It took the manager four years but he finally succeeded in pushing Frank Pogge out the door. Although Pogge certainly deserves to retire after 40 plus years, he and Cauthen have been at loggerheads on many issues. Pogge wasn't even allowed to select his own number two guy. Cauthen's pattern of having no respect for anyone who was here before '03 reared it's ugly head, resulting in a national search for the position, instead of looking within the department. Cauthen settled on Jim Buckler. Cauthen hired Buckler, promising him the director position when Pogge retired.
Cauthen has not been thrilled with his new hire. First of all and great for KC, Buckler turned out to be highly competant, affable, and INDEPENDENT. Cauthen has issued an ultimatum to Buckler, the water capital projects must be CIMOIZED or he is doing another national search for the director position!
Cauthen has plans to bring back his buddies from Denver to manage the $500 million in water projects. With CIMO skimming at least 10% off the top of all projects, this means a whole lot of moola heading for Denver and a bunch of mismanaged projects for KC.
Buckler has stood up to the Boss and, as a result, Cauthen has announced he is doing a national search. Watch for Buckler to leave very soon.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
wonder if the Denver folks will be able to come and investigate the Water Department's operations and then write the RFP like they did for Public Works?
If the City is truly broke and has some serious cash flow issues coming, Wayne is smart enough to hire someone who will figure out a way to privatize the water department and create an even greater slush fund to spend.
Watch out people. The water department is for sale. Check out MWH's own press release page.
---Since the formation of the water companies in the UK, MWH has worked closely with the privatized utilities on the design and operation of sewer networks. The UK water utilities have established major programs over the past five years to screen discharges into receiving waters from CSOs during storm events.
Great.......let's get the Water Department out in the private sector where it belongs. Right now it takes several weeks just to get a repair completed, and about 12 employees standing around while one or two work. Now that is a really efficient use of taxpayer dollars....NOT.
cimo is a cover for wc when the city offered buy outs for retirement we all signed papers stating that we wont work for the city for 5 years. but wc decides to change that and hire former city employees at the same wages or higher then they earn while working. where is the savings for his pet project. especially when thousand of dollars come up missing when the police depart check while building the training building. nothing was ever made public where the money went to from cimo so this just goes to show the taxpayers and employees that the city manager will and can do what he wants without anyone question his acts
Who cares if Water is privatized. The important thing is who gets the money. The consultants or the citizens of this great City.
If MWH or Burns and McD are involved, it won't be the latter.
It seems like there are a ton of Burns and McD staff down there on contract "consulting" right now. How else would they get a $25M contract through 5 amendments that started out under $50k.
Post a Comment