Crisis! Sometimes in life the worse thing
that can happen is to be right:
Those of you who may
remember my run for city council in 2002 may remember my concern with
the capacity and expandability of our city water/sewer system.
Well Once again we are in trouble, we've out grown it and seem to have
few practical solutions. I was concerned with wholesaling the service to
Oakgrove without knowing for sure we could meet our needs. Our waste
water treatment facility has been upgraded and reworked again and again
to squeeze all the capacity we could. We've built the new water tower on
the Westside and are looking into a new waste water plant and new water
tower on the Eastside.
Almost as bad, all
this capital investment could be for not. The Met-council is less than
10 miles away, once they expand here we would be tied into the metro
system. Unfortunately, this option we have no control over and have
obligations now.
Our challenges for St
Francis this term are many:
·
long term
planning for development
·
attracting a commercial and light industrial tax base, currently over
25% of the property taxes in St Francis are paid by one business
·
building
for the long-term needs of water/sewer
·
to find a
permanent home for our city hall
·
adequate
police and fire to ensure we can deal with law enforcement issues
surrounding meth and sex-offenders in our fast growing community
Although that list is long and complex I
believe we can meet each of these challenges together with a lot of hard
work to ensure demand does not exceed our availability of services.
St Francis needs to have a permanent home for city hall, get better control of
land development by having a precise plan, attract new business that fit
with our community while ensuring we maintain adequate resource levels
for police, fire and public works. I know that we can make it happen
together, and that’s the key, working together. I would like more
community input and I want the council to take the input from its
citizen advisors and consultants far more seriously than it has been in
the past.
I am concerned that we have lost too much
time with the city hall issue. The list of sites for our city hall
continues to go up and down yet we seem no closer than when the search
began over five years ago. While we’ve been distracted with that issue,
other issues have been neglected and grown.
The city must go forward from here and not
start over each time the city holds elections. They have brought in an
outside and impartial consulting group to advise them and I believe the
city should use the data to find the best site that meets the criteria
already laid down.
We have a lot of community energy right
now, new groups like the Jaycees and the chamber of commerce and
established groups like the Lions willing to work with the city for the
betterment of St Francis.
John Hane