Last evening I attended my first y2k community meeting. It was hosted by a Baptist Church in the our city. The guest speaker was the city year 2000 project manager.

I went to the meeting loaded for bear. My shoe box was overflowing with documents that I've collected in the last few months, the most recent of which taken from this forum an hour before the meeting. I was looking forward to meeting and sharing notes and ideas with my fellow titanic passengers.

There are approximately 1/2 million people in the city proper and approximately 1 and 1/2 million people in our urban area. I went early to assure a good seat, expecting a rather large crowd.

Upon entering, I encountered a table with literature and a lady greeter. I was the first one there. I found a place that I would be comfortable, and be able to take notes.

After about 20 minutes of waiting, the second person arrived. Our greeter inquired if he was there for the "to why" thing. The writing was on the wall. Shortly afterwards a number of other people arrived. They were from the steering committee that had been meeting in another room. I quite naturally assumed to it was a y2k steering committee but apparently it had something to do with church functions. The topic of the meeting was how to cut costs by eliminating the weekly church newsletter (overheard).

In total there were about 20 people in attendance. I was asked repeatedly if I was a guest speaker. I simply replied "not yet", smile on my face.

Upon arriving our guest speaker introduced himself and gave us a short biography. He has been the project manager for the year 2000 project for two years. Prior to this he has been manager in three separate divisions within the city, including public finance. business and debt.

The introduction started with the question "is y2k under control"? A short summation would be "no guarantee ... BUT" . He went on to say that earthquakes and storms pose a greater problem and that we should not get lost on *possibilities* with regards to y2k. He informed us, his job was to calm fears. His agenda was try to keep panic down. He assured us that there was no reason to look beyond our local environment. A notable quote was " this stuff breaks now and we fix it". (sounded familiar from somewhere)

He went on to say that their recommendation is for preparation for a 72 hour event. He informed us a recent poll found that 50 percent can and 50 percent cannot last three days. He repeatedly told us that it is a practical problem not a technical problem. He assured us that the 911 center was already basically prepared, and would be fixed in June.

He informed us that some of the areas of concern that already had been addressed, are things like low-interest loan program, water and sewer bills, core financial functions, property tax statements, parking garages, building security systems, and police records systems. They had have six people working for two years and can now report that the police communication and data records system would function, and will be ready by July 1st. He did state however that if they had not taken inaction, they would have failed. Most of the remediation process' had required replacement of the systems. Also, the entire Fire bureau system has been rebuilt over the last three years.

Our water system is 85 percent gravity, our sewer service is 85 percent gravity, transportation system shows zero problems and it will take care of itself in one or two weeks after 1/1/99. He said " if we get electricity we will be okay"

He explained to us the structure of the nationwide power grids system and that there was no way that we would be required to supply power to Texas. And it did not have anything to do with date comparisons anyway. All power stations in the western grid will be online 1/ 1/ 2000 and idling along in the grid throughout leap year. Many of the systems are already operating with post 2000 dates now. They will put them back to the correct dates after leap year because of the benefits of having accurate management records.

All indications are that the phone companies will be okay. The major concern is this: if everyone attempted to pick up the phone at midnight on December 31st to see if the problem was real. Since there are a limited number of bile tones available, this would probably crash the system.

He informed as that we were at greater risk carrying or hiding money than if we were to leave it in the banks. His committee expects burglary to be a growth industry toward the end of the year.

His y2k remediation analogy was; if a person has a stroke, the body finds new avenues of blood to supply the affected parts, and it "will" be opened by the body, replacing those that have been damaged, of course if it was not a severe stroke.

Again here he aerated that, the billions of lines of code are not the problem! It is a "business problem" issue.

Please forgive me if you find any spelling or grammitical errors contained in this piece. I'm really not feeling to well right now!!! But I swear to you, this happened just the way I have portrayed it here. My head is "spinning" again and I am having a hard time concentrating. It seems triage' has become exponentially more distant in the last 12 hours. This onerous contravention hath no solution!

Twizzle Twazzle Twuzzle Twome, time for this one to go home. Help Mr. Wizard!!!!!!!!!

-- MUD (turtle@ubysa.iam), May 17, 1999

Answers

I think I attended the same meeting, except it was held in North Carolina.

I swear the verbiage of some statements is identical to what I heard at our town meeting.

Could the government have written up "scripts" for the locals to use in such meetings? Gotta wonder...

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), May 17, 1999.

Scripted information from the fed's? - I'm sure it's more than "likely" almost assured.

Look beyond the script though (see my comments in the CA "cities and counties" thread too - this city Y2K manager is saying exactly WHY it may become a 3-4 in some areas (that have prepared) and a 7-8 in other areas (that didn't prepare and remediate.)

The systems that he needed to repair (and which took 2+ years to fix! - which confirms the timeframes repeated elsewhere since the first cities began completing last fall) - he confirmed (accidentally) would FAIL without remediation.

And they were critical systems - 911, police, court records, taxes, police, emergency management, etc. Look again at what needed fixing - how long it took, and what the result of "failure" would be. the guy is following the "script" - as he knows it, maybe it is as accurate as he can get based on his systems - here water and sewage collection are "gravity-powered" - good, but sewage treatment most definitely is not gravity-powered. Water treatment is not gravity powered, nor is water pumping.

Remarkable, isn't it, how even "good news" can't be filtered and purified effectively enough to hide potential problems.

What this really means is that any city over 10,000 in population that is not remediated faces very real, very significant problems. No exceptions.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), May 17, 1999.

I was hoping to read an article about an effective community program. This prepare for 72 hours garbage is nonsense.

Why don't they just announce that Y2K is now officially called off?

-- Doug (douglasjohnson@prodigy.net), May 17, 1999.

"He informed us, his job was to calm fears." The only thing I "fear" is that these government and industry maroons will not figure out in time how absolutely unacceptable that statement is!

-- Brook (brooksbie@hotmail.com), May 17, 1999.

MASS HYPNOSIS explains much!

Break on through.... yes, you yourself....

-- lurking_regular (lurking_regular@moi.com), May 18, 1999.

And they call US a "meme"!

Society as cult group!

Jim Jones must be laughing somewhere right about now.....

-- me_again (moi_encore@moi.com), May 18, 1999.