Effects of the restrictor

Click here to see a study of the effects of the restrictor on the College Avenue storm sewer system.









I received this study from Mike Ross on April 18th. You can see from the data that the restrictor has almost no effect on the flood prone area of College St. Only one city council person is running for reelection. At last week's candidate forum, that councilman said that the county's offer to sell us land for almost a half million dollars to abate the effect of the restrictor was phenomenal progress. How could he say that if he knew of this table prepared by our engineers?

More importantly, what if the city council did not know of this table? How can our elected officials make decisions when they are kept in the dark? The more I delve into this problem, the more it looks like Mike Ross obfuscates more than he clarifies.It shouldn't be this difficult to get to the facts.

At the candidate forum, I raised my concerns about the information Commissioner Radack had about the restrictor (see my comments on this blog). The current city councilman accused me of dwelling in the past and wasting time over things that happened in the past. He urged us to move forward as fast as possible and buy the mitigation capacity the county offered to us for sale. The data on this table tell us that we should not spend another nickel on the restrictor.

My position is that common sense and good judgment matter. I promise that I will do my best to gather the best information possible before I make decisions.

I have had less than a month to review the restrictor and associated flooding problems. In the email that accompanied this table from our engineers, Mike Ross said that he sent it out because questions had been raised. It was me that raised those questions.

A common sense issue that I will raise is that the restrictor could cause the outlet to clog up with debris faster than it would without the restrictor. The common sense solution to that problem is to have a city wide storm sewer clean out program in place. I assume we are already doing that.