City messes up
Maintenance is something you have to do from time to time. If you don’t put a new roof on your house every so many years, leaks may ruin personal property worth much more than the re-roofing job. If you don’t top old trees every few years, they may blow down in heavy winds and flatten buildings — or, worse, injure or even kill people.
Me, I need to do “maintenance” on my couch — that is, clean all the clutter off of it, lest some visitor have no place to park it — so to speak.
We found out this week that the city of Madison appears to have neglected important maintenance on the city’s sewage treatment plant, for some years. The cost to put everything right, at long last? An estimated $2 million. That’s allowing for inflation. The longer you put it off, the more you’ll pay in the end — or through the nose.
The Board of Public Works and Safety voted this week to spend $246,000 to finance plans for the much-needed repairs and updating.
The board was told that in December, the chlorination and dechlorination systems failed — and there was no back-up system in place. Parts of the system called “scum skimmers” reportedly haven’t worked in years. The manual for the department hasn’t been updated regularly for years, either.
“Scum skimmers.” Think about that phrase the next time you’re about to dig into a big plate of biscuits and gravy.
What brought the city’s attention to the long-standing problems at the sewage treatment plant? On-going pressure from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. Good to see SOMEBODY watching the store — if only from a distance.
We can say, I think with a pretty fair amount of safety, that several administrations of both parties can be blamed for this embarrassing situation. The plant was first built in the 1950s, updated in the 1970s, and since then … well …
Where is the money to come from to finance all this? (How many things have that question been asked about in the last few months?) Well, a grant was cited at the meeting as the best source of funds because it doesn’t have to be paid back. Sure! This money just flies in here, painlessly, from Mars! Give us grants, many grants, please! They just somehow materialize, and cost no one anything.
Accessing the state’s revolving loan fund was cited as the second-best source — second best apparently because that money has to be paid back (Boo! Unfair!) A sewer rate increase was suggested (which will be popular with no one who pays sewer bills). And the least-favorite source of funding (the envelope please): the money in the TIF Fund, because current and future industrial customers would benefit from improvements to the sewage treatment system.
Gee … am I the only one that sees the TIF Fund route as the most prudent? Tapping a local source of money that’s already there, that’s supposedly meant for just such projects that will benefit local industry?
Naaah! Let’s go for the grant, as was recommended No. 1 to the board. After all, maybe we can get a piece of Indiana’s portion of the Stimulus Fund! Isn’t that the current rage? Stick that hand out there, and wait for De Prez to put some goodies in it!
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Speaking of the federal government, kudos from Old Corporal to Sen. Evan Bayh for having the courage to stand up to the leaders in his own Democratic party in opposing some aspects of President Obama’s stimulus plan. As I recommended last year, Obama should have picked Bayh as his running mate, instead of Joe the Clown Biden. But no — Bayh wasn’t “exciting” enough as a public speaker. All he could do was make a speech without committing two or three embarrassing gaffes right in the middle of it.
Old Corporal – City messes up!’, – Friday, March 06, 2009 at 20:33:09 (EST)
