City Reports – Page 126

Bullets for Beavers

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions November 24, 2008

It lacks the seasonal charm of “Toys for Tots”, or the spiritual intrigue of “Jews for Jesus”, but Rick Parker’s problem solving rhetoric in Sunday’s Gazette does have a certain clarity of purpose. He writes that if the emergency bank stabilization project was an effort to get rid of the beavers the city could have

shot them for the cost of a bullet instead of spending over 500,000 dollars.

Really? Shooting all 8 beavers with one bullet? That sounds like a fairly complicated proposal to me involving a billiards expert and maybe Cirque de Soleil. He goes on to say that there were “two engineering reports, one paid for by the property owner and one paid for by the city.” Actually there were three reports, the city demanded a second accounting when the first’ wasn’t alarming enough.

“Both basically said the same thing: the wall had moved in the previous six months more than 8 inches which explains the haste on the part of the city to effect repairs.“

Ahhhh, did you catch that meme-change? “The wall had moved“. Actually no report said the wall had moved, but that the supporting soil had moved away from the wall. With Worth A Dam’s historic evidence entirely refuting the bank bamboozle even Rick Parker knows there is no relevance to the soil argument. Maybe he had a heartfelt conversation with a council member, or city staff. Maybe he went to lunch with a beleaguered property owner, or watched the video, but Parker knows that the meme has to change, and quickly.

Otherwise, instead of looking like the city of Martinez wasted 500,000 dollars on a bunch of rodents, it will just look like they wasted it.

Beavers seen this weekend include dad, kits, and yearlings, just in time to be Thankful. Cheryl photographed this image of the lodge work on the west bank. Looks like the beavers have some recreational plans for the holidays. Yes, that is a putter.

Impervious

heidi08 City Reports November 20, 2008

Tonight the council demonstrated their ability to withstand factual information of any kind. I delivered these comments along with large scale posters of the two historic photographs.

The Resolution tonight has my full support and should receive a unanimous vote. This project is certainly completed. You completed the heck out of it. I’m unclear why the council asked staff to weigh in on the historic photos discovered by Worth A Dam but you did so I wanted to make sure you had my comments as well.

This first photo, never printed in any newspaper but discussed in the LA Times, shows the de-watered creek in 2000. By itself it refutes the major argument. The Cal Engineering Sept 22 report said the emergency conditions were caused by the widening separation of the bank from the wall.

Obviously, based on this photo there was no bank along the retaining wall historically, so the fact that the soil was separating from the wall is no indication of any urgent situation.

In this photo you can also see that there is a tree planted at the location of the largest crack inside the Bertola’s property. Some of the crack is visible in the photo, as is all of the most likely culprit.

However, the most alarming evidence comes with this 2^nd photo, taken in fall of 2001 showing the replanting efforts. Looking along the base is clear that the ridge we were assuming was a footing is in fact sheet pile and concrete. Your recent staff report addresses saying this is an un-engineered wall installed by maintenance that covers a short section for which there are no historical plans. Does that mean maintenance had access to a pile driver? If there are no plans how do you know the wall was un-engineered? Most importantly, This “short section” covers some 70 feet of the Bertola’s wall, which is only 120 feet total. It appears to have concrete poured behind it, and our fluvial geomorphologist confirmed that she saw concrete in exposed patches so that makes sense. Knowing that there are also four pieces of sheet pile nearest the bridge, 2/3 of wall shows existing sheet pile, so it is reasonable to assume it is also along the places where we cannot see as well.

What does this mean? It means that Martinez spent half a million dollars to build a sheetpile wall with concrete in front of a sheetpile wall with concrete.

I didn’t say this at the meeting…but I will say it here with a special thank you to Mr. Colbert:

Knowing how destructive our beavers can be, do you really think two layers is enough?

Silver Lining Alert:

Last night staff reports spent nearly thirty minutes addressing issues raised on this website and put forward by Worth A Dam. Tim Tucker presented an update on the city photos we discovered and his best understanding of them, and Dave Scola was asked to discuss mother beaver’s eye injury and even consulted Skip Lisle and Mary Tappel about it. They certainly would never have been aware of either of these issues if it weren’t for this website and Worth A Dam’s hard work. This is what is known in political circles as “setting the frame”. The city had to respond to us, in instead of the way round. Maybe it’s a November 7th anniversary present, or maybe it’s the influence of the Beaver Moon. Either way, its worth pausing to inhale.

Once, Twice, Three times a Liar…

heidi08 City Reports November 18, 2008

Martinez Historical Photo September 2001

Lie One: The bank separating from the wall creates an emergency.

Lie Two: There Is no foundation or footing to the wall.

Lie Three: The cracks are evidence of new beaver damage.

I don’t know much about baseball. Remind me again, what is it that happens after three strikes? You know the more I look at the footing along the bottom, the more I recognize that pattern. Click on the picture to zoom in. Where have I seen it before? It’s kind of like crennulations. Kind of like…um…THIS

Don’t tell me that we spent half a million dollars to install sheet piling in front of sheet piling. Well I guess we did, this helps me understand the staff report much better.

Staff believes the photo shows an un-engineered sheet pile wall along a short section of the Bertola wall. This work was apparently done by City maintenance staff during the original channel construction. No records of the design of this section of the wall or supporting structural calculations have been found.

If no records exist how do we know it was “un-engineered”. What exactly does a “short section” mean? Looks like at least half to me. How far does it go down? No wonder they wanted the area filled up with concrete so that no one would ever find the secret wall built behind another wall.

I just wanted to save some beavers…

heidi08 City Reports May 9, 2010

So the Gazette has an editorial today in response to my letter. My letter isn’t printed, but the response, of course, is. It accuses Worth A Dam of being “Conspiracy Theorists” and then proceeds to describe the conspiratorial means by which we ply our conspiring trade. Apparently she got three letters in response to sundays column on the same day. It is of course impossible that any of our 500+ regular readers of this blog would have had their own reaction to the paper running the story after the election. Its not like people stopped me at the dam when I wrote about the historic photo or when they heard about it on the news and asked, “have you sent this to the Gazette? They should run something”.

Obviously, no one other than conspiracy theorists would think that the fact that it appeared on the blog on the 29th, and in the paper on the 9th, is confusing. Surely only JFK whackos could be dismayed by the final “Seeking Council” column on affordable housing appearing on election Tuesday, when it was slated for the Thursday before.

Still, I’m not sure how one person making a bad decision constitutes a conspiracy.

I don’t know why the story wasn’t run before the election. I know for a fact it was received, but it may have been mislaid, forgotten, or shuffled out of site. I know that I can do more to followup when I’m not siting 8 hours a day on bridge watch before going to work. Maybe it will never happen again, and its a complete accident that it happened now. I’d feel more reassured if my letter, (unfounded accusation that it was), or any of the mysterious trio, was printed along with the rebuttal.

In the meantime, we are told to expect a column Thursday on the bank stabilization project. Since the Gazette is reading this blog at the moment, (to find what offensive material they might need to react to next), allow me to suggest what will happen when you contact councilman Ross and the city manager. Ross’ response will likely be the same as for Bay City Media, in which he says the bank of Bertola’s was never the concern. You may want to review the engineering reports to check if that’s true. I have highlighted the relevant passages here. If confronted that this is not what was said in court, the next excuse will be that this job was planned all along for that wall but the city ran out of money in 2000. To verify that you would have to get the city plans from the engineer, because to my knowledge no one’s ever seen them. Actually, I wouldn’t bother because the argument was never over whether this was planned for the wall, but whether it was an EMERGENCY that could affect downtown businesses if delayed. Finally, it would be useful to go back through the special assessment tax records and find out what the property owner paid in 1999 towards the flood project. I’m sure readers would like to know the Return On Investment he received.

Here’s some nice beaver followup in the meantime.

5 days late and 400,000 dollars short

heidi08 City Reports November 10, 2008

UPDATE-

Gazette editor responds to letters received saying that she had no knowledge of this photo. She feels she has been a staunch ally for the beavers and would never delay information because of an election. While acknowledging her genuine surprise at the implication, Worth A Dam maintains that the photo was brought to the office on the 28th, and scanned and emailed to the Gazette on the 30th. Linda Meza’s column that discussed the photo was received on the 29th with assurance that it would be published on Sunday, which it was not. I sent three subsequent emails referencing the photo and received no response. It is possible that there is a massive misunderstanding here, and that we are all reporting our experiences accurately. I do know that I have valued the Gazette’s interest in the Beaver story and considered it an ally in the past.

Letter to the Editor:

Sunday’s Gazette ran the teeth-clenching story of the historic photo which proves that the emergency bank stabilization project was unnecessary. This 1999 picture shows an obvious footing to the wall and no bank at all. The allegation of impending danger from “separation of the bank from the wall” was meaningless. The Gazette has been aware of this photo since October 28th when it was discovered. The story was circulated on the Worth A Dam website and Bay City News on October 30th. Apparently the paper made a deliberate and incomprehensible decision to hold this revelation until after the election. Now that our incumbents are safely re-seated, we can discuss the lies that got them back into office.

The voters of Martinez should be very disappointed by this delay.