City considers 87 percent stormwater utility rate increase over 6 years

You named the three council people on the PUC. Who are the citizens? There should be meetings held in every neighborhood in the city regarding rate increases. Not everyone can attend meetings at City Hall at 5 o’clock. Easy way to say there was public input. Stick it to the residents. MNDOT water from the freeway drops down into our streets from pipes and deposits storm water that goes into drains that empty into some of our neighborhood creeks. What is being done about that?

The citizen members of the PUC are Howard Jacobson, Carrie Ryan, Chris McIntosh, and Bob Prusak.

What qualifies Jacobson, Ryan, McIntosh, and Prusak?? Using the Street Improvement Fund is not what we voted for. Do the tax-exempt districts have to pay as well?? For example, will the billion-dollar “NON-PROFIT” Essentia developers be taxed or any of the other 96 Tax Increment Funded districts have to pay???? Maybe it’s time developers stopped getting tax cuts and started paying taxes like the rest of us.

Our infrastructure is ancient, and most of the existing stormwater system was designed and built over 50 years ago, and a fair amount of that prior to 1940. The 2012 storm event exposed every weakness in our system; moreover, the flooding created even more issues. The backlog of repairs and updates since the storm is staggering. We’ve kicked this can down the road too long. It’s time to pay the piper.

If you do the math, the 87% increase amounts to an additional $5.88/mo or $70.56/year. This sounds like a fair and reasonable cost to me.

Is the cost fair and reasonable when you examine how much of our public funds are being diverted to Erik Simonson & his zoo crew? Is it fair and reasonable when you examine the aquarium or Spirit Mountain, and how they are given the linen-glove treatment?? Is it fair when you see how the elites of this town hold the tourism tax $$ hostage, as if it’s a sin of the flesh spending tourism tax $$ on things like this that average citizens/local environment would benefit from?

Is the cost fair and reasonable to average people as the property tax rate continues to skyrocket around town?

Well, stormwater infrastructure is fairly critical to a city.

You know what’s not critical? Oh… aquariums, ski hills, zoos, libraries come to mind. Nice to have, but not critical.

In a word, Yes.

Don’t know the other citizens but Howard Jacobson was director of Water & Gas/ Comfort Systems when I worked there. Cannot believe that the manhole on 21 as pictured is from 1891. That whole area was rebuilt when the freeway was put in. During the ’60s there were houses there-I lived on 20th.

Thank you. When I asked the public works director to point me toward some old manholes, he identified the one in the picture, as well as two more along that block of Second Street, as being from 1891.