10 April 2007

city of alexandria - cleco talks collapsing

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ALEXANDRIA UTILITY BILL CRISIS

mayor roy gives cleco two weeks to wrap up mediation talks says probability of a successful outcome now "a 50/50 shot."

mayor jacques roy "we cant continue this relationship (with cleco) as it exists right now we cant continue."

click link for video via kalb.com
length 8m58s
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mayor roy says that the city is to begin looking for other options in where the city buys its electricity from. well its about time. why would the city want to continue a business relationship with a company (cleco) that the city maintains had been engaged in a longtime systematic conspiracy to defraud the city for anyway? this whole cleco lawsuit mediation business seems kinda dodgy because if the city had the proof via the audit that cleco had been ripping them off then why go into mediation? why not just go directly to trial and get a judgement? an audit is an audit its right there in black and white and cleco couldnt argue with that.

councilman lawson gives the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results and says looking for electricity somewhere else sounds good blah, blah, blah...

councilman marshall pipes up and wants the mayor to look into a situation in the city's utility department councilman marshall says "is bad." that the clerks in the utility department attitudes sometimes are negative "a citizen walks in there with an already high utility bill they dont need to be talked down to by the person thats accepting the money as they paying their money so i think that maybe sometimes that attitudes may have to be changed or maybe we might have to make some changes in personnel down there." councilman marshall says that that he is hearing from constituents that the workers in the city's utility department are mistreating the city's citizen/ratepayers "they get talked to roughly or rudely by the staff down there it's bad enough paying four hundred dollar utility, five hundred dollar utility bill but then to be talked to as if iam crazy or too stupid to understand."

now, this is where the mayor loses us... again....mayor roy's answer to everything: "iam putting cameras in there ..." LOL! is this guy a freaking shutter-bug or what? you dont need cameras in there. what you need is good management for the city's utility department! why spend all this money buying and installing an elaborate spy camera system when all you need is good management to train, supervise, motivate and inspire the clerks properly?

see also
cenla media blog
mayor roy "the 11th hour is here...we need to do something about it right now."
and also
update: statement from CLECO
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updated 8:55 pm cdt tuesday 10 april 2007
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