Swaying Directors 101

First, baffle 'em with bullshit...apart from the requisite myriad lengthy reports, prevent any director (and heaven forbid, multiple directors) from declaring that a bureaucrat's incompetence should lead to their termination.

Secondly, remember the motto "time heals all"...Greater Vernon directors are--monthly--faced with an Agenda that frequently exceeds 70 pages (the October 2/14 agenda was 82 pages), so if a bureaucrat drags an issue with successive "reports"--preferably lengthy reports--from one meeting to another, to yet another, directors will by then have grown tired of the issue's "lack of newness" and want it to go away.

Seemed to work.

Case in point:  the Highlands Golf private fire hydrant.
You may recall earlier blog entries (here and here and here and here and here) where I first tried to donate my private fire hydrant to Coldstream, then to Greater Vernon Water, with some to-and-fro'ing.

All because my annual tax on it is $560 this year, up from $470 last year.
But there's more to it than that, as many other "private fire hydrant" owners have never been charged Penny One for their hydrants.
So I was asking for procedural fairness, an obviously unknown term at Engineering.

And RDNO engineer McTaggart either outright lied when he said there were 17 private fire hydrant owners, and then a month later that there were 123 private fire hydrant owners...or proved his incompetence with the disparity between the two numbers.  It could be either. or both.

Back to how to sway Greater Vernon Advisory Committee directors.

The latest bureaucratic installment to directors on private fire hydrants is the 3-pager found on pages 10 thru 12 here.
Doubt there's anyone who believes that that document addresses the lack of procedural fairness in charging me $560.

Nor does it touch on--let alone reply to--GVAC chair Juliette Cunningham's comment at the September meeting regarding the $560 annual rate:  "I think we (directors) agree the rate for your private fire hydrant is exorbitant."

So, while Engineering has not addressed the "exorbitant rate" with an explanation--any explanation at all, they have managed to confuse directors.

Confuse them?
Really?
Engineering has confused directors.

Taking the heat of incompetence off themselves, Engineering has now soft-shoed nicely and pointed directors to new (albeit related) issues: 

• that there are indeed people who use unmetered fire hydrants for washing driveways (ours has never issued a drop for any purpose, even to fight a fire),
• that the annual tax for my fire hydrant is higher than that levied by the City of Vancouver ($500), the City of Kelowna ($301.44 flat fee), and the City of Prince George ($150 annual fire hydrant maintenance fee),
• that some owners contract parking lot, road and sidewalk cleaning, (we do not...ever) with contractors connecting to a private hydrant, which is unmetered water use that puts the drinking water supply at risk from cross connection contamination,
• that Engineering proposes staff develop policies and procedures on use and maintenance of private hydrants.  They want to track annual maintenance of fire hydrants, outline acceptable uses and conditions (requiring backflow prevention), educate private hydrant owners and develop enforcement measures for non-compliance.   Policy direction would see rates for unmetered use reexamined in 2015 based on policy conditions.  Use?  we do not use it...ever... and lastly,
• that staff time will be required to not only develop the policy and procedures, staff time is also needed to track annual maintenance, liaison with private hydrant owners and provide education on the GVW policy and carry out enforcement.

It took a year to find out that public hydrants are charged $133 annually versus my charge of $560.
No-one (not directors, not politicians, not bureaucrats) have given a reason for the disparity.

Did I receive procedural fairness?

No, not even an explanation why I was charged so much when other private fire hydrant owners (some are large facilities in Vernon) were not charged at all...ever.  On the contrary, Greater Vernon engineering tars everyone with the same brush by announcing to directors that some private fire hydrant owners use hydrant water to wash parking lots and driveways. 

And naturally, Engineering blames the three separate software programs in Coldstream, Vernon and the Regional District for not being able to put together a valid and substantial--and meaningful--list.

Any business owner or someone with a modicum of accounting acumen would know what to do:  get a clerk in each community to enter each annual invoice to a spreadsheet by certain categories, i.e. name/address, size and quantity of connection(s), metered/unmetered, historical cubic metres consumed, and invoice amounts, regardless of the software used to produce their invoices.
Presto!
Information!

So my "exorbitant rate" issue will likely lead to the hiring of more bureaucrats, as well as new bylaws.

"Do you think GVAC directors know they've been led through a maze by their noses?" queries Kia.

Most certainly.

It's sure a far cry from:  "I think we (directors) agree the rate for your private fire hydrant is exorbitant."

Like any old issue in an 80-page agenda each month, directors just want the topic to go away.

It's by design that the individual on the scale is small and insignificant.