that the concept of engaged governance has brought back the notion of ‘public service’ in Geneva. The Councilors are not volunteers, but their compensation seems, for the most part, to be more of a token stipend than a salary commensurate with the work being performed. What do you think?