What Is Really Happening at City Council

Is the hullabaloo over the Supervisors giving us a $1 mill from ARPA for the new library really warranted?  Now we have to indebt ourselves and beg for another two million. There was a grand round of applause for Interim City Administrator Lisa Kotter for her presentation at the request session, which will probably insure that she will be a permanent city administrator.

            She is clearly glib and facile, but I fear seriously lacking in sense of democracy—the people’s best interest—which should be her first order of business, not promoted by increasing city bureaucracy and giving grants and rebates to businesses.

            Ordinary activities cost people more. A building permit to add a new deck or replace your crumbling steps will currently cost you $25. The city plans to increase it to $250 or more by passing an ordinance that a building inspector from ECIA must OK it before you receive a permit. They charge $50 to come out and do it, and $93 an hour for the inspection. Last week, the office government mileage number was released: 64 cents a mile $33.28. So we see what this is about—bucks for bureaucrats. 

            To my face, she insisted that was what I wanted. What I objected to was only 3 council people being asked to sign off them by the previous administrator. I walked out because meetings all spring that featured more TIF payments to well-off individuals, a decision that will compromise the integrity of a neighborhood, and more bureaucracy. I was overcome with the sense that this city council will do nothing for ordinary citizens. A few wealthy individuals will benefit massively, most of the rest of us, hardly at all.      

      Delaney said Tough Toenails! If you buy a house someone will build in front of you, someone will build behind you. Yeah, bonehead if you buy in a subdivision. If you have a 100-year-old house in a 100-year-old neighborhood, it shouldn’t be compromised. People should contemplate what this is doing to their property value.

             

Begging for Library Bucks

While we are out begging for bucks to build a new library, a look at Cascade public funding history is illuminating.  In 1965, the city built its first swimming pool. The Cascade Utility paid for it, lock, stock and barrel. Seven years later in 1972, the City built a library.  It received $30,000 from the Cascade Municipal Utility, and a grant from the federal government for the balance, a total of $58,000, which what the facility cost. No citizen was asked to donate a dime for either.

            Nowadays, there seem to be two ways to raise money for a city project—bonding and begging. Bonding is taking a loan from investors and begging is trying to get grants from the likes of the supervisors.  Both have drawbacks: if we take $ from the Supervisors can we say no to any request by them in the future?

            Right now the Cascade Municipal Utilities has over $3 million in the bank, $1.7 from electrical bills, and $1.4 gas bills. The Utility gave $27,000 and change to the pool built two years ago. However, Manager Chantelle Orr says those funds “are required for expanding the system. For example, when Centro came to town, new lines had to be run to their facility.”

     

   I have long objected to paying utility workers more than the city workers, who have to have a wider range of skills, but the rationale that council/the utility has accepted is utility work more valuable.  The differences in salaries, however, could not be the reason the CMU no longer can support city projects the way it did in the past.

        The reason is simply that the people of a community are expected to put businesses on a profitable basis before they even open. Investing in a library, pool or park is no longer deemed as important and it was in 1965 or ’72.  Even with business salaries and profits, especially corporations hundreds of times more than  ordinary citizens.

Shades of Jesse & the Old Farmer's Bank Bldg?

 If you read the recap of the last Cascade Council meeting in the 25 May Pioneer, you probably concluded that the most important action council took was to amend last year’s budget. Nope,  that’s water under the bridge because it is money already spent.

            Buried in the 3^rd paragraph is the information that the city gave $70,000 of our tax money to Developer Brian Bock along with a$600,000-state grant from federal funds.  So here we go again, ladies and gents:  shades of Jesse Loewen and the Old Farmer’s Bank Building.

            Prompting me to ask the question I have posed before, “Should a city become a transfer point for money to businesses?” Loans are one thing and they have proven to work out very well, but grants (free money) are another.  Especially, when the city has to go begging for a library and has given up making the alleys in town strong enough for the garbage truck to drive on.

            According to City Admistrator Lisa Kotter, I was mistaken writing that Developers Jason Rogers and Tyler McQuillen got $70,000 for their project above the New City Park; they only got $4,000. However, considering that the neighborhood opposed the project, there is not room to provide adequate fire protection or snow removal and the addition of that much hard surface is sure to flood the park, 5 cents is too much. Hosch voted against it. 

            Bottom line: voters put people on council who are either in business or pro-business instead of pro-community, and this is what you get. Maybe you think this is a good idea?