Weekend open thread
4 December 2009
RS
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The Daily Herald said there is an 800-lb. gorilla in the room at the last city council meeting, meaning what and how the city will cut 1.5 million from the fire dept. for next year.
Will there be layoffs? Will they move to cut overtime, if possible? Almost all of the department’s budget is for salaries so what else could be cut?
How do you NOT make cuts when public works workers and police officers have been cut? Are they LESS important than the fire dept?
I believe there will be layoffs or different staffing rules at the stations. But who, besides the council and city manager know?
Until the city gets around to permanently separating the older faulty city sewers in town that back up when rains too hard in some older sections of the city their answer for someone who wants the temporary fix is that the resident needs to pay for half the temporary fix or about 5000.00 for the overhead basement sewer installation so they won’t have to clean up backed up basement sewage when it rains too hard.
I sure hope they don’t decide to charge someone who has a fire for 50 percent of the fire fighting. That would really burn me up.
It just doesn’t make common sense to me that in a city with ancient faulty sewers and a budget that doesn’t have enough money for fire fighting we just had a grand opening of a luxury golf course, gave a car dealer a nice incentive, and now there is talk of giving a kick boxing merchant an incentive.
It pays to be in business and the tax payer always pays.
One clarification for the above for those who don’t live in Elgin.
I forgot to mention that the new luxury golf course that recently opened is city owned.
We might not have working sewers in all areas of the city and we might not have enough money for fire fighting but there is plenty of money for a luxury golf course.
Not this again…..
Clarence is absolutely right. Never mind the fire department’s “800 lb. gorilla”… Elgin is living in the shadow of a million-ton Godzilla of misplaced funding priorities. Our local leaders have left us as a community with, to quote the Courier, “two premiere 18-hole public golf courses” and not enough money to have modern sewers or to sustain our fire and police departments. But, hey, we got a professional woman’s softball team for a bribed $700,000 of your money, and the City Council even wanted to spend millions more on building them a bigger stadium before that scheme fell apart.
One of the remarkable aspects of the Bandits deal was that you really don’t need to bribe the City Council to get public money. Go down Elgin’s budget and see what our leaders think comes before sustaining fire protection: $3.5 million for an auto mall; over $1 million for “Bikeway Implementation”; $50 thousand for a “Downtown Business Facade Program”; over $800 thousand to bribe elderly voters, oops, for a “Senior Citizen Rebate”; $200 thousand to the Burlington Coat Factory; and over $1 million for “Economic Development Initiatives.”
The Schock Gang (and its mouthpiece The Daily Herald) often claim much of this spending creates “jobs.” But isn’t it ironic that after passing out all your money Schock has left Elgin with one of the state’s - and nation’s - highest unemployemnt rates? Which also explains why there is no population that can afford to buy goods or services in Elgin and why any significant commercial activity in Elgin - aside from taquerias, payday loan places and drug distribution - has to be subsidized by the city. Elgin’s too poor even to support a Salvation Army store; even Walmart doesn’t want to build here. But we got “premiere” golf courses… for awhile at least. Because, folks, the subsidy party is breaking up. The riverboat money that has gone to fund 15 years of little cultural and economic bows and ribbons to make Elgin look like a mainstream American city is drying up. Elgin is budgeting for a 15 percent decline in riverboat proceeds for 2010 and an additional 30 percent decline starting in 2012. And when that money is gone Godzilla and Elgin will get very nasty.
I remember reading to separate all of Elgin’s sewers it would cost close to $50 million dollars. That means a tax increase for all taxpayers. That increase might be more than $150/year for the average homeowner with a home valued at $150,000.
If Elgin canceled all of the above incentives and rebates and subsidies the tax increase might get dropped to $140/year.
Most importantly, it means a referendum where voters would have to agree to raising their own taxes $140/yr. to separate sewers that a heavy majority of homeowners in Elgin have no problem with. Even on the heaviest of rain days. AND, if that referendum is defeated, the city would be able to point to a clear mandate that their voters do not consider separating sewers to be important enough for a tax increase.
Then what? Not fix any of them?
I think the city is doing the right thing in offering financial help on a temp fix until time comes when it can get the permanent job done in permanent stages.
Besides, one person I know would never, ever agree to a tax increase for sewers, especially someone elses, even though he babbles in every Elgin blog available about the city needing to do it. He’s the guy who comes to outdoor concerts and sits on a blanket OUTSIDE the admission gate just to beat the $5 entry fee.
First one to whine, last one to pay. Zero credibility.
I don’t think it is right to make a citizen pay for 50 percent of the temporary sewer fix or about 5000.00 for a faulty basic city service. Boxcar might be right in that there are not that many that are having the sewage back up problem. Do a survey and find out how many would go for the temporary fix if they only had to pay 1000.00 of the fix and the city the other 9000.00.
The city might not have that many to pay 90 percent for but for the ones that they would do that for it would really improve their quality of life and as citizen’s of Elgin be the right thing to do in my opinion.
I would imagine when the sewers were installed by the city they worked fine because there was a lot more bare ground to absorb storm water. It wasn’t the homeowner who allowed all this extra ground to be paved over causing much more storm water to go in these sewers. If the city could not modernize fast enough for the growth they should not have allowed the growth or they should pay for a lot more of the temporary fix.
Having on your epitaph as a city council member that you fixed the back up sewage problem in a timely manner is not as exciting as saying you led the way to creating The Centre, The Bandits Softball field, and the luxury golf courses so I imagine that is why we have what we have. The names of the council on the plaque in the Centre when it was built stay on that plaque during every heavy rain storm that some are breathing and cleaning backed up sewage and storm water in their basements.
Basic working city services should be priority number one in my book.
As I said before it pays to be a business owner in Elgin and the tax payers just keep on paying.
Boxcar, this web page doesn’t cost you a penny so no need to call attention to my repeating a point I choose to repeat.
Common Sense Clarence Hayward
Good post, Boxcar. You hit all the nails square on the head.
The real irony here is that given Clarence’s propensity for continously tooting his one note horn shouldn’t Clarence take the credit/blame for the sewer rate increase too! Where else would the city get the money? Dog license fees!
Paul,
They have spent multi millions from the casino over the same time period that the sewers have been faulty.
“They have spent multi millions from the casino over the same time period that the sewers have been faulty.”
No, one note.
The sewer system in those older neighborhoods precede the casino by about a hundred years!
And your solution of going back in a time machine and re-spending casino money isn’t feasible.
As far as your implication that Elgin has $150 million laying around to fix the problem, you are wrong again. Elgin just had to borrow $2.3 million from ECC to fix Spartan Drive this fall.
The squeaky wheel may get the grease but the squeaky mouse gets the shaft. Given your propensity for taking credit for the fix on everything you complain about, it is only right that you take credit for sewer and water fee increase. Thanks, Clarence, for increasing my cost of living, reducing my standard of living, impoverishing me, forcing me out of my home and into an Obama homeless camp.
>>The city has done several areas, but about 6,000 homes - or 12.5 percent of the city - still remain in neighborhoods with combined sewers. To fix that problem it would cost $150 million, money the city does not have right now…
…The city has had the combined sewer grant program in place since 2001, but only 13 homeowners have used it. <<
Evidently, for the other 5987 residents, investing in their own property value isn’t worth it.
Have you done the math yet, one note? Multiply $10,000 by 6000 homes to see what your temporary fix costs.
The temporary fix might not cost that much if they did a survey to see who has documented problems and is willing to pay 1000.00 for the temporary fix as I suggested.
My sewer works just fine but it isn’t right to say as long as mine is fine the city has no responsibility to do more for someone who has a big problem when it rains too hard.
I have seen a senior citizen who has problems for many years think that he should not have to pay for 50 percent of the city problem and I think he is right.
Granted, if the city were to offer to pay for the temp fix 100 percent then people who did not really need it would be asking for it. I think perhaps 1000.00 of their own money to fix a faulty city service is enough to keep a lot of people from taken advantage of it but it would sure be doing more of the right thing for that senior citizen with the faulty sewer through no fault of their own.
It is just like fixing roads. When they are not workable roads it is needed to fix them and it should not be up to a homeowner to pay for half the fix.
Where did you think they were going to get the money to fix the sewers? Either they increase the fees or they tax everyone some other way. I am not absolutely certain that the fee increase is to cover separating the combined sewers anyway. And if it isn’t coming from the increased fees then the money has to come from taxpayers, the casino, grants, or Santa Claus.
Do you think the people with the combined sewers are going to pay for separating them all on their own?
Was it them who allowed all this expansion of pavement in Elgin that robs the storm water of being soaked into the ground rather than go down the sewer and up their drain?
If the city is not willing to upgrade their infrastructure to keep pace with conditions it is morally reprehensible to allow the expansion and the consequential faulty sewers.
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Well, I must say, Carmelita’s question certainly puts things in a different perspective…
Regarding investment by city leaders in development projects like luxury golf courses vs. investing entirely in maintaining the infrastructure, my impression is that their theory, whether correct or not, has been that higher-end amenities will attract upscale homebuyers, spurring the market for higher-end housing, which when completed and occupied, will provide real estate and local sales tax revenue for the future, long after river boat funds have peaked and ebbed. It’s like priming a pump, or planting seeds now for payoff later.