City Attorney Chris Melcher
David Neumann, who invented the scrubber technology that is being installed at the Martin Drake Power Plant downtown, is accusing City Attorney Chris Melcher of “extreme prejudice” toward his company and Colorado Springs Utilities.
In a strongly worded email sent Sunday night to Melcher and some City Council members, Neumann also says Melcher may be trying to stonewall an ethics complaint that Neumann filed against City Councilman Tim Leigh.
The Gazette received a copy of Neumann’s email late Sunday. About 9 p.m., the newspaper sent an email to Melcher seeking comment. Chief Communications Officer Cindy Aubrey was cc’d in the email.
This blog post will be updated as soon as Melcher responds.
A private meeting in Mayor Steve Bach’s office Friday apparently prompted Neumann’s email to Melcher.
But the meeting wasn’t about Neumann’s scrubbers.
The meeting was about the work of the Stormwater Task Force.
Jason Hann, a task force member who was not in the meeting but heard about what happened afterward from someone who was there, described the meeting like this:
“Melcher stated that NO regional cooperation would take place and if there were collaborative efforts for projects the City would be at the helm. Bach commanded that he knew there were several agendas at the table and that he was going to tell us what our agenda is. Bach stated there will be NO tax recommendation and that while his administration existed, CSU was going to be responsible for paying for stormwater. That CSU needed to “scrub” their budget again (despite the City not being able to execute a zero-based budget themselves). That the Neumann cleaner technology should be removed and that would provide millions right away and for years to come,” Hann said Sunday morning on Facebook.
Robin Roberts, who was in the room, corroborated Hann’s account.
“I was on this committee and in this meeting on Friday,” Roberts said on a Facebook thread. “The way Jason is reporting it is accurate, although I do remember that the suggestion of Utilities taking over the storm water function was just a suggestion, an option thrown out there.”
Roberts said she will never volunteer for the city.
“It will be a cold day in hell before I volunteer my time on a committee for this city again,” she said.
Here is the full text of the email that Neumann sent to Melcher:
Mr. Melcher:
You are being quoted by a number of sources as expressing extreme prejudice toward our company and CSU as part of a Storm Water meeting last Friday which was presided over by the Mayor and held in the Mayor’s office.
Additionally, we are in receipt of a letter from you to two council members which instead of providing them with legal guidance on how to determine conflict of interest you single out the employees of our company and employees of CSU as being the definition of a conflict of interest.
Further evidence of your extreme bias toward our company and CSU is shown in your negotiating a deal with the Sierra Club that involved damaging our company and a CSU project approved and budgeted for by the CSU Board. You attempted to cut a deal with a radical environmental group that could have resulted in a $400 million loss in ratepayer assets and a 30-50% increase in electric rates and may have prevented the Drake plant from receiving required emissions controls.
Additionally, we expect that any meeting discussing the merits of our contract or our company’s past, present or future relationship with CSU will be discussed openly with an opportunity for public comment. Furthermore, we demand that you release to the public the records of past private meetings dealing with our contract with CSU so that the public may determine whether your conduct is appropriate to your position.
Finally, based on information from two separate Council Members, your alignment with Councilmember Leigh has become clear and it appears that you are attempting to stonewall or deflect the Ethics investigation of Councilmember Leigh.
We can only wonder why you have not taken action directly against Councilmember Leigh when you have explicit examples of his providing false information to the public and the Board. It is obvious that you have examined our contract with CSU in detail. Therefore, when Councilmember Leigh says the contract title says it is for “Experimental” equipment you know that is false. When he says the CEO did not sign it you know that is false. When he says there are no specs, you know there are over ten pages of specifications. We are prepared to present over twenty separate counts of ethical and legal violations by Councilmember Leigh should we be given the chance.
Request that you explain to the public how your actions above and other related actions you have done as required by the Mayor are consistent with the appropriate conduct of the City Attorney. Perhaps you can also explain the responsibilities any lawyer has to avoid conflicts of interest. How is it possible for you to do the will of your boss the Mayor under threat of termination, while simultaneously representing the best interests of the City, the Council and Colorado Springs Utilities when their interests are in conflict?
David K. Neumann
Mayor-Council Approval Rating Poll:
If you have two minutes and the interest, please take our on-line poll with your responses and comments as to your current approval rating for the mayor, council, city attorney and how you feel the stormwater matter should be handled.
Thank you
http://obsurvey.com/S2.aspx?id=E93528FC-0CCB-44FE-9BF3-DA9E2941A494
It really appears to me from reading the gazette that Mayor Bach spends 90 percent of his time on CSU matters and 10 percent administering the city. It appears to really piss him off that he has no say on the largest municipal organization. He really needs to concentrate on what he was elected to do. His tech unfriendly attitude sends the wrong message to any tech company looking to locate here.
Bach is going to drag the city into a massive multimillion dollar lawsuit. You watch.
It’s easy to believe the reports of the tenor of the stormwater meeting, because Bach always talks that way. He seems to interpret the “strong mayor” ordinance as meaning he can tell people what they should do and they simply must implement it.
However, Neumann is taking the wrong approach at trying to preserve his scrubber technology. He seems to think he is owed a sweetheart deal without competitive bids and RFPs. When I mentioned this online, Lisa Czeladtko compared it to the non-competitive YMCA offer to run city pools. But if someone had challenged the Y, the organization would have acted professionally, perhaps offering to go to a professional bid or explain the nature of the deal. Neumann seems to operate according to the model of the Tom Edison 19th-century style inventor/engineer. That model simply does not work in the 21st century. The more he tries to slam everyone from Bach to Melcher to Leigh to the Sierra Club, the more he digs himself a deeper hole.
If there is any other organization like the Newmann scrubber technology out there they would be pulling a Bach and would be having a feeding frenzy like a bunch of vultures tryng to get thier payday.
Leigh is such a put,z he needs to get his man as in manhood and quite acting like a sissy pants,
lol
Lilithia
Bach was elected to provide jobs, jobs and more jobs, also balanced the budget.
CSU was NEVER in his agenda when he ran This guy has ADD.
Can anybody beleive that CSU is a problem in this city, We have much bigger issues.
On a seperate note please read the Indy article aobut the Waldo fire and Bach;s performance, shamefull. Now wonder he does not want a outside review of the fire
CSU’s engineers did analyze other scrubber technologies, and found Neumann’s system to be superior in both performance and price. Why is it so hard to accept that?
We have to either recall Bach or ensure that any city council candidate running that supports Bach is defeated. Him and Melcher obviously have a very devious agenda and it does not include the best interest of the citizens. We must get rid of Dougan and Leigh in the next election. Read the account of the Stormwater meeting in the CS Indy. It is much better reporting and more detailed than the personal agenda driven Gazette.
If the Neumann system is NOT to move forward, then it should come back to the ratepayers/customers in lower rates, NOT to fund stormwater needs. I wholeheartedly agree that the massive backlog of stormwater needs in our community need to be addressed but CSU should NOT be taking the primary hit. It is us citizens that need to fess up and pay up (and we need to have the cohonoes to expect new development to properly address its stormwater impacts, which have been waived/reduced for years). Time to face the music and get that stormwater is a CITY infrastructure issue and has little to do with the delivery of gas, electric and water. It’s about accepting the environment/climate we live in and handling it responsibly and in a communal fashion.
what a warm fuzzy feeling i got when i heard Chris Melcher & “Mr. Bach were being challenged by the ACLU! Now this! Hey- maybe the Justice Dept will come questioning next? Maybe Melcher can take on the US AG (pssst! that stands for ATTORNEY General) As long as its ok with your “boss”. What a bunch of arrogant, pretentious FASCISTS. Surely you know your time in OUR city as our representatives is now limited. And we must have a city attorney who did not receive their law degree from a correspondence course.
I have lived in Colorado Springs since the 70′s. I have never seen so much corruption in my life. Bach is out of control. The things we read about his behavior, corruption, secrecy, ties to the Koch Brothers, and irrational behavior is alarming. He is going to destroy our city. A recent article said he wants to focus on the gatewayis into the city and Drake Power plant He has a difficult time telling the truth and has very little integrity. When he was running for office, it was very apparent that he had issues with articles about numerous marriages and alleged spousal abuse. If someone has been married that many times, it is obvious that there are problems. How is he going to attract 6000 jobs when he is doing everything he can to destrpy and discredit Colorado Springs and CSU? I would hope that even the extreme conservatives in Colorado Springs would begin questioning Bach and his self serving agenda and the lack of transaprency in his decisions and behaviior. It seems like it is time for the citizens and voters to step and and seriously look at recalling Bach before he destroys our city.
Mr/Mrs Wirbel, I am sorry, but I do not see it the same way as you. The scrubber technology, is priced comparatively lower than competitiors pricing. Competitive pricing for a scrubbing system has been gathered and it was found to be hundreds of thousands more than the Neumann System. In reference to the YMCA “offer”, it was just that, an offer to help the City keep it’s pools open using an existing system that they have to do so. The Neumann System was offered, accepted, and contracts granted. To go back on that now will no doubt cost the rate payers a chunk of money in litigation, but will also result in penalties from the EPA for non-compliance with upcoming regulatory standards. This is a step in the right direction, we the rate payer save money while meeting the regulations, while investigating plans for the future of the plant, and while quite possibly making money when the system proves to work as well as it has so far, when installed in other localities. One reason there possibly could be for not too many other users knocking on Neumanns door, is the uncertainty of their location of manufacturing and tech due to the unfriendly environment their own home communtiy leaders are presenting them.
I sure wish we had Mayor Bob right now! This City is waste deep in Bullshit from self serving idiots!
This administration wants to take away all input from the people. The citizens opinions are ignored. The City Council who represent citizens are being ignored. Mayor Bach thinks he knows best what to do with our money. I didn’t vote last Mayor election but I will next time and vote him out!
My friend works at Colorado College and says that City Attorney, Chris Melcher, allegedly was fired or was going to be for dishonest practices. no one at the College respected him. He says everyone who worked there knew he was a servant to Dick Celeste and did every unethical request made to him. So what does our City do, hire him. I’m supporting the ballot initiative making the city Attorney an elected position accountable to the people. Send an email to Council and tell them voters want the chance to get someone good in for a city Attny and they want someone looking out for their interests, not to establish dictatorships.
It is time to recall Bach before he totally destroys our city. Colorado Springs has been my home for several decades and I do not want this power hungry person to ruin our city. My children were born here and this is our home. I do not want his self-serving agenda to destroy our beautiful city. His is truly one of the most corrupt politicians I have ever seen and Melcher needs to be disbarred. Bach received campaign funds from the Koch Brothers. Do a little research, these are extremely corrupt people. I did not vote for Bach. It was evident that he would be a power hungry, self serving mayor. Bach is about himself and the developers. I really think that the citizens of Colorado Springs need to consider recalling Bach. He is not a strong mayor. He is a politiican who does not seem to care about the citizens who elected him. He seems more interested in his own special interests.