Posted on 09/04/2022 9:56:24 AM PDT by TigerClaws
There is a another side to this catastrophe that has not been reported in the national news.
* Half of the plant was built in 1992. The other half in early 2007. It is NOT an old plant. It was not maintained and allowed to fall apart. Buy a Lexus but don’t replace the oil, transmission fluid, and timing belt and see what happens after 200,000 miles or so. The plant is no different.
* The city entered into a bad deal with Siemens in 2013 to replace all water meters for some new-fangled ones that would allegedly bring in more money. What it really was was a $90 million bond deal that allowed the Mayor to pass out the bond fees to his friends and stuffing minority subcontractors who weren’t licensed or qualified down Siemens’ throat. The meters didn’t work and blew up the water/sewer billing system. Bond services aren't subject to bidding laws so its an easy way to give your lawyer and consultant friends a quick $50-200,000 which the Mayor did.
* As happened when New Orleans under Landrieau installed new billing system software, thousands of residents got crazy bills or no bills at all. The Yarber administration literally told people not to pay their bills and instituted a moratorium on cutoffs. When you tell people you won’t terminate service no matter what, guess what? They don’t pay their bills. It never occurred to leadership to tell customers to pay a monthly minimum. 14,000 customers had stranded bills (no bills at all) if that tells you anything. Lumumba continued the moratorium on cutoffs. A moratorium has been in place half the time he has been in office.
* This resulted in a water/sewer department that made a profit of $7 million a year to losing $20 million a year. Public utilities are usually a money maker for cities. A city has to work real hard to lose money on these services but lose money Jackson did.
* Media says white flight decimated city finances. Uh huh. Check the city audits. On the overall budget side, the city is getting more revenue than ever. Read that sentence twice. It gets more money than every. It’s just losing nearly $20 million on its utility. The audits are on the city website.
* The city sued Siemens and settled for $90 million. $30 million went to attorneys, including the Mayors friends at a Birmingham law firm that did the real legal work and his Jackson lawyer friend, Winston Thompson, who is a criminal defense lawyer and had no business being on the case. $14 million shored up the water/sewer finances. Some was used to repaid the $90 million bonds and their ever ticking interest rates. Some was spent on other stuff.
* None of the Mayor’s staff have any management experience. He was a criminal defense lawyer in a two man firm. His Chief of Staff was a professor at JSU. His first Chief Administrative Officer was a music professor at JSU. His current CAO came from Energy but from the marketing department, not operations. The Public Works Director who was JUST reassigned after the flood was an architect. They are down to one engineer in public works and his speciality is roads and traffic. The previous Mayor had two knuckleheads for a CAO as well. One was a former deputy who never ran anything but was his bud while the other one never ran anything either. Getting the idea?
* They got caught two weeks ago not even posting online the openings for the Class A Water operators they so desperately need. They don't have Class A operators but can't seem to advertised for the jobs. They fail performing basic management tasks in the water/sewer dept.
* Worst off all. They Blew off the Health Department of years. MSDH finally called the EPA in winter of 20. EPA inspected plant in Feb. 2020. EPA was appalled at how poorly maintained and staffed the plant was. The EPA placed the city under an emergency administrative order. The Mayor hid it from the City Council, media, and public for over a year until yours truly busted it in the. Media. The Mayor refused to discuss it in the open but would only discuss it behind closed doors with the Council. He even blamed the public and media for being ill informed about it when he is the one who covered it up and refused to discuss it.
How incompetent is the leadership? A fire took place at the plant April 2021. 9 months later, several pumps were still down. The problem was the electrical panel controlling said pumps was damaged in the fire and not replaced. He blamed supply chain issues. The media filed FOIA's w/Health Dept. and found out the city had not even ordered the panel until the state told it to order the part and gave it a 30 day deadline in December. The city finally ordered the part on the last day of the deadline in January. The part arrived around May.
The city repeatedly blew off EPA mandates and deadlines in the order and continues to do so.
The plant did not flood. Period. The problem is the flooding upriver changed the chemical composition of the water entering the intakes at the reservoir. The lack of staff and failing equipment meant the water leaving the plant was barely treated.
-PJ
Never forget, the ignorant, useful idiot, democrat, dark skinned voters put the leadership in place to destroy Jackson, MS.
Many years ago Southwest Airlines used to fly into Jackson MS, after the acquisition of Airtrans.
Four gates in one terminal was all.
A few years ago they dropped the service. To a state capital, at that.
Word from a friend is that the airport management are friends of the mayor, and requested unusual considerations besides the high airport fees.
Citing low volume, Southwest just dropped the flights altogether.
Not enough money to fly into a situation where one is compromised, just by accepting the situation.
“Sometimes the best move is not to play at all” I think is the movie quote.
Yes.
This needs to be a National story. Hoping Tucker picks it up.
All the facts are there. I didn’t write it. It was a citizen journalist.
But share. Please.
The fault lies with people of Jackson. They voted the scum in and voted to retain them. Disincorporate the city and take over its government at the state level - no more local elections. Ever.
That or move the capital.
Thompson previously served as an assistant district attorney under then-District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith and also sued the families of white teenagers from Rankin County who killed James Anderson, a black man, in Jackson in 2011 on behalf of his family. Jackson attorney Barry Howard is also representing the City, the mayor confirmed. Howard, who was one of the mayor's father's largest campaign contributors, head of his transition team and shared office space with both Lumumbas before they became mayors, is the brother of City Attorney Tim Howard, who is not involved in the Siemens lawsuit.
The Jackson Free Press asked Mayor Lumumba why the City chose to work with an out-of-state firm—which is majority white—on the lawsuit.
There is a cap on contingency fees in Mississippi, not sure how it is affecting this case.
Point 1 - one of the mayor's former law partners is on the payout for this lawsuit; and
Point 2 - even the newspaper wants to know why the mayor chose a "white" law firm to fight this settlement, even if said (black?) crony is part of the team.
Yes, but blacks as an almost overwhelmingly as a group are rat party true partisans as part of being black. That is what is meant by their being secteries of the religion of politics. Supporting the National Democratic Party is sacramental. The religion of politics promises its believers a secular paradise created by the social welfare state if they are true believers. Because no matter how many black mayors, police chiefs, superintendents of education, etc there are elected the millennium never dawns and the true believers find themselves in ever an ever more dysfunctional universe. Some one is to blame. WHITEY, he is robbing black people somehow of their pair o’ dice.
They didn’t ‘lose their water service’. They had aplenty..............😉😜
A follow-up to this.
The ‘narrative’ from libs is out:
Kat Tenbarge
@kattenbarge
More people need to be talking about Jackson, Mississippi. The city ran out of bottled water to give residents yesterday. It’s the largest city in Mississippi. It’s 80% Black. Their water system is failing because of years of neglect. This is environmental racism.
Ignoring this is unconscionable. Letting it become someone else’s problem isn’t an option. We ONLY have each other. When the climate crisis reaches your doorstep, will you look back on the people it affected first and wish you’d done something then?
Nope.
There should be mandatory LIFE imprisonment for any politician who makes a deal that benefits himself with tax money.
OK, maybe not life, but MINIMUM 10 years with no parole
Thanks for that. Corruption by the diversity crowd.
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