Today, for you Stay-at-Homes, our delegation of nine (9) Foothill Transit employees, board members, general counsel, and alternate reports on a visit to the Veolia Environnement Campus outside Paris, France. Veolia is the French company hired by the Foothill Transit Board to manage its operations here in the Foothill area. For example, Doran Barnes, Executive Director of Foothill Transit, is a Vice-President of Veolia Transportation, the contractor. Similarly, all the other "employees" of Foothill Transit--at least on the management side--are really employees of Veolia. The operations (of the actual buses) are similarly contracted out to other vendors. For simplicity (at the expense of absolute accuracy) we have and will refer to such workers as "employees".
Since our post of yesterday, the Foothill Cities Blog posted a comment from Felicia Friesema, a representative of Foothill Transit, which includes the information that our post of yesterday was in error: There are nine (9) representatives from Foothill Transit in France, not eight. Darold Pieper, General Counsel to the agency, is also in Europe with the group. He will be helpful in resolving any legal issues on the application of the Napoleonic Code.
Today, after a good night's rest from the long flight, our plucky group jumped into a cab, or two cabs, or a small bus, and headed for the outskirts of Paris to visit the "Mother Church" of Veolia. This visit was followed by dinner back in Paris at a fine Parisan restaurant.
This is our information on the day's events, which we deem reliable but which cannot be guaranteed:
Just a quick note and a few pictures to let "The Folks Back Home" know a little bit about our fabulous Parisan tour. After a very interesting night, about which the less said the better, Thursday was working day with a visit to the Veolia Campus. There we saw some buses so that qualified this trip as "business". Doran got his instructions for the year from the senior Veolia management; what with the dollar down against the euro, we will be needing to report more profit back up to headquarters. We think Peggy and Roger will go along with this because they really got the first-class treatment and the gift of those fine wines won't hurt a bit. Gallic hospitality.
We went to the "transportation campus" of Veolia and Doug Tessitor got to drive a bus. Luckily, they have a good crane and they will get it turned back upright by tomorrow they assure us. It's a mistake anyone could make.
Even though they have a great cafeteria on the Veolia Campus, we went back into Paris for dinner. For the nine of us and for our Veolia hosts and minders the bill came to just over 2,000 euros. Ever the gracious guest, Doran pulled out the Foothill transit credit card. He is so generous.
After all this hard work, it is lucky we have an open day Saturday after a visit to Rouen tomorrow. Remember, Rouen is just like the Foothill cities. Except it is really scenic, old, exotic, and it is in France.
Thanks to you on the home front for making this possible.
Darold, Dave, Arciela, Gary, and Dietter
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