My Spearfish neighbors really, really want a vote! Last year, the city cancelled a referendum on annexation of a chunk of land on the north side of town east of Evans Lane when they found some uncrossed t's and undotted i's. Now with more than 650 acres of the Upper and Lower Spearfish Valley facing annexation, citizens have once again petitioned for a public vote. Petitioneers needed just over 300 signatures; according to the annexation opponents' website, they got 1,059. Unless someone really screwed up on the petitions, this annexation goes to a vote in December.
The Black Hills Pioneer finds petition signers wanting to preserve the agricultural heritage of the Valley and keep taxes down:
One of several people who supported an election was Christina Engelhaupt.
“In carrying the petition, there was strong support to conserve farmland and tourism that adds to the diversity of the economy,” she said. “There is also strong support to conserve the history of the Valley.”
While there were a few in favor of the annexation, Engelhaupt said they encountered residents who knew little about the annexation and how it would affect everyone in the Valley and everyone in city limits if approved.
“I think there are a lot of people who don’t understand how much this will cost the residents of Spearfish and for us who live here,” she said [Heather Murschel, "Let the People Decide," Black Hills Pioneer, 2013.11.02].
City Administrator Joe Neeb says the city will come out ahead on revenue. Englehaupt counters that Valley residents will see a big hike in taxes and that they already pay a fair share to the city:
Spearfish City Administrator Joe Neeb said the city would assume about $298,000 in revenue and $120,000 in new expenditures, so the benefit would be around $130,000. In addition, once the connection fees for water, sewer and solid waste are incorporated into the equation, Neeb estimates the city will incur an additional $322,000 in net revenue.
“There are so many residents who will not be able to afford the costs if we’re annexed, and the city’s claim we do not pay our fair share is simply false,” Engelhaupt said of the nearly 1,600 residents who live in the Valley. “We support the community in so many other ways. We volunteer our time, have memberships to the rec center, library and shop locally” [Murschel, 2013.11.02].
Neeb mentioned sewer... hmm... I hope the sewer lines the city runs out to the Valley would work better than their line along Eighth Street:
For at least 15 residents in Spearfish, the costs of having their basements inundated with raw sewage are both financial and emotional, especially because their pleas for help are falling on deaf ears.
The majority of families who know what it’s like to wade in “water so disgusting it makes you sick to your stomach” live along N. Eighth Street where the city’s main outfall line exists.
Although some residents said they have had to go through this at least three times, several of them experienced it for the first time on May 31 and a second time on Oct. 11, when a historic amount of snowfall made flooding inevitable.
“I want everyone to know that there is a whole group of people in Spearfish who are devastated by an overloaded sewer,” Callie Houghton said. “We had sewer all over our basement and it has cost us all thousands of dollars to clean it up” [Heather Murschel, "Sewage Backup Spurs Residents to Confront City," Black Hills Pioneer, 2013.11.02].
Maybe before the city hooks more people into their sewer system, they should make sure the current system works. The city will host a public meeting on their sewer woes Wednesday at 6 p.m. at City Hall.