Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Water Utility Manager Explains Changes To Diversion Application

Daniel Duchniak, the General Manager of the Waukesha Water Utility, has sent by email an explanation of changes to the city's Lake Michigan diversion application that can be made without the approval of the Common Council.

"There are no substantive changes that were made" Duchniak wrote Monday.

"The City Attorney thought that taking parts of section 6, which is the compact compliance section, and repeating them throughout the relative sections in the application would be beneficial. So he went through and inserted/copied those sections where applicable. The common council agreed with him and made a motion that allows him to do that."

I raised this issue Monday; Duchniak said the Council's resolution allows for changes to the city's application without Council approval, and quoted the criteria allowing the procedure. It's all in this posting.

This is not a matter of personalities, as I see it.

Rather, it's about transparent process, and I can't understand why Waukesha's Council, and certainly its new Mayor, wouldn't want to build more guarantees of open policy-making into this extremely important matter.

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