Subject:  Meeting RoD and Response to your 2/26/00 Email
From:  "Darrell L Taylor" <TAYLORDL@gov.ns.ca>
Date:  Thu, 09 Mar 2000 17:01:44 -0400

Hi Shalom,

I understand I may have inadvertently caused you some embarrassment when drafting the RoD for the modelling meeting. I assure you that was not the intent. I was merely trying to reflect who was invited, who was there, and what was discussed. Please accept my apologies.

I believe we need to discuss an alternate arrangement beyond the present situation in order to work towards a better response time for your concerns or requests. Recently I have been unable to provide you with all of the information which you wanted, due to either my time constraints or those of other staff from which I requested this info.

Although I will continue to serve as your conduit to the Dept and get information as quickly as I can, please bear in mind that I have responsibilities that periodically take me away from the office. Moreover, when seeking information for you from other s taff, I am also at the mercy of their schedules. Therefore, response times will vary but be as prompt as possible.

I believe that the informal approach which we agreed to take for discussion and resolution of issues, and to facilitate a collaborative working relationship should continue. I assure you that I have read all of your correspondence, including nearly 30 em ails since our meeting, and have been working to address the identified issues since that meeting.

I prefer discussions by phone as opposed to email since I find them generally more efficient. If I appear hesitant to carry on a protracted conversation it is because I have many other commitments and not because I am uninterested. Therefore, I need to k now the essence of the request you are making relatively quickly, so that I can pursue the required info and respond more quickly for you.

Perhaps we should meet periodically over coffee or tea to discuss common matters of interest so that more information is exchanged and we would better focus on the issues and not be distracted by other pressures. We could set up a certain time every so of ten to talk about lake issues and see how things are progressing.

Until we get something better set up we should continue as per our agreement during the meeting at your home. That is, I draft a RoD from our discussion, we work towards addressing the identified concerns, and we pursue mutually beneficial interests throu gh collaborative efforts.

To that end, I plan to have a RoD for our meeting drafted tomorrow. I hope it reflects the highlights of the conversation.

You may be interested to know that I had occasion to comment on a lake issue in HRM this week and recommended that the municipality adopt and use a predictive model and set water quality objectives to benefit their decision making. I also referred to your lake data archives on two occasions as well. I know that you believe others than the municipality should be doing these things, but I believe the important thing is that they get done. I think we both believe in th e same ends, it's just the means that we disagree about.

Can we continue discussing these issues sometime after March 20th? I'll be out of the office until then. Let's set a date and time and meet over coffee. I believe I've gotten answers to at least two of your questions and we can pursue the other ones at th at time.

Regards,
Darrell