AS TO WHAT WE'RE EXPECTED TO ACCEPT, THERE'S THE FOLLOWING EVIDENCE:
Last posting, just below, Nov. 2003 about "developing city" vagueness vs. explicit letter-writing about high density north of Trott Brook.
Why should "developing city" mean that at all, and who got hoodwinked besides Ben the Ramsey taxpayer? Who did the hoodwinking? We all got hoodwinked except for a cabal of insiders is my best guess - but I was not an insider to any conversations, so it's only a guess.
Go figure, based on the images as additional evidence: About a half year after the letter set out in the last post, an April 5, 2004 council worksession produced the minutes presented in the images [and again, click each image to enlarge and read, or open each page in a new tab or window - and please pay attention to who the players are as they are identified and how meeting dynamics developed - it is the evidence you have to infer motive and opportunity]:
To me that meeting conversation raises as many uncertainties as it dispels. More. What if the CAB pipe allotment is insufficient to meet north-end landowner greed and expectation - their visions of Kurakian profits dancing in their heads? Put some local treatment thing up and dump the sewer-water on land locally? That sounds exactly like the complaints from Met Council about private septic systems being a threat. Janus was the Greco-Roman God that was two-faced. It's Janus-like to me, that response. And it shows no regard for water availability. There are regions of the seven-county Metro region that are above a more productive aquifer - where growth channeling is more appropriate for that reason.
Why stick it to Ramsey? Ramsey is short on water. No more wells, DNR has said. Drink riverwater, so a few can reap dollars from their farmland? A "cash crop" so to speak? And we buy it for them with our taxes?
That's unfair to the rest of us when they want to fob their development costs - or any part of the cost - off onto general taxpayers.
When the home I live in was built it was no added cost to the north-enders. Nor to anyone else but the promoter chasing a profit. When they build homes out there, it should be symmetric. No cost to me or my neighbors. Quid pro quo. There are a host of homes and neighborhoods in Ramsey just like mine. Self sufficient from the first stick of lumber, and the first cinderblock on site. What's wrong with that spirit of self-sufficiency reaching north? Nothing, as far as I can tell.
Already people are being forced to pay higher taxes for a city hall no citizens really wanted very much. It there had been a referendum, that dislike for profligate spending would have been apparent.
And where are the promised shoppes and restaurants? How about a little good faith that way, before imposing yet more assessments for sewer-water, or more taxes?
I sure would like some of the stuff from that meeting spelled out clearly - up front, not by hemming and hawing then later being hit with big surprises.
I'd like sound, feasible protective things up front, such as having a Charter and Comprehensive Plan that each says my neighborhood, the Soderberg Addition, and other established homes will never be forced by Met Council to hook up. Not even with the Peterson Pipeline neighboring the Soderberg Additions (west of the gun club, south of Central Park) and Peterson wanting to charge others for costs of his profit pipeline. Ditto for the homes north of the gun club and Central Park, south of Trott Brook not being forced into paying the Peterson piper.
And, is the term "Peterson's Pipeline" at all inappropriate? Is it Ramsey's pipe?
That's one of the uncertainties. Those who get money from others hooking in, isn't that a key badge or indicia of ownership? Connexus owning the power grid, Qwest owning the phone grid?
A property right? You pay to play the developer's game, and if in the Peterson pipe's locale, that means pay Peterson as well as paying Ramsey and Met Council, the governmental entities?
A Strange Arrangement. I have a public data disclosure request in with the City to review that particular contract - see who has what "rights" to charge hookup fees, or to take a share of the hookup tithing.
Six of one. A half dozen of the other. Own it. Funnel off cash flow as if you did.
How's this, if Peterson's Pipeline precipitates growth beyond the capacity of existing wells to provide domestic water to dwellings, then Peterson can pay up front for the Mississippi riverwater treatment plant.
It sounds great to me. Then if anyone wants to hookup to the treatment plant water supply, without being forced to, he gets a share of the spoils??? Do the water plant the Ramsey way too?
I am not wholly negative - What I do like is the second image above, p.5 of the minutes containing the Steffen -&- Met Council committment explicitly within the minutes half way down the page; if the pipes are in the ground, "let people decide if they want to hookup." I recall Ms. Steffen phoning me earlier about the language and our having a discussion about it being in the minutes. She said she would check on it. That was summer-fall 2004 and the statement still stands unchaged since then.
Let's put it in an even more appropriate writing than a set of work session minutes. Let's put that Met Councilmember's committment down, in black-and-white, within the new 2008 Comp Plan. For the Met Council staff to read and approve it, stated that way -- it can and probably should be using that exact wording. "Comp. Planning" the statement will help make me a happier man - seeing that the wording is explicitly carried over into the Comp. Plan and then officially endorsed by Met. Council staff agreement. It is what Steffen said. She said what she meant. We know from experience she is not one to equivocate or to dissemble. Having her word about "let people decide if thy want to hookup" is reassuring. And it certainly helps. But let's "Comp Plan" it that way, anyway --- like buying insurance even when we do not expect the barn to burn down.
That language. In the Comp. Plan. Why not? The wording is simple. Is there any problem, taking a promise for what it is?
I see none.
We have to understand, it's not an absolute guarantee over all future time, yet having clear, terse, protectivie Charter and Comp Plan wording -- wording to protect existing homeowners and neighborhoods from density and assessment mayhem is, a far lot better than placing trust in some half-baked ordinance that says if a septic system or well fails with sewer/water available, a homeowner must assure the septic system meets prevailing standards or hook up [i.e., there's not a word, nothing, about what to do with a failed well]. Ordinances can be changed in an eyeblink.
Go figure. That one ordinance was passed in such haste that provision for a failed well was never written into it, nor cared about, apparently, as much as getting it passed quickly for reasons I can only guess at. There was an anti-Peterson Pipeline petition circulating at the time that ordinance got cobbled together.
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So, those north-end or other folks wanting to profit - will they pay to play, as Peterson & cohorts did while routing their pipe for the gun club and cornfield?
Will they pay Peterson & cohorts, and are things set up so the Peterson faction can make a profit off of laying of city sewer main? I want to find out. The contract the City pursued for that pipe, and Peterson folks' exact continuing position when others want to hook into it, is public data -- anyone can request it be disclosed and the City is obligated to provide the document for inspection and copying. My request is pending.