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.
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