We are the Borg, says the City of Spearfish to the Spearfish Valley Sanitary District:
Without hesitation and very little discussion, the Spearfish City Council voted unanimously Monday to approve a resolution that they believe provides the municipality with exclusive jurisdiction to take all property and assets associated with the district’s sanitary sewer system, as well as the power to levy and collect taxes.
...Spearfish City Attorney Dick Pluimer said what happens next is up to the district to decide.
"It would be better for all taxpayers if the district simply accepted the condemnation, and turned all of their property over to the city," he said. "If that does not occur, I suspect we will be back in court" [Heather Murschel, "Spearfish to Condemn Sanitary District," Black Hills Pioneer, 2012.12.05].
We'll hear at the December 12 meeting of the Spearfish Valley Sanitary District meeting whether Valley residents think resistance is futile.
District president Douglas R. Hayes has responded to earlier coverage of the city's condemnation threat with an online missive. Hayes says the district pays its fair share for the privilege of pumping its poop to the city's pot. He also contends that the district keeps its costs down by hiring private contractors for maintenance of its sewer lines, unlike the city, which incurs greater overhead with salaries and benefits for full-time public sewer employees.
Hayes maintains that the city's demand that the district increase its share to pay 20% of the costs for the wastewater treatment plant is unreasonable. Hayes contends that, with the city's population growing and the district's population flat, the city's share should go up. Hayes also asserts that a share based on actual flow would be more fare and support a lower cost share for the district.
Evidently Hayes thinks his semi-rural residents flush less than us town folk. I hate to get into a pissing contest, but I need to see some science to support that claim. Absent that, it seems we can safely use customer numbers as the basis for the cost-sharing formula. On that count, the city is off by just a few tenths:
In the city’s final attempt to negotiate with the district, they proposed a contract that would require the district to pay 20 percent of the total treatment costs incurred by both entities, instead of measuring and charging the users for the actual amount of wastewater they generated. This number was derived in 2011 by calculating the number of customers in both the city and the district. At that time, the city consisted of 3,621 customers who make up 80.7 percent of the total users, and the district consisted of 865 customers who make up 19.3 percent of the total users [Murschel, 2012.12.05].
There you go, neighbors. Let's not go to court. City, bring down the demand to 19.3%. District, take that as your fair share on plant maintenance.
Hotels and restaurants use ALOT of water. Spearfish has the valley beat on that count by a large margin.
How about the university(4500), not just population but every biz in the community runs water like its ging it of style compared to a homeowner. The Valley might be at 10% and that would be on the high side.
Seems like I heard something about a guy with a slingshot once Corey.
So 20% is an arbitrary number, and maybe used as a starting point in negotiations. But if the valley lines are taken over by the city, then everybody stops worrying about percentages and homeowners will all pay the same rate. No?
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how many customers "the valley" has, (I'm sure that Mr Hayes would be more than happy to provide that statistic if asked), but I'm sure that the city has WAY more customers/users. (Population over 10,000 folks, people that travel into Spearfish to work everyday, rec center, department stores, grocery stores, multiple businesses, schools, apartment complexes, mobile home parks, and what Les and Jerimiah have noted above.)
I'm not part of the sanitation district, but I do know some of the board members as we also share the irrigation in Upper and Lower Valley. The valley isn't opposed to paying their fair share - but they want just that. Their fair share. It more than likely goes beyond the "poop processing". There is definitely a bigger picture here with this "condemnation" claim. Doing this would also help their golden boy developers tap into the district sanitation system, if necessary. And doing this would also make their annexation argument one more solid. Their poor decisions on power grabbing are costing tax payers more money than it should.
Say, Dana, where does the Valley get its water? I notice that we pay a flat residential rate for sewer, regardless of flow, but we do pay for water by the thousand gallons on an upward-sliding scale (my 10,000th gallon—heavens forfend!—costs more than my first and 2,001st gallon). The commercial outfits Jeremiah mentions do pay more for higher sewer flows.
I'm wondering about R's proposal: should all homeowners pay the same rate? Or should sewer be rated to flow?
The majority of the Valley is on well water.
The city throwing a flat percentage at them is fraudulent and self serving. The numbers put forth by the city have little to no validity while you have a mayor who forces the District's attorney to serve him with the Sheriffs Dept.
This is the fella who wishes to serve the Valley. I'm guessing those 800 votes will assure his job search resumes once annexation happens.
I would wonderw why not an individual rate comparable to the city if they really want to look like a friend?
Woody and Kris Hayes own the biggest parcel out there: it's a historic property with its own well and irrigation rights. They would take a huge hit.
Spearditch is under fire from the county and the state to reduce organics in the creek: even if city condemnation of the District fails, it will happen by decree from DENR.
Particularly offensive to the Valley is that storm drains and driveway runoff in the city proper contribute tons of toxic effluent to the creek that otherwise goes unmitigated.
This stormwater quiz just magically appeared in my twitter feed:
http://www.concordnc.gov/departments/stormwater-services/stormwater-quiz