Water related rant, again

Once again, Calgary is under water restrictions as they tie in the new pipeline to replace or supplement the broken old one. This builds off a water post from June 2024, here. This time I remembered to get a photo of our water meter the morning of November 4.

So far the city as a whole is under the desired limit. We don't have a lawn or hanging baskets to water now. Navy showers and being mellow about yellow should cut the consumption quite a bit.

Today the City announced a proposed budget that would increase our property tax by 15%. (Source here.) I'm cranky about this, but not for the reasons you might suspect.

One, the City recently paid the panel chair on the team that reviewed the water main break debacle $1.7 million dollars. It works out to about $1000 an hour. He was probably the best paid person in the entire province during that time. That was out of a total bill of $2.3 million. The rest of the team was paid about $80,000 each. (Source here.) The fee was agreed to by administration, but nobody seems to take the blame for such an egregious decision. Heads should roll. Yes the report was necessary. Yes, about $2.3 million is not an unreasonable total for such a complicated and comprehensive report done in such a short time frame. But why did one guy get almost three quarters of the panel's budget?

Two, the City has underspent it's water infrastructure budget for decades, because managers were rewarded for coming in under budget. We now see the result. Don't maintain a pipeline, and it will break. What happened to all that leftover money? Who made those decisions? If anyone on the denial side of those decisions is still working for the City, they should be fired. Lots are probably retired now, but they should be named.

Three, admin fees. They are supposed to provide for this sort of maintenance. I haven't seen any accounting of where it went. As I point out in my previous post, the admin fees can be higher than the actual cost of water. Which is ridiculous. There is no price incentive to save water. The admin fees should be done away with and the entire cost to supply water and treat wastewater should be boiled down to an amount per cubic meter delivered to the customer. Corporate customers that put our treated water in a plastic bottle to be sold for a huge markup should be priced out of business. 

Today there is an article in the Sprawl about City administration stonewalling.  (Support local in depth journalism here, it's great value for the money, with the frustration article here.) It isn't just journalists they stonewall. City staff seeking information from another department get stonewalled. Citizens get stonewalled big time. I could totally believe there is a City manual outlining accepted tactics to avoid responding to questions. Even Councillors get stonewalled. Reports to the public about proposed projects or changes to the regulatory environment are a form of stonewalling. 

Senior administration is a blight. To be clear, I don't mean regular workers. They're putting in their time as best they can in a brutal system, putting up with overlords who have no concept of how to do the work they demand get done faster with inadequate tools. I have zero faith that the numbers put forward in the budget are related to the needs of the City. There's lots of administrative pork in the budget; it's just really difficult to find it because they're experts at hiding it. Sir Humphrey Appleby would be right at home, and could probably learn a few new tricks. (I hope I don't need to tell you who he was. If you don't know, the hint is Yes Minister, and Yes Prime Minister. You are in for a treat. Thank me later.)

As we get into the budget deliberation cycle, there will be much more detail about which departments are getting the increases and why. It's probably going to be bad for my blood pressure.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film, another view of the Carseland killing machine, original post here. 

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Serendipity

I am not the Walrus. I hope.

I went to sleep last night with "I am the Walrus" running through my mind. That happens sometimes, a song or chunk of a book, or a snippet of real life gets caught in a loop and goes around and around. Sometimes it goes away by itself. Sometimes I forcibly evict it by thinking of another ear worm, and then at least I'm listening to something different for a while.

I woke up in the night to deal with bio-pressures, and then couldn't go back to sleep. A text worm took over my brain starting to write the president's report for our community association's AGM. After a while I gave up, got up, and started typing. 1,000 words or so later I had lots of what I had been thinking about safely captured in text. It still needs editing, of course, but that's a different task. 

Most people get into trouble writing stuff because they start by trying to produce polished prose when they don't know what they want to say. The way to do it is to start with a short statement of the core message. That might be 'you're fired', or 'give me my money back', or any number of other messages. Profanity is encouraged. Then keep that in mind and barf out anything that is associated with that message to add detail or supporting facts. Add in different ways of saying the same thing, trying to be more polite.

Then comes the important part. Editing. Prune away the words you don't need. Say the Strunk and White's advice to yourself, or out loud. "OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS!"

The actual fingers on the keyboard thing is a problem for most people. They were never taught to type, and when forced to use a computer just made up a system. Usually that involves only two fingers, and looking at the keyboard to do it. It hurts my soul when I see that. I was taught to type in high school, while not looking at the keys. It kind of disturbed some of my co-workers over the years that I could be looking at them and carrying on a conversation, while typing something else. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, that typing course was the most useful course I've ever taken. Mom was right about it, even if the reason she gave at the time was there would be lots of girls in the class.

When I was doing software training I knew everything about how my day was going to go when I watched people log in with the user name and login I had just given them. This wasn't some arcane series of mixed case computer generated letters and numbers. It was their name, and the password was the plant name with a 2 digit number. The people that whizzed through it got recruited to help the ones that struggled. I heard of one guy that had been bribing the plant admin staff to do his timesheet and expense report for him, but he was told that it was his fingers that had to deal with my database, and they would be watching. He retired instead.

1. This is a display at the central library for your amusement.

2. A very detailed part of the above image.

3. Another part of it. See if you can find it.

4. Information about the work.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Serendipity

Another FC walk, not in voter's flats

Voting has been much on my mind lately. The UCP wasted an estimated $84 million dollars on the recent unwanted referendum. The only person that wanted it as is was Smith, trying to save her job. It seems to be intact for now, but with any luck she will be spat out of office at the election a year from now, back to the radio dregs where she belongs. She should be looking at how riding gerrymandering turned out for the Republicans.

And then there was the great Trump repudiation earlier this week. They're still counting a couple of races. I have hopes that the Democrats can achieve a veto proof majority in house and Senate, forcing Trump to sign bills he hates. 

I was actually walking near Votier’s flats on US election day. This area was named after James Votier; one of Calgary’s first settlers. I've often heard it referred to as "Voter's Flats". 

Fish Creek has been going upscale lately. Tired old washrooms have been replaced. The main pathway from end to end is being widened. Any luck this will give the cyclists and pedestrians more room to dodge each other. 

1. The view from the top of Votier's Flats. The wind and water was so calm I couldn't help myself taking reflection photos.

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5. Brand new, almost unsullied pavement.

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Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film. The other swampy image from near last month Image of the Month.

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago. Part of the entrance to the downtown public library.

Flower. That one rose blossom, still hanging in there on Nov 1.

Landscape

Serendipity. The year we didn't drain the water barrels before the snow. That was no fun at all.

A Halloween walk near bridge 1

We've had a few cold and almost snowy days, but Halloween was nice. I was itchy to get out of the house and take one of the cameras for a walk. I went down to Fish Creek, walking a short loop from Shannon Terrace to bridge 1 and back.

Just so you know, none of these photos are immortal winners that will change your life. These are whatever caught my eye, without thinking about it much. I've been mostly doing film lately, and I think about that completely differently. 

All of these are places I've been before, but things change. Trees fall down, the river changes course. A couple of them I know I have photos of that same place taken from the same spot or quite close to it. Just different light, different season, different photo. What was important was getting out into the fresh air and enjoying the experience.

As a side note, we had 39 kids come to the door then we ran out of candy. Just as we were shutting the lights off another 5 came along. This is about the average number of kids lately, and they seem to be trending younger. We used to get a lot of tween and early teens, but not so much anymore. I'd have to go back and look at my photos from previous community association events, but I think the same is true.  Also more people coming to the events and public parties, fewer trick or treating on the street. There's probably social commentary there, but I'm not up for it.

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I was sad when I saw this stump. That's bridge 1 in the immediate background and the highway off in the distance. I've walked past this tree many times, and there was a big interesting burl on it. I've taken lots of photos of it, but it was a tough subject for me. You can see some of my history with it in these posts, here with a political rant, here with another walk through Fish Creek, here with amusing speculation, and here along with Dinosaur Provincial Park photos. 

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You might not be able to tell from the photo, but it looks like ants have chewed it through and through. No wonder it got blown over with some of the wind we've had lately. I looked, but if the burl is still on the trunk, it's on the bottom.

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Bridge 1 itself is is a utilitarian concrete structure that I typically wouldn't take photos of. But the view from it is nice, this happens to be looking downstream. The view upstream has changed, and if the weather stays nice I might go explore.

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A lady walking her dog had seen me taking the photo, and asked if there was an interesting bird. She was a bit confused when I said I'd just taken a photo of the trees because the light was nice. She didn't quite edge away and run, but I could see she was wondering a bit.

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You've had lots of photos so I'll pass on the Of the Day feature for today.