What you get for $368K

garym — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 21:35:21 -0500

Worth a footnote that the online "Feb 9th council minutes(only available as an RTF document file)":http://www.southbrucepeninsula.com/sbp/uploads/collections/14911763.rtf
record a list of the shortcomings of the latest semi-anonymous update handed over by Power Budd; gives some sense of what you get for that kind of money, starting with "Erroneous and incomplete," and ending with bold marks around the point ...

bq. "Certainly unprofessional"

It would be interesting to know just what people do to command that sort of money from a small rural municipality, and how on Earth they can _get_ such a sweet gig. I'm also now kinda interested to know why we even need big-money lawyers to lobby for us on The Hill -- maybe I'm just naive, but isn't that what Ovid is supposed to be doing for us?

Power Budd Riles Council in the Sewergate

garym — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 09:00:17 -0500

By now most local residents will have heard or read the Echo story and can now answer May's mystery handbills after an explosive session of council debates over the fees being paid to environmental legal eagles, a firm so active, high-profile and famous, GoogleNews returns zero hits on them ;) --- Power Budd LLP, best known for their role in restructuring of Ontario's electricity industry and the development of our competitive wholesale and retail electricity markets. Council is retaining PB to lobby, or seek, or whatever all it is they do in trying to dig up the $65M in funding that's needed for Carl Noble's pet pipeline project:

A meeting Monday night (Feb. 9) saw council vote 5-4 to retain the services of Power Budd for another $165,000 in its quest to find federal and provincial funding, much to the dismay of about 30 people who were at council to protest against the pipeline. The town has already paid $203,000.

Put in perspective, just judging from the material I was given by the ecological waste-water technology consultants, that lobbiests fee is, let's see ... roughly the cost, including tax, of thirty small Living Machines units, each capable of washing the effluence of at least two homes or half a dozen average beach businesses. So, effectively, I could have cleaned the water of every main-strip beach biz with that fee --- I wonder what PB LLB bought ...

South Bruce Peninsular - Power Budd Riles Council in the Sewergate - Comments

What you get for $368K

Power Budd Riles Council in the Sewergate