Nevada City City Council last night - disaster dry run, garbage, water rates, warming center, beautification

Just quick (and likely flawed; please report an error ) notes on the Wed. Oct 12 Nevada City City Council meeting (parts of which have been reported by Christopher Rosacker (on warming center - NC Council moves forward with homeless cold shelter ) and Jeff Pelline ( Water rates: The new elephant in the corner in Nevada City )).

At City Council meeting tonight: Nevada County Pedestrian Improvement Plan

Thanks to KNCO News, I learned that tonight's Nevada City City Council meeting will include "a presentation of the Nevada County Pedestrian Master Plan"; but as a pedestrian who provided input, I noticed it didn't reflect my concerns.

Enos v. Spencer, on improving local public schools, at Rebane's blog

Current Nevada County Supervisor John Spencer disparages public schools over in the comments at George Rebane's blog.

His constituent, former GV City Councilmember Steve Enos, asks some pointed questions in reply.

As of this writing, we see no response from Mr. Spencer.

Not-so-confidential to Steve Enos: I value your thoughts, but rarely see them. Please, send out alerts via Twitter, so those of us who get our local news through Nevada County Voices will know to go and read.

You can't judge a paper by its website

*
...or at least you can't judge with confidence, since the picture you'll form from the online site - bereft of columns, AP stories, the headlines applied to said stories and their placement - may be misleading.
(note: I realize* that the online paper likely *can't* show this info; but its absence can - and today, does - result in an online paper that's a lot more reasonable than its wood-pulp counterpart.)

Today, The Union illustrates this issue:

• On the front page - and on the website - you'll find an IMO excellent article by Dave Moller, taking our county Board of Supervisors to task for refusing to say who had applied for the county Clerk-Recorder position (vacated by the no longer moonlighting Kathleen Smith), or who screened the six applicants such that only Gregory Diaz emerged to be interviewed by the BOS, or how the screening process went.
  
  Halo of the day to reporter Dave Moller.
  


• But inside the paper, global warming denialism still reigns: you'll find yet another reactionary column by Pittsburgh PA former sports writer (and current denialist) Bill Steigerwald.
  (If you're reading the paper online you won't see this - the column's not visible on the paper's website, and googling steigerwald site:theunion.com brings up nothing.)

So - today, the wood pulp Union informs with good reporting on the one hand, and disinforms with a beyond-questionable column on the other. But the online Union only shows the good reporting. Is this another reason to just get the paper online?


again though - Dave Moller done good.

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I've sent an email to the paper's Readership Editor asking by what criteria they find it appropriate to run columns like Steigerwald's, and will report back the answer.
(or the stonewall, if past performance is any guarantee of future results)
(July 5 update: it was.)

For anyone who's curious: the global warming denialist Bill Steigerwald is not related to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center press officer Bill Steigerwald. (I'd asked both; only NASA Bill responded, saying no, they're very different people.)

Synchronicity

edited*, to make clear that this isn't the fault of the "new regime".

It turns out that, while I had my brain to the grindstone over on the Assignment Zero crowdsourcing homestretch*, working on a piece extolling the rich harvest of low-hanging local fruit that's likely overripe for the picking by citizen journalist watchdogs, the Nevada County Grand Jury was releasing a report (PDF on county website, HTML on NCDocuments) slamming Nevada City's government for decades of mismanagement far above and beyond the norm - "...so unusual and so extreme in dollars, personnel, customer service, and efficiency, that it is difficult to quantify."

So, yeah. What I said.

It stems from lack of oversight; and it manifests in lack of oversight.


But the drinking water is great. Thank you Chris.

Crowdsourcing, County Supervisors and An Inconvenient Truth

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Great news from Nevada County - global warming's not a problem; or even if it is, we should ignore it; and transparency is overrated. These are the messages I read as being sent by 4 of Nevada County's 5 supervisors to their constituents.

Regular readers may recall that in early April NCFocus did an interim report on a small crowdsourcing project here in Nevada County; one person in each district* had emailed their County Supervisor to ask whether and when he or she had seen the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and whether they were willing to have this information be public.

This project emerged from your correspondent's experience at the March 27 Board of Supervisors' meeting; during the public comment period I had asked whether the Supervisors had seen the film - by then it had been out on video for four months, after having shown in town for two months last summer - but chairman John Spencer jumped in to inform me that I was not permitted to ask questions during this period, I could only comment. His implication was that the general public had no right to know this information, that it was between a supervisor and that supervisor's constituents, if the supervisor chose to tell them.

I interpreted his unwillingness as stemming from a desire to avoid publicly answering an inconvenient question; subsequent events have not altered this impression.

The four of us contacted our supervisors to ask. The results:

• District I Supervisor Nate Beason answered my email after a week had passed; he did not recognize the legitimacy of the questions, and was only willing to say that he had seen the film, not when.
  (My reason for asking "when" was to find out whether he had seen it before or after the supervisors' meeting at which I was prevented from asking about it.)
  
  (Mr. Beason did subsequently speak* at Nevada County's StepItUp 2007 event on global warming, but - as with his speech* at the Town Hall Conference on peak oil in 2005 - did not take questions from the audience or remain in the room.*)
  


• District II Supervisor Sue Horne did not respond to an email asking whether her views had changed. Last summer she'd had this to say to her constituent:
  I do not believe that global warming is the impending crisis that Mr. Gore and others would like all Americans to feel personally responsible for. I will tell you quite honestly, Mr. Gore has little credibility in my view, and I have no interest in viewing a film he is associated with.
  
  I have attended a rural counties conference in which this subject was addressed by experts in the field. The consensus was, yes, there is global warming. It is probably cyclical in nature, and it is debatable as to what degree the earth is warming. Also, equally debatable is whether a change in human behavior to reduce ozone levels would have any sustaining altering affect on the planet's warming taking into consideration the natural atmospheric occurrences of our planet. I do believe in being good stewards of this beautiful planet we have been blessed with utilizing common sense and responsible actions.


• District III Supervisor John Spencer did respond to his constituent and answer the questions, but was not willing to have his answers be public.
  


• District IV Supervisor Hank Weston saw the film last summer, during the two month stretch when it was playing in local movie theaters, and found it informative and worthwhile.
  


• District V Supervisor Ted Owens was asked by Truckee-based freelance writer Ronnie Colby for his views on An Inconvenient Truth; Colby did not receive a reply from Mr. Owens.

That, in a nutshell, is Nevada County's government.