Thursday, January 17, 2008

Now, a Groundwater Utility?

Yesterday I read that the Woodstock City Council will consider a new tax to pay for groundwater management. What is this? It rains, and now we have to pay to watch the water go down the street into the sewer?

If residents don't wake up and turn off the TVs and hot-foot it to the March City Council meetings, there will be a new "utility" created and a new tax. Isn't groundwater management something that ought to be paid for by the entire City?

City Attorney Richard Flood was quoted in the Northwest Herald as saying, "It would be similar to getting a water bill. ... in a sense, it's a voluntary fee in the sense that if you wanted to provide for your own stormwater and deal with your own stormwater ... [you] can do that."

Do you suppose there is even just one person in Woodstock who would see such a stormwater management billing as "voluntary"?

Now, how about the initial cost - the cost to "study" the problem? According to Public Works Director John Isbell, the start-up cost would be "substantial." OK, what's substantial? It might cost "hundreds of thousands" of dollars just look at each property and guess (errr, calculate) how much each property owner ought to have to pay. And that's not even including the cost of getting the job done.

Is this what the residents of Woodstock want? The March City Council meetings are March 4 and March 18. My suggestion? Either be there or just tack your signed check, made out to City of Woodstock, on your front door.

For the full article, go to www.nwherald.com and search for "stormwater". Change "Sort by" to "recent first". Or just click here: http://nwherald.com/articles/2008/01/16/news/local/doc478da0f49d596219231755.txt

As of this posting, no comments appear following that article. Did anyone read the article?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The City should have done things right in the first place. Why should the residents pay for poor planning and design by previous inept City engineers

Anonymous said...

According to a call to the NW Herald, a vote is required in order to establish a public utility. So we should have a chance to vote it down if the City decides to move forward with this follishness. Gus, you da' man! Snoozer

Anonymous said...

Well, we are also supposed to vote for tax increases for the public schools as well. Seems to me that the Woodstock goon squad passed a new property tax increase WITHOUT a public vote on the matter. As for poor planning, it is poor planning to keep building new homes without making those developers flipping the bill for the upgrades to the sewer system. Maybe we should just shoot em all and livelike savages again!