Hi Chris,
I won't bother to try to explain the RFP again or why it would not have mattered to submit an alternate proposal. A proposal that deviated from the model proposal would have (and one company's was) been deemed "unresponding". -leaving only Railstar's proposal in the end, which did not deviate one iota from the model proposal.
The date of the letter and the date of the discussions is moot.-The CHS knew the letter was coming before it did. The fact is that CHS handed GTLRR a set of NON-NEGOTIABLE terms- Take it or leave it before going through with an RFP. For the health of their business, they left it. I commmend them for trying to save our community by offering to renegotiate even later in the RFP process. They will do fine, we will suffer here. I think that if I were them, I would have run as fast as I could away from the CHS. But no, they put yet another best foot forward and offered to sit down with the CHS. The CHS responded by saying that the law disallowed them to drop the process they were in -despite the law saying exactly the opposite. (another one I had an attorney look at). This, coupled with the many mistruths told by the CHS, has the appearance of a deliberate ploy.
I have a hard time with anyone blaming the good folks of the GTLRR for this fiasco. This is CHS's baby. No one else's.
Chris, I know NOTHING about trains (until I came to this message board) and that is why I ended up here- to get some real answers to the CHS's elusive ones. I am, however, a 12 year Georgetown resident, homeowner, business owner, married with 2 children under 7. I have a great personal stake in my community. I run georgetownpolitics.com and I get a lot of feedback and confidential info from the community via that site. In the past, I have been a reporter and photographer for the Clear Creek Courant, worked for Koleen in 2001 and saw firsthand the venom of the old gaurd - today I am a paralegal. I have read a couple thousand CHS documents retrieved via open records. That is probably my sole claim to being more in the know.
I have tried not to boggle this board down with my un-train responses and I don't put georgetownpolitics.com on my messages. Perhaps the CHRPPAs wouldn't mind if we take this conversation over to the message board at savethetrain.org?
Forgive me for the suspicions of your stance, it seems that just about anyone who is standing in line to get CHS/SHF grants is willing to turn on the blinders and spout the CHS company line.
Have a great day,
Kerry Ann
