The Ooops Chronicles
Part 4 -- The body is buried and the fix is in
In a bizarre rerun of 2002's PuterGate fiasco, council members prove they have they have some striking similarities to their predecessors
-- John Patten, 04/27/05, revised 04/28/05
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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RELATED:
Ooops, I did it again
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 04/17/05
Ooops part 2 -- The Ooops memo
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 04/21/05
Ooops part 3 -- Duck and dive e-mails
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 04/23/05
OMI's Newton "removed" after Venice Florida! dot com's Ooops story reports soil dumping at water plant
-- Venice Gondolier Sun, 04/19/05

Locking horns with Black
On April 26, I spoke before council and formally presented the Ooops story. My statements were a wrap-up of previous stories that had been published here on Venice Florida! dot com.

I ended it with one additional piece of information -- that I had turned over my findings to both the Venice Police Department and to the EPA to see if the events warranted a criminal investigation.

Which is true.

On April 23, I had filled out a Probable Cause Affidavit listing what I had learned and included the photos that I was in possession of. The affidavit was turned in to the Venice Police Department, where it currently is sitting waiting for review by a detective.

The affidavit stated that it was my belief that a crime had occurred and had been covered-up and requested an investigation to determine if criminal action was warranted.

It is my understanding that the VPD is going to do a prelim investigation and then turn the info over to the EPA, as the city is hesitant to investigate itself due to potential conflicts.

So I was rather stunned when I listened to City Manager Marty Black's follow-up comments, which were basically a near-total denial of the events I had recounted along with few red herrings. Black's comments were obviously rehearsed and at least Mayor Dean Calamaras appeared to know in advance of Black's retort: the mayor segued straight from my presentation over to Black by asking the city manager to respond.

After Black finished his rip-and-tear job, I left the speaker's table, turned around and immediately locked eyes with utils head Chris Sharek. Sharek was sporting an ear-to-ear grin and was waving his fists in the air victoriously as though he had just scored a touchdown.

The big quote that probably had Sharek thrilled was Black's opening comment: "The police department met with Mr. Patten and felt that none of the allegations warranted a criminal investigation."

Which is both true and not true. I did meet with an officer and turned over such information as I had. As to Black's statement that the police are taking a pass, no such determination has been made by the police department. From what I've been told, the matter has yet to find its way back to the detectives yet. As of Tuesday's council meeting, the case was still on a sergeant's desk awaiting review. Getting a case like this through law enforcement is a lengthy process, and the process on this case has barely just started. The only way the case could get killed this early would be if instructions were received from on high to kill it, and of course everyone is denying that anything like that is happening.

Black dismissed my comments as hearsay with no direct evidence. Ummm... photos? There were some photos? Which I had just shown to council? The bright and colorful images that had been shown on screens in front of everyone?

Black dismissed the suspect dumped soil documented in earlier stories as "construction debris" while stating at the same time that OMI's Tim Newton's behavior in dumping it behind the water plant was "not the best judgment." Curiously, Newton reportedly had all the water that was sucked out of the hole carted to the Eastside Wastewater Treament Plant (EWWTP), so he apparently felt that the water in that same hole as the dirt needed treatment.

As documented in earlier stories, the soil was eventually carted to the EWWTP and, within a week of its original exhumation, subsequently dumped at the county landfill.

The dumped soil's prompt disappearance from the drying bed at EWWTP was also dismissed by Black as "routine," despite information I have received that indicates that the drying beds at EWWTP hadn't been cleaned in over a year.

Black further stated that my allegations that city water supervisor Bill Green was instructed by Sharek not to test the soil for fecal contamination were false (contrary was the actual word that Black used).

Problem: I never made any such allegation. Black ripped a bit of conversation I had with him out of context.

I previously had told Black that I had one unconfirmed report that Sharek had ordered Bill Green not to test the soil, but that what really happened was more subtle: that Sharek originally wanted the soil to stay behind the water plant until Green insisted that the soil would be tested if it remained there. I had stated and had written that it seemed pretty clear to witnesses that Sharek didn't want the soil tested, but that he stopped just short of ordering that no testing be done. Instead, Sharek reversed his previous decision and ordered that the soil be removed and taken to the EWWTP.

Red herrings and orange juice
Another red herring tossed into the mix was a recent memo from Sarasota County Health Inspector Robert Bolesta. In a memo to the city dated April 7, Bolesta wrote wrote that he had tested a few areas at Venice Municipal Airport for contamination and had taken six soil samples, this some two or three years after sewage was dumped on airport grounds according to an admission made to Venice Florida! dot com by now-former city employee John Newburn.

Bolesta wrote that his "...conclusion is the soils and debris dumped at the Venice Airport do not contain wastewater sludge."

The original admission by Newburn, and reported by this site, was that sewage, not sludge, had been dumped at the airport. Black verbally reported to council that Bolesta had stated that he could find no evidence of wastewater contamination at the airport.

Which, also, is not exactly true.

I attempted to verbally correct Black on this matter while the mayor was trying to shut me up by stating that I had used up all of my time. Nevertheless, I was able to get into the record that Bolesta's memo addressed sludge, which is a heavily concentrated form of sewage and not wastewater as Black had just stated (and as the original admission by Newburn stated).

To which Calamaras responded, "So raw sewage would be not worse than sludge?"

Yes, Mr. Mayor, you have successfully almost-but-not-quite grasped the obvious: an untreated concentrate is usually a lot worse than its unconcentrated component parts.

Unless we are talking about orange juice.

Which we're not.

Unless I really missed something.

Now I was hearing Calamaras say that while I was turning around and locking eyes with Sharek, and the only thing I could think was that here I am back in 2002, I've just exposed Steve Randall as an embezzler, and the whole of council has just silently branded me as a liar. Sharek's ear-to-ear grin was admittedly maddening, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it. For the moment, I had to eat waste and smile. Feeling every eye in the room on my back, I walked out of council chambers to cool off.

An old U2 song immediately came to mind: I Threw A Brick Through A Window. As angry as I was about the circus that I had just walked out of, if this were twenty years ago I might have carried the impulse a little further than just humming a few bars outside council chambers. Such thoughts and behavior, while immediately extremely celebratory, joyous and gratifying, are ultimately self-defeating.

Which, of course, is a darned shame.

It's all about the wanna
See, the problem as I see it is that while the city eventually ended up doing the right thing in this matter, it's only because a couple of employees stuck their necks out. Way out. If they hadn't, the suspect soil, which everyone apparently believed was possibly contaminated (if you go by their behavior) would have stayed right where it was first dumped behind the water plant.

So yes, the city finally did the right thing, but it wasn't the original intent of a few employees.

And that's where I have a problem. A big one.

This intent thing, the one thing that I don't think Black successfully addressed, is what led us into the EPA's field of vision to begin with. This intent thing has already cost taxpayers close to a million dollars according to a Herald-Tribune breakdown of costs related to the EPA's investigation.

Intent is the core of any successful criminal prosecution, and here the intent is clear as day, even if you only take into account the quote attributed to OMI's Tim Newton: that he would have dumped it at the airport but that too many people were paying attention.

I can't help but believe that the stream of events shows that Sharek thought that soil testing results, should the soil have stayed behind the water plant, might have proven to be embarrassing. If Sharek didn't think that, he clearly would have left the soil where it was and said "Go ahead and test it." But Sharek didn't do that. Instead, after making the decision to leave the soil and then being informed that it would be tested, Sharek reversed himself.

According to accounts, Sharek was anything but happy about having his decision co-opted by his underlings. But, and this is important, Sharek did stop short of actually ordering that testing not be performed. Black is right in that, even if he is wrong in stating that I had alleged otherwise.

Where to now, St. Peter?
So where to from here? Who knows. The request for an investigation wanders on, despite Black's blanket statements to the contrary. Sharek's celebration is extremely premature -- this still could be trouble for him.

More likely not, though. This was an iffy case to begin with, I was more than fully aware of that. Black's statement that the investigation has already been killed was a strong signal to the police department. The message I heard was "Make this go away." The VPD is an agency that is about to go through an external audit, plus the cops are still going bloody knuckle to bloody knuckle with Black in highly contentious series of union contract negotiations. Venice has long been a political landscape of plots within plots and battles within battles, almost as though the original city planner was Frank Herbert and not John Nolen.

As for council, this batch still hasn't seen the battles within battles that are really going on in the undercurrents. I saw that in the blank looks I received. I've seen that collective glazed gaze before. 2002. When I first came before that august body to inform them that they had been duped by a city manager and a computer department head. The look I got in 2002 was the same look I got this past Tuesday.

Members of this current council have gone to great pains to separate themselves from previous incarnations of dais dwellers. More than a few times I have heard the elect disconnect themselves from municipal history by claiming temporal separation.

I get the strange feeling nothing ever changes, that four or so years from now, there'll be another group of folks who will be claiming that they aren't guilty of lack of due diligence as they weren't on council in 2005.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.