Well, They Do Deal with Waste After All...

If you were reading the Post-Gazette this weekend, and not using it to make bio-degradable seed pots like I do, you would have noticed this article regarding a blast from the not so distant past:

The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority is preparing to hire another ex-member of Pittsburgh City Council.

Tonya Payne, who lost her 2009 council re-election bid to R. Daniel Lavelle and later sparked a police investigation into petitions he filed for another candidate, has been offered the vacant job of safety manager...

Makes you wonder what the job description was:

Reports to the Finance Director. Supervises employee health and safety issues to help the authority control workers' compensation costs. Applicants must have at least four years of City Council and abandoning community groups experience. Vendettas against former City Council members and members of the State Legislature a plus.

But wait! There's more:

If she takes the job, Ms. Payne may cross paths not only with Mr. Deasy but with another former council colleague, Len Bodack Jr., who lost his 2007 re-election bid and now is on the authority payroll.

What? Seriously? Is the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority the Pittsburgh equivalent of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds?* I almost expect Doug Shields to show up on the hold line while you're waiting to get account information.

Not the "the voice of the hold line", mind you. I mean, Doug will be talking to you for thirty minutes while you're waiting to find out you need a new automatic meter reader installed. For Doug, this would be termed "a short conversation."

Anyway, I guess it's comforting to know that PWSA is only hiring the best and brightest of people that couldn't get enough people to like them. If that's true, I can only assume that Tom Corbett is going to be up for the job of PWSA Executive Director in 3 years.

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* This is an incredibly clever reference, by the way. You should look it up on Wikipedia. You'll pretty much hit yourself in the face and go "Gosh! That's clever." Go ahead, I'll wait.

PWSA to be Managed by Poo-Flinging Monkeys

Acting quickly following the decision Friday to seek a management company for the embattled Authority, the Board of PWSA today accepted a proposal from a troop of monkeys to manage and reorganize the agency for the next 18 months.

"This kind of radical shift in thinking is exactly what we need to right the organization's problems," said Board Member and Pittsburgh City Councilman Patrick Dowd. "I'm hoping that the next few months will see better responses to developers, a a clearing out of institutional dead wood, a better customer service system, and, of course, the throwing of large amounts of feces."

The Board was initially impressed by the submission of the Monkey Troop, which had outstanding references from the John McCain Presidential bid and New York socialite King Kong. The Monkey Team has previously used shared grooming, patriarchal hierarchy, and the throwing of excrement to turn several Fortune 500 companies from the brink of bankruptcy.

The PWSA Board, however, failed to assert its dominance over the chief male "Coco" and agreed in the contract to limit their liability and indemnify them against all actions, including, but not limited to "Grizzly beheadings in Paris","Old Ronald Reagan films," and "sharp rate increases".

PWSA is still suffering from a failed water line insurance plan that was ruled in court to be illegal. It has been without an Executive Director for two years and without a competent Management Team for at least twice as long.

In recent months, Mr. Dowd had criticized his fellow Board members for dragging their feet on the replacement of the former Executive Director, arguing that "even a [expletive deleted] monkey could do this job better than what we got."

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, however, is reporting tonight that the selection of the new Primate Management team may actually be the result of nepotism. Rumors have begun circulating that one of the Monkeys is closely related to another Board Member, State Rep. Dan Deasey.

Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water Authority

And then there's this kerfluffle brewing at PWSA:

A year of frustration at the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority boiled over Friday when city Councilman Patrick Dowd called the agency's board "pathetic" and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's office accused him of grandstanding.

The PWSA's top management job has been vacant since December, when executive director Michael Kenney resigned amid questions about his ties to a vendor.

Mr. Dowd, one of six board members, says the management void has existed far too long. He became angry Friday when fellow director Scott Kunka suggested postponing the search for a management company that could oversee operations on at least a temporary basis...

Asserting that the board's main roles are to hire top management, make policy and hold managers accountable, Mr. Dowd said, "we have failed in each of those categories, and our failure is pathetic, and it is enormous."

The comments brought rebukes from Mr. Kunka, who is also Mr. Ravenstahl's finance director, and state Rep. Dan Deasy, D-Westwood, the board chairman.

According to my contacts over at PWSA, Mr. Dowd's comments need to be submitted to staff in writing within 5 days so that they can be reviewed for 30 days for comments by PWSA consultants, at which time Mr. Dowd will need to resubmit his motion with the necessary changes for a second review. After the re-resubmital, PWSA staff will re-review for 60 days and ask for additional corrections that they forgot to mention the first time. After the third review, PWSA staff will call a meeting with Mr. Dowd asking what this submital is and why they haven't seen it before, reminding him that they need at least 30 days notice before they can approve any submital. Mr. Dowd will then protest that he's already submitted the comments to PWSA three times at this point and that they are perfectly aware of them. PWSA staff will deny all knowledge of this and make Mr. Dowd submit for a fourth time, which they will lose under a stack of paperwork until it decomposes and is used in a onsite water retention system that PWSA doesn't let you build anyway. By now, everyone involved will have retired and the point will be moot.

Fortunately for Mr. Dowd, this is the PWSA "fast-track". The normal process involves a fight to the death with spears and pipes.

Beer-er My God to Thee

Where was I?

Ah, this:

After years of squabbling over unpaid bills, the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority today announced it had reached a settlement with Lawrenceville-based Iron City Brewing LLC.
The total value of the settlement is $750,000, above the $400,000 figure the authority originally agreed to, but below the $1 million sought by city councilman Patrick Dowd, a member of the PWSA board, whose district includes the now mostly vacated 148-year-old brewery in Lawrenceville now proposed for redevelopment.

As part of the settlement, PWSA will retain the rights to "Piss Water", previously reserved for Iron City and will be allowed to dump the beer directly into the toilets, in order to eliminate the middle man.

I also heard from a leak that the whiz kids over at Iron City Brewing will be allowed to pass water bills onto new owners of the building.

Dowd Calls Out PWSA

Councilman and Mayoral candidate calls Authority's inner workings, "full of crap."

If it's Brown, Flush it Down

Saw this in the P-G this afternoon:

Former city councilman Len Bodack Jr. has left the boardroom of the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority for its payroll.

Mr. Bodack has been hired to a $56,000 job as maintenance supervisor at the agency, after serving on its board of directors as a city councilman. He resigned from the PWSA board (which is appointed by Mayor Luke Ravenstahl) after applying for the position this month.

He had been council's District 7 representative for four years before being beaten in the Democratic primary by Patrick Dowd last year, and lost a three-way primary battle for a state House seat this year.

Before joining council Mr. Bodack served as operations director for his father -- a former state senator and head of the county's Democratic Party -- and ran an auto repair shop.

So, really this is a step up for Bodack, considering his past experience in human excrement. Although, I suppose if your goal was a do nothing job, your choices were either PWSA or running for City Council again.

However, don't most organizations frown on moving from the Board of Directors to employee?