$5,000,000 or was that $15,000,000+

I have to give it to Mr. Windwehen, he calls a spade a spade and I like that about him. 

In last nights meeting after the presentation by LNV on our water system he gave his review.  In short, and this is my condensed version, 'you failed to plan 7 years ago when this was brought to your attention, so now you have no options but to go outside for money.  If you'd done your job, you would of raised rates then in anticipation of this, and had capitol to pay for it, but you didn't.'  Yeap, that's a spade. and as far as I can tell there were 2 on our council back then when this happened.

If you haven't read my blog from May 30, 2011 - A Bit Bothered click on the link and brush up on where we are.

So LNV came in and gave a proposal to replace our filters to gravity filters, which are much new technology and apparently something TQEC are wanting us to do for compliance.  They listed several areas that needed addressing on our 90 year old water plant. 

In short to 'fix' the plant is just over $5,300,000.  But fixing the plant just delays the inevitable, and that's that our plant needs to be replace at just over $15,000,0000. 

There were a couple of other items that honestly I'm not sure I totally understand.  We have 2 free standing pipes that hold water if I understood correctly that apparently have issues with the water not churning properly, and to fix those are just over $150,000 each.

To fix the Hwy 97 well is still being evaluated, but they expect the sulphur remove would be automatic if run over a chiller tank, so they are testing that out, but to run that would be around $200,000.  We would then have to see what problems would be cause by mixing ground and surface water, so we don't really have a final there.

So get ready, because you are about to hear the words 'bonds' come up to pay for this.  Even a 20 year bond would be $1,000,000 a year in payback.

I want to make this clear, I'm certain our water system needs work/replace.  I'm upset that over the last 10 years we haven't been planning for this, and for the record that went way before Mr. Huseman, he just continued to let the ball sit in the corner and ignore it.  I'm upset that instead of all those who have used the water over that time, didn't pay for this, so not only do we have to pay for this now, but if we are going to be good citizens we have to start planning for the future and putting some aside for the next go around.  What a horrible burden to be place on those of us living here right now.

In the next couple of days I'll write about our streets and the situations there.  But once again, a lack of planning, poor city managers, and our city councils over the last 15 years or so lack of action has brought us to this point. 

For those of you who don't know, almost every Tuesday night there has been a special called meeting of the council trying to clean out the cobwebs in our closets and cleaning up the mess left by previous administrations.  They have meet at least 3-4 time a month since February.  Honestly, it's not what they signed up for, but it's what it's taking to try to clean up some of this mess.  I can't tell you how lucky we are that Mr. Windwehen came along when he did.  I'm afraid it would of been to late for many things in our city if we'd of stayed status quo much longer. 

The 'we'll get around to it' or sweep the problems under the rug attitude that previous administrations have worked under have gotten us here, under funded, broken down, and overwhelmed. 

God Bless,
Dennis Nesser