Breaktime !

Switching to Twitter for a while.  I can usually get my point across in 140 letters or less.

@QuincyFire

Contributing Bloggers

If you haven't noticed, the posting here has increased the past few days. I have been quite busy and have slowed down on the things I want to post about. QNO usually covers what the Whig either missed or chooses to ignore so it leaves me limited thoughts to ramble on about......Sooo.... I have asked (begged) a few friends I know if the would like to contribute to Fire and maybe this will keep the activity here going. I still will be adding stuff from time to time and I am currently waiting for the river to drop below flood stage so the pro-hydro people will pull their heads out from (not there) the muddy flooded shorelines and start promoting hydro again.

Thanks for stopping by.

2010 Hydro Update

Reading JRG's Blog on the "Wants, not needs" got me back on the Hydro track, well...... that and a morning inside enjoying the AC.

Bob brings up the point " We were supposed to have an equity partner in place by late June, early July at the latest. Guess what? July ends Saturday."

Today is August 1st so let's crunch some numbers.

Here is the information that I retrieved off the rivergages.com for this years thru 7/31/10.

Pool is river level at Quincy Filter plant, Tailwater is from L&D 21 and Fall is the difference between the two. The OEM of the Hydro generating turbines states that the minimum fall needed to produce electricity is 1.4 meters or 4.5'. The Chart here has the results color coded as below 4.5' as red and above 4.51' as green.

As you can see that there has been only 35 days so far this years that the multimillion dollar Hydro project would produce electricity. This is 212 days into the year.

Do the math and this is a whopping 6% operational efficiency.

Maybe that explains why the partners are not beating a path to city hall.

Thinking Michael may add some input ???

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Conflict of Interest?

Even tho Quincy Pundit , QNO and UDN beat me to the blogs on last nights city council meeting, I did a search for what I thought was a conflict of interest of Duesterhaus voting 12-1 to establish a private corporation with his brother, Joe Duesterhaus, being brought in to handle the legal work of forming the corporation.

Didn't take 5 minutes to find this:

In order to understand what a conflict of interest means, it may help to examine what we mean by 'interest'. Almost all of us have personal or professional interests, whether it be a hobby, an investment in a business or a desire to help our friends and family members succeed in their own interests. Sometimes we base our decisions on whether or not they will ultimately benefit one or more of these interests. Most of us would not face a conflict of interest situation because our hobbies rarely interfere or intersect with our professional responsibilities.

But people placed in positions of judgement or power must take extra steps to insure that their private interests do not compete with their professional duties. A conflict of interest may arise, for example, if a city councilman awards a lucrative contract to a company owned by his brother. It would not be illegal to award such a contract to the best qualified company, even if that company were indeed owned by a relative, but the councilman himself could not be part of the decision making process. There would be an obvious conflict of interest, because the councilman's own family would benefit financially from his position of power.

I swear, you can read it here or click the Title.

Funny how Lovelace abstained from voting to approve Gomez-Lovelace's hiring in October by a 3-1 vote.

Seems it's not a problem at City Hall.

* Also seems it's funny how the City Hall Gazette failed to mention that Joe Duesterhaus is the brother of Alderman Steve Duesterhaus (D-2nd Ward)

Slight oversight I'm sure....

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Blog Visits

150,000 Visits
Woo Hoo!

4 More Years of......

The Good....

• Quincy Fire and Local Bloggers will have 4 more years of incompetent fodder from local officials to Blog about.

The Bad....

• 4 more years of the same administration......

The Ugly....

• Millions of taxpayer money being wasted on Hydro, Servergate, Firegate, Puppygate, Amtrak parking, City Hall improvements...............

stay tuned !









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What's Hot, What's Not....Job Loss Edition

Six city employees sending personal e-mails on city's time.... IS HOT !

IT Manager hosting a personal web site on the city server....IS NOT!


Double Standards?

Words to Vote By......

"There is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. It is that simple and if you vote straight party line you, my friend, are stupid."



Read the Grizz Blog Here!


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COQ Job Apps

Quincy News did the first article.......

Tookie took another swipe......

I have to go for the hat trick !

....Q Pundit jumps in too !

NEPOTISM STATEMENT

(Job Application)

The City of Quincy has a policy on hiring relatives, so we need to inquire about relatives working for the City. The "relative" list below includes those relationships that the City considers under its nepotism policy.

RELATIVE - includes parent, grandparent, spouse, domestic partner (a person of the same or opposite sex who lives with a City employee under circumstances in which they have agreed between themselves to be responsible for each other's welfare), child, brother, sister, grandchild, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, parent-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, step-parent, step-child, any other person so related through marriage, and any other person so related to one’s civil union partner or domestic partner.

Does anyone related to you as described on the list work for the City of Quincy, in any capacity including a permanent, limited, or temporary position, in an exempt position, or under contract? A positive answer does not necessarily eliminate you from consideration and will have no impact on the results of this interview.

Relation: Name:

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If you filled in at least one relitive in the above lines, please wait at least 5 days while a job is created for you.

If you did not fill in any relatives in the above lines, We currently do not have any available openings.

100 K

100,000 hits on Friday the 13th ?

This can't be good.



Thanks to everyone who stops by !!!

January Tornado Warning ???

WTF is this?

Tookie, stop pissing off GREDF !


In other non-threatening news, I have added two new links in addition to removing the ones that have been idle for some time.

If I missed someone, let me know.

Thanks for the links.

Newborns

Looks like WGEM is sprouting up blogs faster than the speed of smell.

In addition to Storm Trak, Blog Gough, and Nora's, they have now added Sports Stew and City Desk. ( I see some copyright infringements here Tookie!)

I think it is a much more interactive, positive and updated approach to being more interactive with the public.

Time will tell.

(Still working on Bob's comment that Anonymity is weak.)