This is my third consecutive response to letters from Bob Stroh. The thread is wearing thin, especially where Mr. Stroh attempts to distance himself from the Katzenjammer Party line.

Mr. Stroh’s most recent assertion that [I haven’t] accepted the challenge, and his confident denial that he has “been a regular, outspoken supporter of these views…,” has, in his words, "turned into something like, it may take [me] a few weeks of searching to find the evidence."

This is a challenge to my integrity which will not go unanswered. However, I cannot turn this paper into some kind of Bob and Martin show. Believe it or not, Bob, not everyone shares your enthusiasm for this pointless contest. You now apparently deny any expressed sympathy for the Katzenjammer view that certain high level employees have been so wrong in their support and implementation of plans for the development of north Fillmore, the new water treatment plant, and several other undertakings, that they should be replaced. Also, that former Mayor Conaway, and former Council Member Cuevas should not be re-elected.

Your denial of having expressed any demand for the “unconditional termination of a group of city employees” is as hollow and disingenuous as your phony explanation for your letter of March 19, that readers may have “assigned a meaning unintended by me.” A meaning unintended by you? You sound like Letterman dodging his recent outrageous “unintended” joke. “Unconditional termination"? This strident term is an invention of yours, Bob, not mine, or anyone else that I am aware of. This sort of clinical specificity is an effort on your part to deflect the main accusation, i.e., that you are, and have been, methodically sympathetic to the views of those who have been sufficiently critical of certain council members and high-level city employees as to contribute to their untimely departure.

I would be surprised if you voted for Ms. Cuevas or Mr. Conaway. I would be equally surprised if you failed to vote for our new City Clerk, Clay Westling. I would be surprised if you agreed with our Director of Public Works Bert Rapp, or City Planner Kevin McSweeney, or, for that matter, former Management Analyst Steve McClary or Finance Director Barbara Smith. Would my surprise be justified? I think so.

Did you support the water treatment plant, as implemented? Did you support the second north Fillmore development plan (700 houses)? Did you support Measures H and I? Did you vote for Gayle Washburn and Jamey Brooks? Do you support the policies of Mayor Patti Walker? Did you express any displeasure with the outrageous bluster of Washburn’s (and Brooks?) interloping campaign manager, (failed former Mayor) Gary Creagle?

These questions are designed to cut to the chase and save a lot of dance time. Would you be so good as to answer them? In this way we can decide if you are sympathetic to the policies and strategies of the Katzenjammer Party membership.

To satisfy your curiosity about your own statements on these issues, Bob, I will attempt to publish some of your past statements. Last week you finessed your comment about Mr. Conaway’s trip to D.C. I’m hoping for a more forthright explanation for this week’s evidence.I will not devote so much time to your statements in the future. Very few readers have an interest in this debate. But, I’ll make a quick attempt to answer some of your most recent questions, and ask a few of my own.

That now famous trip to D.C. has been vetted to death. No private plane or fancy hotel were involved. Mayor Villegas signed the American Water contract. Please provide any evidence of Councilman Conaway’s lack of objectivity concerning this project. Vertreat, Micromedia and PERC all failed to participate in the bidding, and are, therefore, irrelevant to any discussion. Do you still agree with Gayle Washburn’s conclusion that one of these companies should have built our plant?

Do you agree with Washburn’s belief that Fillmore’s decision to use a Design, Build, and Operate process for the treatment plant was the wrong way to go? Fillmore saved 15 percent using this process, and Santa Paula followed suit with their DBO process, throwing away about $3 million in engineering plans to follow Fillmore’s lead. Likewise, the county tossed about $1 million in plans to do the same for Piru. Did you oppose the DBO, Bob? Delays in re-bidding plans for Santa Paula and the county cost them millions in inflation and permanently higher sewer rates. Conaway was right.

Fillmore’s final sewer rate will be about $89 per month and Santa Paula’s rate will be about $88 per month ($77 plus $1.12 per unit of water or about $88 per month) for a typical Santa Paula family. Actually, Santa Paula’s rates should be significantly lower than Fillmore’s because they have twice the number of customers and have an advantage in economy of scale over Fillmore.

Fillmore’s sewer rates could easily have been $10 per month higher than Santa Paula’s without former Mayor Steve Conaway’s leadership.