Venice on the web
A semi-regular column

Wading through the Water
- John Patten, 08/14/02 jpatten@veniceflorida.com

Got a comment? Make it here.

I've acquired a copy of the 500+ page "report" that was put together by the city's investigative team over the issues at the water treatment plant. I have held off writing anything about any of this for a number of very good reasons.

Part of the problem is that the 'report' is not really a report as such. It is more a collection of documents, notes, memos, e-mails, photos, etc. There is no document that provides an overview or a roadmap through this quagmire.

And this ain't over yet, folks, despite how the city has appeared to close the books on the episode. Appeals through the city's personnel department are pending from dissatisfied employees. Then there's that big piano in the sky that could fall at any time and that nobody seems to notice: an investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency that is still very much alive, kicking and waiting to possibly reopen the whole mess. When and if that piano drops, all bets are off.

In what I have seen and assimilated of the report, I'm not seeing the same smoking guns, so to speak, as others in the media have seen and written about. An example: a particularly nasty e-mail from vendor Paul Rademaker to Shane Saputo, which calls Saputo, his brother and a few co-workers some very choice names. The level of personal insult and invective is incredible at first glance:

"Be thankful, very thankful I didn't rip your face off like I did with this loser from Sarasota County Utilities... I will dictate pricing, not a low life scum sucking neanderthal like you. Tell your sister John to get a haircut and butch up a bit... Hopefully the city will take notice of this rude and incompetent behavior of yours and expediently usher your stinking ass out the door..."

However, that same e-mail ends with, "Hey let's take lunch next week, who loves ya bro!" So much for the hostility.

Thus, it is easy to get sucked in by first glance appearances into thinking that there is more than there really is in some of these documents.

Make no mistake, there appear to be some real smoking guns in the piles, but there's a lot of false ones as well, enough of them to warrant a very close examination before pronouncing anything as overtly hostile.

To give you an idea of what it is like to wade through this sea of papers, the 'report' can be broken down into 10 piles.

First are the investigative team members' notes:

Then come four piles or randomly gathered e-mails:

That leaves three final piles:

Over the course of the next few days, I will wade through the piles. I will scan and post to the web as much as is possible of pertinent documents in order to try to give readers a better overview of what the actual report states. This will be after I can formulate an overview myself.

Additionally, interested parties are invited to contact me to offer up their interpretations of the situation. We will publish, unedited, any writings that participants care to submit.

Stay tuned...