Mayor Discusses Need for Water Dept. $600,000 Contingency Fund
January 25th, 2011 by Joe BurgessMonticelloLive on Vimeo.
At Thursday night’s City Council meeting Mayor Allen Maxwell informed the council about financial issues faced by the city’s water department.
Regulations require cities to have $100,000 set aside in a contingency fund for each well operated by a city. Monticello runs six wells, requiring a fund of $600,000.
Currently we have “a little over $100,000” set aside.
Maxwell explained how last year’s dry weather caused many repairs to be made on the water system, such as cracked pipes and broken joints.
He closed by saying, “I’m not making any recommendations on what to do, but I want the city council to think about that. We need to be prepared and we need to build up that contingency fund.”
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Looks like the water bills will be going up. Watch out, people. You will be paying more for your water in the coming months.
Perhaps, we should eliminate the MEDC’s budget and put it towards the water contingency fund. The MEDC is given $250,000 of taxpayer money every year. If the taxpayers were seeing a return on their investment, I could see giving them the money. But perhaps we could eliminate their funding and then approve their actions on a case-by-case basis. That way, we can take the $250,000 and put it towards something that the taxpayers actually approve of, like a new Fire Station or a water contingency fund. I know that, as a taxpayer, I would rather have the peace of mind in having safe water and a well-equipped Fire Department than an empty Spec building.
Don’t get me wrong. In no way am I trying to be facetious here. I honestly think that if we’re going to cut all of the funding from the Chamber of Commerce under the guise of doing better things for the community with that money, then we ought to reevaluate even larger expenditures, like the $250,000 given to the MEDC. It seems that if the $50,000 budget given to the Chamber is enough to warrant looking into, then $250,000 certainly is. After all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. And in two years time, we’ve raised the $500,000 needed to bring our water contingency fund up to par. That way, we’ve reallocated current monies and NOT raised taxes for Monticello citizens to take care of a problem which shouldn’t have been allowed to happen in the first place.
Suggestion Man, I applaud you for your common sense approach on how to solve one of many problems our city and new mayor are facing. You should strongly consider volunteering for a position on the mayor’s new planning commision. You seem to think along the same lines as many of the citizens of this town. We do not need higher taxes or water rates, they are too high now, and since wages and income cannot support higher taxes, we need to “trim the fat” from our budget, and the dissolution of the MEDC is the best place to start. The mayor stated that the Chamber was not providing “economic development” for the city and therefore their funding was cut, well please show me where the MEDC has provided ANY economic development. Unless you call tearing down a few eye sores “development”. It may have been created with good intentions, but definitely has not earned it’s name or it’s funding.