Columns
Time for pretending is over
NEW ALBANY — The purpose of a municipal sewer system is to remove the impurities from our waste and deliver a clear end product back to our waterways.
The purpose of a good opinion piece ought to be similar, so let’s boil our current fascination with a proposed sewer rate hike down into its key elements.
Element 1. The people of New Albany need to pay more attention to what’s going on so they won’t be fooled by politicians.
2. The coming rate increase for sewers is not unexpected. Members of the City Council are the last people who can claim shock and surprise. This dramatic boost in our rates has been coming for a long time and the Council knows it. As for the people of New Albany, see Element 1.
3. Our representatives on the City Council have resisted every recommendation to have the people who use the sewers pay for them. The sewer system was never supposed to be a drag on the taxpayers. It was supposed to pay for itself.
4. Since the City Council is the only body that can set the rates and keep the sewer utility operating at break even, all responsibility for the current condition of the utility’s finances can be laid at their feet.
5. A heavy debt burden is the reason for the rate increase. There’s no evidence that New Albany’s operating expenses or maintenance costs are out of line with normal.
6. That debt is even heavier because past City Councils have refused to establish rates sufficient to meet the dollar costs of the utility, including mandatory upgrades to prevent overflows of sewage into the streets and streams where stormwater flows.
7. Even with this pending increase, the City Council intends to continue an outrageous policy of subsidizing the rates of the biggest users of the system by having the taxpayers keep their rates low.
8. Shifting money from the income tax to artificially keep sewer rates low is a direct transfer from working New Albanians to businesses and households who do not pay an income tax to the city.
9. Most of the City Council thinks you aren’t smart enough to figure out where the responsibility lies. They think that if they keep your sewer rates artificially low, you will ignore the fact that you are already paying for it with reduced fire protection, crappy streets, non-existent code enforcement, and higher crime. What’s really happening is that they are using your taxes to pay other people’s bills.
10. The time for pretending is over. The utility is in default. Though council member Dan Coffey denies that this is so, the facts are the facts. Failure to raise the rates immediately will result in our assets being seized, having even higher rates imposed on us, and losing control of the utility for years and years to come.
11. There are no “sides” to be taken on this issue. The politicians are using this rate imbroglio to stir up passions and convince you that this guy or that woman or that company are ripping you off. A council faction is using you to fight a petty turf war with the administration, apparently because the mayor hurt their feelings.
12. The deal on the table, as a raw business proposition, is not that bad. Since our debt is our debt, how much we must raise is not in question.
13. Our lenders and regulators are willing to refinance a significant portion of our debt right away.
14. They are prepared to let us use our own money, now held in a reserve account, to finish the job the EPA demanded of us, and to let us replenish that account over 10 years.
15. For that leniency, all they ask is that we pay our bills in such a way that the current deficit is cured. During this and next year, that requires $3.2 million in new revenues from ratepayers. Beginning in 2012, that requires another $2.3 million in new revenues from ratepayers.
16. The deal before the council calls for an immediate 36 percent rate hike, followed by another rate hike in 2012 of another 19 percent. Prudently, the sewer board built in a 3 percent annual rate hike in the ensuing four years.
17. Failure by council to accept this deal means we lose all control of a technically bankrupt municipal utility.
18. Don’t let this happen. Make sure your council representatives know you’re going to be plenty mad if they make some banker from Boston our new sewer czar. We paid for this system and we won’t take it lightly if the council gives it away in the name of political posturing.
Since the editors of The Tribune do not have unlimited space, I’ll ask them if I can have just a little more on another day to propose a plan that would avoid any rate increase at all for about 20 percent of all ratepayers.
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