Good afternoon Mr. Mayor, Mayor-elect and Councilmembers.  A group of us have just completed a very eye-opening tour of Austin’s Ullrich Water Treatment Plant   I’ll talk about what we learned another time.  

Rght now, budget is on my mind, owing to having attended Tuesday night’s “town hall meeting” which solicited citizen input about the City budget albeit in a limited, highly structured kind of way.  Afterward there was a chance to take the microphone, and I hastened to to mention the quarter of a million dollars we could save annually by abandoning water fluoridation.  I wasn’t the only one to speak up about fluoridation, though. Several others did too, and they didn’t restrict their comments to the budget angle.  It was clear, just from talking to people around me at this big event, that the issue is alive in the public mind and gaining traction.  Many people here have long felt that fluoridation was a bad idea for health reasons, but have felt resigned to it, believing “You can’t fight City Hall.”  Well, we don’t want to fight City Hall; we want to work with you.

Also on the subject of budget.  Reading documents obtained through Texas’ Open Records Act, I’ve learned many of the facts behind the City’s recent re-negotiation of its contract with fluoridation chemicals vendor Lucier.   It seems Lucier’s own supplier, Mosaic had suddenly doubled its price, forcing Lucier to pass some of that cost along.  This can happen at any time, and it will:  the costs will only continue to rise.  The reason given was “great demand and increased cost of production.”  By production, I assume they mean fertilizer production.  Someone recently sent me a picture from one of those fertilizer plants.  Hmmm…interesting.  Animal feed ingredients and. . .uranium.  That’s something we don’t often hear about:  the radioactivity that can come along with fluoride in our water.  Maybe it‘s in the animal feed too?

That‘s all for now.  Thank you.  .