Paris Postcard

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

Foothill Transit: Party On!

We are told by one of our readers that Foothill Transit, our local bus agency, has sent eight (8) representatives to a two-day conference in France. [update Thursday: actually, nine representatives. Darold Pieper, agency general counsel went to Europe, too] This is the same agency that recently had to increase bus fares for the low-income or environmentally-conscious folks who use the bus system. At first we found this unbelievable, and frankly dismissed it as a crank complaint.

However, we are always open to new information, and the new information is that the old information was true. The group left on Tuesday, July 1, and will return on Wednesday, July 9.

The 8-person Foothill contingent is made up of three elected officials, Peggy Delach (chair of the Executive Committee and Covina councilmember), Roger Chandler (member of the Executive Committee and Arcadia councilmember), and Doug Tessitor (member representative from Glendora and Glendora councilmember). Two senior staff members are attending: Doran Barnes, the Executive Director, and David Reyno, the Director of Government Relations. In addition, there are three worker bees getting the nod for this plum trip: Arciela Lopez (transit store manager), Dietter Aragon (planning), and Gary Nehls (procurement).

You, the bus riders and taxpayers who subsidize Foothill Transit (3 dollars in subsidy for every dollar paid into the farebox) are lucky to have these eight hard-working representatives doing your work in Paris, Rouen, Lyon, and St. Etienne. One can only imagine the things they will see and do. In fact, we here at the Insider do imagine these things, starting with this email from Doran Barnes back to the folks at headquarters:

From: Doran Barnes
Sent: Wednesday, July 2, 2008 3:48 PM (France time, Oooh-La-La)
To: Michael De La Torre; Lola Storing; Paula Lantz;
Cc: Kevin McDonald; Christina Lopez; Darold Pieper; Doran Barnes; Bob Arthur; Claremont Insider
Subject: FTA Public Private Partnership Conference in Lyon, France

Friends Back Home at Foothill Transit

Boy that was a long flight, but we landed safe and sound at Charles De Gaulle Airport (he was an important Frenchman). And now our little group (except for Dave; we lost him somewhere) is now safe and sound in our swell hotel with a nice view of the Arc d'Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.

Sweet.

At the April Executive Board meeting, the Executive Board considered sending representatives to participate in a Public-Private Partnership Conference that will be held in Lyon, France. the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the American Public Transportation Association, and The Embassy of France are collaborating on an international workshop on public private partnerships in the public transportation industry July 6-8 in Lyon and Saint-Etienne, France. The workshop will focus on how to fast-track new projects with partnerships that include private sector financing as well as private sector responsibilities for turnkey design, construction and operation of the project. We are not sure how fast tracking new projects in France relates to the Foothill Cities, but with eight [nine, actually]of us here, and with the fine wines and all, we know we can figure it out.

The Board took action to authorize the Executive Board Members and Executive Board Alternates to attend this event. Don't look for any information about this boondoggle on the Internet; our sponsors are smarter than that. We only distribute this information on a "need to know" basis. It slipped by at the APTA with a cryptic reference, here.

We do anticipate that a Board Member will be making a presentation at the Workshop on the Foothill Transit experience (even now, with the session only 5 days away, we are a little unsure whom that will be). We are planning to include site visits to the City of Rouen and the Veolia Environment Campus as part of this trip. Rouen is a very interesting city in that it shares many characteristics with the Foothill Transit service area. I can hardly wait to get back and tell you what those are.

In the meantime, this email contains a few pictures we took at Charles de Gaulle Airport. We last saw Dave Reyno in this igloo...

Thanks!
Doran

Doran Barnes
Executive Director
Foothill Transit
ph: 626.931.7200
fx: 626.915.1143
100 South Vincent Ave., Suite 200
West Covina, CA 91790