Pleased To Report A Fairly Dull CVMVCD Board Meeting

Yes, while tonight's meeting of the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District Board wasn't quite as pleasant as a Desert Hot Springs city council meeting, it was a great improvement over past board meetings. But first, because some of the players have changed recently, let's just list who all sat on the dais tonight. You can always go to this page on the CVMVCD website that lists the current trustees. However, as I look at it right now, the two newest trustees, Gilbert from Indio and Hobart from Rancho Mirage are not listed. Odd, since they do correctly show Underwood as the presiding officer, which came about more recently than Gilbert's ascension to the board. Would someone who knows please leave a comment (remember, we are always open to anonymous comments here at Ron's Log) and tell us which staff person it is who has the responsibility of keeping the website up to date?

Anyway, left to right, from the public's point of view:

• Gary Howell - Cathedral City
• Richard Macknicki - Coachella
• Gene Gilbert - Indio
• Sharon Lock - Palm Springs
• Terry Henderson - La Quinta
• legal counsel, usually Kathy Jenson, but tonight John Ramirez was filling the spot
• Bruce Underwood - Indian Wells, Secretary/Treasurer and presiding officer for this and next month
• Interim General Manager Raymond Griest
• Dana Hobart - Rancho Mirage
• Doug Walker - Palm Desert
• Karl Baker - Desert Hot Springs
• Albert Keck - Riverside County
• Nick Nigosian - Riverside County

The meeting was kicked off with the administration of an oath of office for the newest trustee Dana Hobart who, after the oath was read, commented that he had never before worked for an organization that was so concerned with the violent overthrow of the government. That phrase is repeated several times in the oath, including swearing that one has not been a member of any political party advocating the violent overthrow of the government in the last five years! So there's a statute of limitations on those radical feelings.

From there the meeting moved along swimmingly, everything (except one item) being approved unanimously. There were NO public comments. None. Nada. No comments on non-agenda items. No comments on agenda items. And the Passaros were there, too!

Trustee Underwood hinted at the dropping of a bombshell when in the finance committee report he said that a REDUCTION IN THE RIFA TAX TO $10.55 WAS BEING CONSIDERED. That would be a reduction of almost one-third, but it is far from being a sure thing yet. But even so, it's a remarkable indication of how things may have changed on the CVMVCD board.

In fact, I should point out ahead of time that, as Trustee Keck said at the end of the meeting in trustee comments, Trustee Underwood ran a good meeting. He was always clear, explaining what he expected of the small audience. He leaned forward and spoke clearly into the microphone, never needing to glance to his left (the general manager) or his right (the attorney) for reassurance or support, as has been the chronic behavior of the past two presidents. It was Underwood's show tonight. Who knows, maybe he could be as good as Yvonne Parks.

Next genuine bombshell was Trustee Nigosian's Personnel Committee report. The Personnel Committee voted itself out of existence! He said that the PC had originally been formed for the sake of efficiency, but now it seemed that everyone wanted to know everything, so it disbanded itself. Non-trustees told me the PC, which had been made up completely of the most ardent supporters of suspended GM Gomsi and former attorney Copeland, had been the place where personnel issues went to die.

I believe Interim General Manager Griest spoke only once during the open meeting and that was to give his "report" of district activities, which means he only pointed out that it was all there for anyone to read, and unless someone had questions, that was all he had to say. IGM Griest has a rather striking appearance with a richer head of hair than a man his age should rightly have. He looks like he might be a cross between Will Rogers and Gary Cooper. Very appropriate for a Range Rider.

Jim Saulnier got up to report on Operations. The good news is that fogging to kill mosquitoes in the duck club and North Shore area has ceased after several weeks of work. No positive mosquitoes are being found in the traps now, so they are considering the recent appearance of West Nile virus to have been quelled.

He also spoke of Duroville where there are 11 acres of raw sewage just lying out in the desert sun. He reported that due to "safety issues" the staff will no longer be applying ground level treatments but will use only aerial applications of insecticides, larvicides, whatever they're throwing at it. I spoke to a staff member later to clarify the "safety issues" and they are everything you might think they would be. Not only would an employee's health be endangered by driving around in raw sewage, but the area also abounds in feral dogs and drug dealers.

Trustee Keck pointed out that since the CVMVCD collects no taxes on Indian reservations that the CVMVCD might be able to get some reimbursement from the federal government for this expensive aerial treatment of what is probably the greatest single source of nuisance insects in the district.

Mr. Saulnier also brought up the problem of the Mission Springs Water District sewage treatment facility just south of Desert Hot Springs. The same issue had been brought up in last week's city council meeting, where smell had been the greatest issue. For two weeks the MSWD had cavalierly ignored complaints about the smell, so now the City of DHS is levying a fine against the water district. The CVMVCD found that the MSWD sewage ponds had become a rich breeding ground for houseflies. The CVMVCD provided info to the water district on how to improve the situation and the MSWD has proceeded to rent a big sewage squeegee (or something like that) to dry out the material and reduce odors and insects.

The "green pool" problem is growing. "Green pools" are any manmade pool of water that has been allowed to go mossy and green. Usually they're swimming pools and usually they are behind houses that are empty because the snowbirds have gone home or the house has been foreclosed on. Mr. Saulnier had a database of 500 green pools in the valley based on reports and complaints from individuals. Then an additional 650 were discovered by aerial survey. He will be breaking that total of 1,150 green pools down by city and sending the numbers to the trustees.

Trustee Underwood as presiding officer announced his choices for the nominating committee. The nominating committee will come up with a list of three names for President, Vice-President and Secretary/Treasurer for the June meeting, whereupon the board will elect them (or maybe somebody else, but not very likely). In the past I don't think the selection of the nominating committee was ever mentioned publicly, and it was always made up of strong supporters of GM Gomsi and attorney Copeland. This time, however, Underwood chose Gary Howell, Albert Keck and Richard Macknicki to be on the committee. A nicely balanced mix. The committee will also discuss whether it would be appropriate to adjust the terms of the next three officers so that their terms end at the end of December, as they are trying to get all terms of office adjusted so they begin and end with the new year.

Attorney John Ramirez then provided an update on the Oath Of Office issue. Let me say that if you read a verbatim transcript of what Attorney Ramirez says you will see that he has left absolutely no possibility for any lack of clarity in his statements that might come back to bite him. He spoke in complete titles and wonderfully long, fully definitive statements. That, combined with his monotone, made it almost impossible to stay awake through one of his paragraphs.

I would do him a disservice to try to boil his statements down, but boil I will. Anybody who has previously sworn an oath for any public office in California would have in essence covered their ass for oath-swearing for the CVMVCD board, Ramirez says. Trustee Baker pointed out that this would include even school teachers, and possibly even licensed real estate brokers, although I wonder why real estate brokers would have to swear to uphold the Constitution. Attorney Ramirez will be looking into that particular point.

Ramirez also went on to say that while the CVMVCD is not itself obligated to go to the trustees to try get them to repay any funds they had received from the CVMVCD before they swore an oath, it was possible that a private individual or another public entity (the City of Indio was suggested) might sue the board and force the CVMVCD to recoup the funds. Consider the possible outrageous scene of seeking reimbursement from Ben Laflin, who served on the board from 1952 until just recently and is now quite ill.

The bright light in all this is that one possible remedy is to sue attorney Lisa Copeland for bad (horrendous, actually) legal advice. Someone pointed out how many items on the agenda tonight were there simply because of bad legal advice from Copeland. I believe I count five.

Then we moved on to an agenda item which was to be a discussion and clarification of the scope of work required of Kiner Communications, the public relations firm that appears to have been retained simply to soak up some taxpayer dollars. However, this item was derailed by a letter received from Kiner just today saying that they quit. They walked. No more Kiner PR for the CVMVCD. They said it was due to the political turmoil, but since they were hired from Day 1 to help with political turmoil in the CVMVCD, that explanation is hardly believable. I think the fact that their favorite little boy and little girl (Gomsi and Copeland) are no longer there to guarantee them a paycheck for doing not much more than stonewalling the Desert Sun is why Kiner lost interest.

John Schroeder got up to explain the request for $50,000 for an enhanced security system at CVMVCD headquarters. Mr. Schroeder needs to learn to be brief and to the point when speaking to and answering the board. A few trustees on the board admonished him to keep his remarks to the point and to avoid unnecessarily discussing potential security weaknesses. Mr. Schroeder cited many break-ins and instances of vandalism as part of the justification for an improved security system. Trustee Gilbert said he had inquired of the Indio police department to find out what sorts of crimes were being reported at CVMVCD HQ. In fact, the Indio police have record of only FOUR calls to the police for relevant nefarious activities (we are NOT counting calls to the Indio police to come and seize computers or to search offices). Trustee Gilbert asked for an explanation of this apparent disparity. Mr. Schroeder insisted there was "lots" of criminal activity, but could cite only two specific instances. He did insist that the private security firm retained by the CVMVCD was very good and that if they found any trouble during their nighttime surveillance that they would definitely call the Indio police. Still, there are only those four calls. And despite his insistence that the private security firm was very good, Mr. Schroeder said most of the evidence of crimes was discovered in the daytime during their morning walkaround, after private security had gone off duty.

I think that these inconsistencies in Mr. Schroeder's description of the issue, and that he did not seem to be interested in gaining the cooperation and support of Indio police, contributed to Trustee Gilbert's vote against the $50,000 allocation. But later Trustee Gilbert said he voted against it because the item was not the usual one where staff would get bids and then bring it back to the board for approval of the final purchase. Rather this was $50,000 to go and spend. This was the only non-unanimous vote of the evening.

Jim Saulnier got up again to explain his request for $25,000 to buy "120 gallons of Pyrenone 25-5 and 160 gallons of BVA 13 Mineral Oil." Two reasons: the early heavy use of these insecticides to suppress the West Nile virus that showed up in the duck club area suggests that they may need more of it this year than last, and secondly, a worldwide shortage of the key ingredient pyrethrin will occur this year, because the world's single largest supplier of the chemical is Kenya, which is beset with unrest. Other nations, notably Australia and Israel, are ramping up their production, but it will not be enough to meet the world's needs this year.

There were three items on the closed session agenda. There was no reportable action on any of them, including the item dealing with the long-lasting Lisa Copeland initiated suit against Desert Hot Springs. Had there been a decision to drop the suit that would, I think, constitute a reportable action. Since there was no reportable action, one must assume that the suit against DHS continues...for what reason and by what attorney I simply cannot guess. None of the attorneys currently associated with the CVMVCD are foolish enough to expend so much energy just to look idiotic in front a series of judges.