Home of…The Immaculate Jagoffs of Pittsburgh

“Going in there it was just like a scene from hell.”

Last month, the Ocean Shores Police Department issued a press release, announcing that 10 boys and girls between the ages of 15 to 17 and an 18-year-old were “involved” in breaking into three homes, stealing alcohol and food and “partying” at one of the residences.

That hardly tells the whole story, according to a victim who was interviewed by this blog.

“Those kids totally trashed the place,” he said. “They slept in all the beds – there were condoms everywhere.” Continue reading →

Gary Iversen photo captures the awesomeness of nature:

“Do you really administer justice, you mighty ones? Do you judge rightly, you men?

Rather do you plan evil in your heart, and your wicked hands deal out injustice in the land.

. . .Let them pass like the snail that wastes away . . .”

 Though it is surely an overstatement to get biblical on the Ocean Shores government, one has to wonder what our leaders’ idea of justice is.

Do they really believe in the “open and transparent” government that most (if not all) of them told voters they would create?

Why did Mayor Crystal Dingler try to steer a debate between councilors Jackie Farra and Ginny Continue reading →

From Jen Hough:

Another nice shipping photo from Emma Davis, photographing all things down-by-the-Jetty:

From Sam Bach:

1. The “oops, we forgot to include interest” goof in Street LID budgeting (thanks, Ken Lanfear!). That, and/or lack of management (pick your poison) sends the project spiraling out of control, nearly 50 percent over original budget.
2. The City of Ocean Shores obtains more than $6 million to build a new “MIEX system” water treatment plant. And fails to provide funding to build a cover for it.
3. In early 2008, city council sets the salary of the new “strong mayor” position: $12,000 per year. But after Dean Bunkers is elected as mayor, he points out that he has to be paid the same $99,600 salary that former city manager Rich McEachin was paid. The difference, including benefits, over four years: About $500,000.
4. City clerk Diane Foss and then-city attorney Art Blauvelt forgetting to send a letter to Continue reading →

Long ago, i posted all the union contracts signed in 2007 on northcoastnews.com – but you know what happened to that site. The info posted below is for all four union contracts (but not the “Exempt Employees” group of managers and other non-union positions), with various Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) documents added since 2007, when Rich McEachin – briefly promoted to City Manager after a long, rocky stint as Police Chief – singed the five- and six-year contracts that have generated huge increases in salaries, rising in inverse proportion to the plummeting General Fund.

Thank you to the citizen who forwarded this information, received through a Public Records Request.

In most cases, the bundled documents below include the 2012 salaries, by category.

OS – Clerical Labor Agreement – AR-M620N_20120713_111512

OS – Police Dept. Labor Agreement – AR-M620N_20120713_113132

OS – Public Works Dept. Labor Agreement – AR-M620N_20120713_120008

OS – Fire Fighters Labor Agreememt – AR-M620N_20120713_104246

*Note: The above is the expired firefighters agreement. The 2013-14 agreement is here.

Copy of email sent last month to Ocean Shores Mayor Crystal Dingler, librarian Keitha Owen and the library board. There was no response from Dingler and Owen to the questions posed.

At the July 2012 library board meeting, Keitha Owen was asked how she came up with the detailed requirements for the “Request for Qualifications” for a computer maintenance position. Owen said that she came up with the qualifications for the computer person that were approved at the June meeting. She noted that Jenny Belcher, the city’s purchasing representative, “found something similar on a web page.

“I also researched what King County and the North Olympic Library System had.”

The process of developing the RFQ occurred over a few weeks in June. Jim Mitchell of the library board said the RFQ was “in order to be completely transparent to the voters of Ocean Shores.”

The levy vote was on Aug. 7.

A review of public records requests shows that it is likely that Grant Midbrod’s “Computer Maintenance Proposal” sent to Owen on Oct. 11, 2011, was copy and pasted as a significant portion of the RFQ. (SEE BELOW)

Questions for Ms. Owen and Mayor Dingler:

-Was the Midbrod material of 2011 used in the RFQ of July 2012? Continue reading →

Here is what happened:

The sports world was shocked (shocked!) by this week’s double-whammy: First, superstar biker Lance Armstrong told Oprah Winfrey he had been lying for years when he said he didn’t use performance-enhancing drugs. He told Oprah he quit cheating in 2005. Several in the sport suggested he was lying again about this . . .

Then, Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o (with his attorney by his side) told ESPN’s Jeremy Schapp in an off-camera interview the truth about a “girlfriend” he had previously told reporters he met online, who supposedly had died tragically. Te’o told Schapp he lied when the told reporters he had met her, as he had been pranked – the girl never existed. He also noted he had a “real” girlfriend.

Here is what will happen:

Armstrong goes on Oprah again, and admits he had lied to her. “The truth is that I was cheating long after 2005,” he will tell Oprah. He will claim a “truth disability.”

She will ask, “Are you lying about that?”

“No comment,” he will answer.

In his own follow-up interview, Te’o will have three attorneys and demand that all questions be delivered in the form of pantomime. Schapp, who has his own attorney present, will nod Continue reading →

Ocean Shores Councilor John Lynn at last week’s study session: “Last year our General Fund was negative in seven of the 12 months. That means we didn’t have enough cash to do operations without interfund loans . . .” Lynn added something about the state auditors, but I’m not sure what he was trying to say. I will follow up with him, or you may contact him here. (Councilor Lynn has not responded to several of my recent inquiries, such as, “Re your statement at a recent city council meeting, who gave you the information that councilor Ed Engel’s comments on the fire/police being paid too much led to Convention Center cancellations.”)

Carol Schultz photo:

Photo from Emma Davis, who notes, “Rare wave cloud formation – lower elevation wave clouds coming in from the south west while the higher elevation wave clouds are coming in from the north west – all beautifully illuminated by the setting sun.”

Frank Szabova photo:

Midbrod is the computer consultant who started working for the Ocean Shores Library, then expanded to other city departments (Fire Department, Convention Center, etc.). The great majority of the $64,608 he was paid in 2012 was for “monthly maintenance” (not repairs). View the payments: Computer Payment

*Note: Mayor Crystal Dingler and Finance Director Steve Ensley have not responded to repeated requests about how much is budgeted for Midbrod in 2013.

Was just going to ask/beg for some Snowy Owl photos, and here comes two from Priscilla Edwards, taken today at Damon Point:

Gary Iversen photo of one of the supermodels of the bird world:

Looks like the Daily World folks have yanked the plug on northcoastnews.com. All that is on the site is the NCN logo, followed by this:

“Thank you for visiting the North Coast News Blog. The site is temporarily unavailable until a new editor has been named. Please check back at a later time. Thank you for your continuing support.”

Photo from Patty Welsh, who notes, “These were taken on Thursday 1.10 just south of the casino. Absolutely beautiful and the clams were showing everywhere.  We got our limit in under 1/2 hour.”

Another great Duck Lake scene:

As he often does when Ocean Shores gets in a lather about something-or-other, Tome O’Scanlinn called from the dark, cold depths of Atlantis City to coyote-howl, “That’s nothing compared to what we got going on over here!”
Atlantis City, of course, is a cursed, quasi-island anchored 18.333 miles from Ocean Shores, due west as the duck flies. As the locals over there say, “If something can go wrong in Atlantis City, it will – twice!”
O’Scanlinn crowed that, just like Ocean Shores, Atlantis City used to be flush with money, until the local government started spending it on who-knows-what. And, just like Ocean Shores, Atlantis City found itself busted like a Ray Charles song. “Until they came up with this ambulance utility thing, just like you critters did,” Tome laughed. But it was a sad laugh, the kind of laugh you laugh when your face hurts from fake-smiling.
“Once they figured out this utility game,” O’Scanlinn said, with a sigh that would depress the Dalai Lama, “it was like giving the liquour store keys to the town drunks.

“Or, better put, the keys to the back door.”
Within 18 months, the Senators of Atlantis City had passed the following utilities:

-The Oops Utility: There have been so many mistakes at Atlantis City Hall – failure to file responses to law suits, contracts unread, Continue reading →

By Carol Schultz:

All’s Clam on the Western Front
By Scott McGeath

I recently read that among Wall Street types, how the stock market performs in the first week of January is looked upon as a reliable predictor for the rest of the year. If that infallible logic were to be applied to our clamming season, then 2013 promises to be a very good year indeed.

The author and his brother, a few years ago.

Actually, fall/winter of 2012 wasn’t anything to sneeze at either — I only had two digs where I came home with a catch under the limit (which I attributed to stormy conditions). But the excellent weather we enjoyed during the January 10-12 digs, not to mention the New Year’s Eve digs, has elevated clamming to a whole new level of bivalve-chasing nirvana.

In particular, on Friday, January 12, we were treated to the equivalent of a perfect storm for clamming (on second thought, that’s confusing — let’s call it a “perfect calm”): low tides, mild weather, and … drum roll, please … daylight. The low tide of 6:14 meant diggers could actually hit the beaches before the sun even went down (although that didn’t stop me from bringing a flashlight, just in case). Continue reading →

Emma Davis, who took this photo on Saturday afternoon, hopes someone knows the answers to her questions: “Would you happen to know what this is and what it’s doing? I photographed this helicopter flying low and slow over OS this afternoon (around 3pm). It seems to have some kind of exposed bay on the bottom with photographic or maybe mapping equipment showing?”

Fill in the blank.