HomeMy WebLinkAbout01272014 City Council Laydowns \ 0714_
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Addition to the City Manager's Report for January 27th, 2014
The Electric department is scheduling an outage on Thursday, January 30th from 10 am to 3pm.
The two businesses which will be affected have been contacted. (Van Gilder Hotel and Liberty
Theater)
The reason for the outage it to replace a damaged pole.
Late reported Purchase Orders:
• Digital Payment Technologies for the Parking, Campground, and Harbor departments
totaling $31,946.00, purchase of 3 pay stations
• JWC Environmental for Public Works totaling $27,917.00, purchase a new muffin
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Seward City Council- prepared statement
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Some of you inay recall theillegal openbum that forcedthe closure of-my
business and drove me'froin'niy home'on Nash Road in 2001.I remember it
like it was yesterday.
After the epic investigation arid'lawsuit played-out.in the pages of the local
newspaper I never imagined anything even remotely like it could occur in
our community again. As a natter'of fact that event inspired the creation,of •
RBCA and ever since then we have striven to educate ourselves and the
public on local conservation and compliance issues.
Even so,just a couple of weeks ago, an all-too-similar:scene unfolded before
our eyes in broad daylight: As in the 2001 fire,the folks in charge of.this
recent fire also failed to mention their intentions to burn items listed in •
their permit applications. Also, as in the 2001 fire if their intention to burn
anything other than unpainted,untreated woody debris had been revealed
beforehand;the burn would not have been allowed. Just as in 2001 a local
fire department official visited both,fires on a number of occasions
throughout the days-long fires but'failed to notice or acknowledge that items
other than unpainted,untreated woody debris were burned.In fact both
• allowed the obviously illegal burns to continue.
.The parallels between fires continue into the aftermath and investigations. In
both fires no one in charge admits any knowledge of unpermitted material
being burned in spite of overwhelming physical evidence to the contrary. It
took the EPA and FBI Environmental Crimes Units thousands upon
• thousands of dollars and two years, and the civil courts six years to sort it all
out after the '01 fire.
I cannot fathom that the folks in charge who planned and managed this
recent illegal burn with public funds through a city contract did not realize
that burning treated lumber of any type is harmful to the environment and
public health, and in fact illegal. This is remedial knowledge. The fact that .
DEC ordered this fire put out after realizing that they had been duped and
that it was in fact treated lumber being burned and then to have that order
blatantly ignored deserves further scrutiny and consequences. •
Knowing that both the 2001 and 2014 illegal burns were organized and
overseen by both a former Seward police chief and a Seward city
councilwoman begs the question of whether there are different sets of rules
and levels of enforcement for different folks in our community. In both
instances there seems to have been a concerted effort to conceal their
intentions and then afterwards to conceal what transpired.
Some of the differences are equally disturbing. It was actually a different
former Seward police chief and a different Seward city councilwoman back
then than it is now. And back in 2001 they burned garbage-filled vehicles
and buildings, whereas in the recent fire they burned known-to-be
chemically-treated dock timbers and allegedly ties.
Additionally, this most recent illegal burn was funded with our tax dollars
and blessed by our local authorities. Even though the names and materials
burned then and now are different, the pattern is awkwardly clear. This
cavalier attitude towards regulations that the city often displays must end
-Russ Maddox
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