The Ojai Post

(According to a letter just received from Resource Management Agency Director, Chris Stephens, it appears that the county is NOT interested in obtaining these additional weigh tickets.)

From: Chris Stephens
Subject: Meeting Follow-up
To: mjsfairview@yahoo.com
Cc: "Kim Rodriguez" , "Matt Carroll"
Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 5:26 PM

Michael,

First, let me thank you for arranging the meeting last week. I believe the discussion was very constructive and helpful for County staff; I hope you and your committee found it helpful as well.

At the meeting, there were a number of statements and assumptions made about the weigh tickets and the County and State's ability to retrieve and review them, and perhaps make them available to your committee to review. I indicated when we met that I wasn't familiar with the weights & measures requirements, but that I would look into this further and let you know what I could find out.

Working with our County Sealer (manager of our Weights & Measures Section), who consulted with the State Division of Measurement Standards, I've found the following relevant information:

1. State law requires that "All weighmasters shall keep and preserve, as records, for a period of four years, all copies of voided certificates, records and worksheets required by this chapter and true copies of all weighmaster certificates issued. The records shall, at all times, be open for inspection by the director." For sake of clarity, "weighmaster" refers to the person operating the scale, while "director" refers to the County Sealer/State.

2. As referred to in item #1, they are to retain "true copies" and not electronic copies. Thus, contrary to your committee's expectations, there are no databases or other electronic data sources available - what are customarily available are boxes of paper records.

3. When the County Sealer and State representative conducted an audit of the Ozena operation in late 2008, they found some technical violations but no substantial operational violations/issues associated with the Ozena scale facility.

4. As noted in #1, the County Sealer/State are only allowed to review weighmaster certificates; they can ask to make photocopies but they don't have the legal authority to do so without the permission of the weighmaster. However, should the Sealer/State find or observe a violation, they can "for probable cause" seek a warrant so they can then seize documents as evidence and conduct a complete review.

5. Based on the results of the recently conducted audit, both the County Sealer and the State Weighmaster Enforcement Official have concluded the technical violations were not serious enough to warrant additional action in and of themselves, nor did they provide probable cause to obtain a warrant or seize certificates.

Notwithstanding the State Weights & Measures laws and procedures described above, the County Planning Division as you know has asked for and received weigh tickets from a number of random days as well as other days with suspected travel violations. Lacking a future determination by the Planning Division that a substantial problem with the weigh tickets exists, this is likely to be its continued approach to requesting and reviewing weigh tickets from that operation.

I hope this clarifies the State regulations with respect to weigh scales and record keeping and reviews. If you have any further questions regarding those requirements, please do not hesitate to send me a note and I will follow-up with our County Sealer and the State. Again, it was a pleasure seeing you and your committee last week and we look forward to working constructively with the community on this project.

Chris

Chris Stephens, Director
Resource Management Agency
County of Ventura

THE STOP THE TRUCKS PROPOSAL TO REACH THE TRUTH:

On March 3, 2009, the Ventura County Planning Division delivered a large number of documents and records to the Ojai Stop the Trucks which will take the members of the Coalition some time to review. Seemingly missing however from this delivery was the one category of records that could help settle this ongoing dispute, Weigh Tickets from 2008.

The documents and the accusations on either side are actually just a distraction from the bottom line of this conflict which boils down to one or two very simple questions. Has Ozena in regards their C.U.P. been, “(A),” a good corporate citizen or, “(B),” have they not.

Fortunately the answer to this question can be easily be determined by one simple and absolute documentary test of Weigh Tickets.

For example, the one set of weigh tickets that the County has shared with the Coalition so far, the ones for February 8, 2008, show that Ozena was in likely violation that day. In other words, 100% of the weigh tickets now show a 100% probability that Ozena has been in violation, a fact recently confirmed by senior Planning staffer, Dan Kleeman.

Therefore it is easily deduced that any thorough and public analysis of the weigh tickets for Ozena will show whether, (A), they’ve been good corporate citizens, or ,(B), they have not.

If the records show that Ozena has operated properly over the last year since being informed by the Planning Director, Kim Rodriguez, that the rules will be strictly enforced, then the County will have irrefutably demonstrated that Stop the Trucks has been off base with its complaints. If, however, it turns out that Ozena has been a regular violator of the C.U.P., then the Coalition’s stance will have been shown to be justified.

It is for this reason that the Coalition has repeatedly made requests for a full year’s worth of weight tickets. Let the simple truth be known. Is the answer, (A) or (B)?

We have asked for a full year of data – as opposed to the County’s desire to analyze only one month - in order to get a clear picture of what has been going on up at the mine. Trucking volumes have decreased over the past 12 months due to the recession.

A one month sample could easily skew the results if the selection included a recession month and a couple of snow storms – such as the month of December 2008, which Kim Rodriguez suggested she might just pick. It might also miss the three - four months between the time this past summer and fall when Tony Virgilio’s Weighmaster Certificate apparently expired and Alliance took over daily operation. Who, for example, was weighing and certifying truck loads in July, August, September and early October? Was it Tony with a possible expired certificate or was Alliance doing it prematurely and in possible violation of the C.U.P. they swore to uphold?

Yes, we’d like for the public to see and be able to analyze one full years worth of weigh tickets from 2008.

And why wouldn’t the individual staff members of the Planning County Division, the Resource Management Agency, senior administrators, the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors also want to settle this dispute once and for all by a simple review of the actual facts embodied in a full years worth of records?

Everything else before us, every other opinion and document, is merely a distraction based on whether or not one feels that (A) or (B) is correct.

We hope the County government will join us in seeing that this very real and simple test is undertaken and the real truth will become know for all to judge.