Stehly’s letter has perfect timing, the council votes on the fee increases tomorrow. I think this paragraph says it all;
The city’s priority has not been to spend tax dollars on basic infrastructure such as sewer upgrades and streets. Understandably, paying taxes and fees is necessary for living in our fine city, but we need to work to keep the basic essentials such as water and sewer rates reasonable. We need to work to use more efficiently the huge amount of added revenue that past water and sewer rate increases have brought.
This is what I cannot figure out. Why is it that we have to continue to raise rates when the money is already there to repair these pipes. One word: Greed.
UPDATE
I see at last night’s council meeting all but one councilor voted for water increases and all six present voted for sewer increases (Rolfing and Jamison were absent);
“There is no way to dress up a vote like this,” Councilor Vernon Brown said. “It does stink, pun intended.”
What needs to be ‘dressed up’ anyway? It’s simple. There is money in the CIP to pay for these repairs, frickin’ use it. This should have been a no-brainer. Instead our stubborn council justified the increase because of sewer repairs. But what if they would not have voted for the increases? The pipe would have still been fixed. Why? Already budgeted and planned, something the council failed to recognize. Imagine that.