22 MAY 08: GLASS WORKS?

First the Phenix City Mayor asked the City Manager to resign. He didn't. Now the City Manager is demanding the city Utilities Director resign. So far, he hasn't. Why don't these officials follow the example of the Columbus Mayor, and simply send letters of reprimand?

Wednesday's Ledger-Enquirer reported Phenix City Utilities Director Greg Glass is writing officials in Washington and Atlanta, to answer accusations by City Manager Bubba Roberts. He says the outsiders will provide "professional and expert opinion." The Lee and Russell County bloggers should take this as a personal slap in the face....

This is a case where the Phenix City Mayor and City Manager seem to agree. Mayor Jeff Hardin complained two weeks ago about the Utilities Director approving a $25,000 change at the water filtration plant on his own. The mayor believes without City Council approval, making a filtration change simply isn't a grate idea.

Greg Glass says Phenix City Manager Bubba Roberts actually has tried to fire him three times. But you have to give the Utilities Director credit - this Glass doesn't break under repeated pressure.

But Greg Glass has backers in Phenix City - as we discovered after the Ledger-Enquirer first reported on this spat Monday. This e-mail reached us Tuesday:

I know this subject is bound to come up with your readers and I just wanted to make sure they got a dose of the truth along with all the trash the Ledger-Enquirer & their buddies in PC (IE: City Mgr Bubba Roberts, The mayor, & council) want you to read.

So the City Mgr cannot fire the Utilities Director ... he writes him a letter pretty much saying I want you gone resign and this is why. Soon im sure it will come before the council and they will vote on whether or not to replace him ... matter of fact they meet today so we might know soon. As far as the letter goes (yours truly has seen the original copy) and the tone is very ominous & petty and if you work for the city ... well any letter from Bubba "let me throw yet another chair across my office" Roberts is ominous & petty.

The man is just plain mean & nasty. Many of the statements included in the Ledger-enquirer article are not only false they are just pure cr*p. Saying that Mr. Glass cost the city money from wholesale customers (IE: Russell Co & Fort Mitchell) because of disinfection byproducts is just stupid. #1 if neither entity is buying water at this time it is simply because they don't need too. The new rules surrounding disinfection by-products were just brought out a few years ago and the technologies needed to bring these levels down are still expensive & untested. ADEM has only approved a few for use in Alabama drinking water. All that aside if there is no money to implement these technologies exactly how do you expect Mr Glass to be the one held responsible for this? The simple fact is over the last 7 years (since the last utility rate hike) Mr. Glass has suggested each and every year that rates needed to be raised due to the rising costs of both producing drinking water and taking the sewer water & making it safe to re-introduce to the river. All this on top of the fact the utilities department needs millions upon millions in capital funding to keep up with new state & federal regulations.

So what happened each and every single year up until this years rate hike? Nothing .... the mayor, manager, & city council just said NO every single year. The sewer department alone is costing the city of phenix city so much money daily it boggles the mind. Is it because the sewer department does a bad job ... NO!!!! .... its simply because they have not raised rates for citizen customers ... we now charge our customers HALF what it costs to treat their sewage .... HALF!!!!

How long would McDonald's stay in business if they charged $2.50 for a Big Mac when it cost $5.00 to make one? That is exactly what this city is doing! They still havent raised sewer rates only water this year!!! This is simply a personal vendetta from Bubba to Mr Glass. It is years of city MIS-Management by the mayor, council, and city manager coming to a head. They wouldnt raise rates fearing they wouldnt get re-elected.....now the city is having to come to grips with what bad planning & management year to year will get you ...... PROBLEMS. Hopefully the new elections will clean house and get some people that actually care into office ......

Speaking of people that actually care .... you kind of have to live in the city to care ... City Manager Bubba Roberts is STILL not abiding by the city charter. His home on the corner of 21st Street in Phenix city still sits empty & uninhabited in case anyone wonders. He still fills his personal vehicle with gas from the city gas pumps and commutes over 40 miles total daily to and from work on city taxpayers dime out to his big beautiful backwaters home near Opelika.

One more thought to ponder .... The City Manager ... DOES NOT EVEN HAVE A COLLEGE EDUCATION! NOTHING ..... not even a tech school certificate.

Current Utilities Director Glass ..... Degree from Auburn University

Mr Greene over at the water plant ... Degree from Auburn University

Tell me again why Bubba is the one in charge and making policy & decisions? The man who not only has a bad case of mis-management all the time but needs Anger management....... Guess its time for me to move along .... yall got room for a few more across the river? Its starting to get above my waders over here .....

Roscoe P Coaltrain

PS: The good ole' boy network is alive and well ... the true mastermind behind 90pct of the terrible decisions the city council makes & have made is Mr John "lets make up a" Storey. This man is an enigma and should also be removed. He is a cancer on our city. Truth be told ... He tells bubba and jeff hardin what he wants done ... and they carry out his wishes. If you hear a wet f**t ... he probably approved it.

Don't pack those bags yet, Roscoe - not until we clear up a few things. From the top: Phenix City Councilman Arthur Sumbry told Wednesday's newspaper the city manager DOES have the power to fire Greg Glass. If Bubba Roberts doesn't know this after three attempts at a resignation - well, that speaks to your education complaint.

It turns out the Phenix City Council did NOT meet Tuesday. Several members were at the Alabama League of Municipalities convention in Birmingham -- and we sincerely hope their by-products were well disinfected.

So what do you know -- we apparently have a reader who wants Phenix City to raise his sewer rates. Most people wouldn't.... well, you know.... they wouldn't raise a stink about that.

Roscoe is correct when he notes this is an election year in Phenix City. Perhaps he should find someone to run for mayor, who will make the changes he suggests. I'm not sure where Sonny Coulter stands on that proposal to abolish the City Manager's office completely. He might oppose it -- since he's a banker, and doesn't need the extra salary.

An online check Wednesday left us unable to confirm the educational background of City Manager Bubba Roberts. But who said you had to have a college degree to make big policy decisions? That hasn't seemed to stop Bill Gates....

(But then again, maybe that explains the Triangle development in downtown Phenix City. With a Troy University satellite campus there, Bubba Roberts can walk from his office to evening classes.)

But is John Storey really the brainchild behind what happens in Phenix City? The Redneckin blog in Russell County seems to have put that label on Sonny Coulter and Sammy Howard. And Wednesday's newspaper claimed Greg Glass is an important grant writer for city government - or is that ghost-writer?

E-MAIL UPDATE: Another reader wants to talk about something we mentioned here several years ago....

I wondered if you got a prayer rug from Saint Matthew's Churches.



It promised riches with use (and a return of offering to the church).



This link does a much better job explaining the whole mailing than I could - including the odd use of large font, underlining that made it seem like it was cut from magazines and glued together....

Oh yeah, did you hear about the car almost going into the river directly across from the TSYS office. When I got to work at 8:30 they were pulling it up the hillside back to the public housing.



take care



BH

We've actually received a couple of those rugs from Tulsa, Oklahoma [19 Apr 04] - but we never bothered to use them. I've found plenty of Bible verses about prayer, but none that said you had to kneel on a rug. Yet I've found a rug is certainly more comfortable than a kitchen-tile floor....

Uh-oh - did someone pull this "car into the river" stunt in Phenix City again?! A woman did that near the Riverview Apartments a few weeks ago, in what I'm told was a suicide attempt. The woman was saved by several people, including a homeless man - who could have told her simply to jump off the 14^th Street Bridge.

BLOG SPECIAL EVENT: Long before WRBL promoted "Daytrippin'," I was planning a road trip for this week. Except it will take me two days, and about 16 hours of one-way driving. I'm simply doing my part to make up for all the Memorial Day travelers who suddenly can't afford to go.

If all goes well (please, no last-second requests for governmental investigations), I leave this morning for Kansas City. My youngest niece will become married on Saturday - and since she dreams of becoming a doctor, she'll be ready if anyone in the audience swoons over her wedding dress.

I could have made the trip by air, but a long drive in the car should cost less money - yes, even with gas prices above $3.50 a gallon. Especially if airlines are going to start charging 15 dollars per checked bag, as American Airlines announced Wednesday. When does Chevron-Texaco plan to merge with them?

Wednesday was preparation day for the road trip. I had the tires rotated on the car. And I even went to a local car wash, where the staff did a thorough job of cleaning. This is a road trip to visit the family, you see - and I don't want my old car looking so bad that relatives propose to trade it for a clunker.

In years gone by, we would have to stop somewhere during a road trip to update this blog. But a recent change by our blog server means we won't have to do that anymore. We've already set up several items, which should automatically appear day by day. If they don't, you'll have to watch CCG-TV and come up with jokes of your own.

But we DO plan to blog a couple of times, while we're on the road. We plan complete coverage of Saturday's wedding for you - to set the record straight, before the paparazzi's pictures show up on TMZ.

Now before we fill the trunk and head up Interstate 185, here's a last quick check of Wednesday news:

+ WLTZ visited the National Infantry Museum construction site. Developers said work is on schedule, toward a grand opening next March. But if the money runs out in December, things still might be OK - with visitors arriving in an authentic World War II-style mud parking lot.

(There's one local company which might be willing to make up that three million dollars of state funding, which the Governor vetoed. But for some reason, the Infantry Museum isn't letting Carmike Cinemas run the IMAX theatre.)

+ Richard Hyatt's web site reported the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Muscogee County School administration building will occur 3 June. Critics have about two weeks to get their protest signs ready -- or maybe buy bicycle locks, to chain themselves to the construction site fence.

+ Georgia's School Superintendent declared some of this year's CRCT social studies exams invalid. Less than 30 percent of the sixth and seventh-grade students passed the test -- perhaps because they thought "social studies" was like social networking, and they expected questions about Facebook.

+ The Eufaula Tribune reported Alabama's Governor has vetoed a bill allowing a new one-percent sales tax in Barbour County. Bob Riley opposed it because the tax did NOT require a vote at the polls. Pay for a special election on a sales tax question?! I thought this governor was against gambling....

+ The Alabama House building lost power for several hours, and officials suspected it was due to a squirrel. Had this power outage happened in the state Senate, the cause would have obvious - a filibuster by some Democrats.

+ Hamilton Jordan died of cancer -- the man who served as President Carter's campaign adviser, and later White House Chief of Staff. NBC News noted Jordan battled cancer five different times, while fighting another overlooked battle. The fight to pronounce his last name JURR-dehn....

+ Cartersville conquered Columbus 10-8, to advance in the Georgia high school baseball playoffs. Which came first to Cartersville - the Budweiser brewery, or the weird school nickname Purple Hurricanes?

+ Instant Message to Best Landscaping: I left a voice-mail message, but you might see this first. One of your white trucks went around me during the noon hour Wednesday, in the entry ramp to I-185 southbound at J.R. Allen Parkway. The driver went through the off-limits triangle, to hurry onto the interstate -- but he showed that "How's my driving?" phone number long enough.

COMING FRIDAY: Our Blog Special Event continues, with another wedding at another time....

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