Public speaks out on East Bethel sewer and water
GOVERNMENT, NEWS -- SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2010 3:00 PM BY ERIC HAGEN
The council chamber of the East Bethel City Council on Oct. 6 was filled to the brim with people most of whom strongly oppose their elected officials spending any more time on the sewer and water topic.
A few property owners offered words of support in person or through a letter. A couple more were concerned about how much they could be assessed.
The council was holding a public hearing on what is the first project within the phase one area of the city’s overall sewer and water plan. The impact is generally on the west side of Highway 65 and between 181st Avenue and Viking Boulevard.
Although the people who showed up to the council meeting were mostly against the project, Councilmember Bill Boyer said it is not unusual for naysayers to show up to council meetings and people in support to stay at home. Two out of every three East Bethel residents he has talked to want more business in East Bethel to lower their taxes, he said.
The taxpayers who showed up to the Oct. 6 hearing were extremely skeptical and feel their taxes will end up increasing to pay for a gargantuan system that ultimately could serve the entire Highway 65 corridor through East Bethel and over to the Coon Lake Beach area.
“It was a good plan back then and it may still be a good plan, but I think what needs to happen is that comprehensive plan needs to be looked at,” said Robert DeRoche. “If businesses aren’t here, people will have to pay.”
Residents concerned
For the last several years that sewer and water has been discussed, the council has been consistent in saying that only users of the system would pay for it and nobody would be forced to hook up, said Mayor Greg Hunter, who has served on the council for 12 years.
“To be honest with you, if you’re a current resident in East Bethel, it’s not planned for you,” Hunter said.
Most East Bethel residents who showed up to the Oct. 6 meeting are very skeptical. The city of Ramsey was left with a mess in the Ramsey Town Center when the economy fell through and East Bethel residents worry that something similar could happen in their community.
Bruce Roles said the city needs to re-adjust its growth plan because the aging baby boomers will mean the growth will not be as high as anticipated.
Richard Lawrence said his main concern is that the small and medium size businesses will not be able to afford the assessments and that could lead to them moving from East Bethel.
“When you put a system in like this with charges tied to it, why wouldn’t they move to Ham Lake where they don’t have to pay those fees or skip right over us and go somewhere else?” Roles asked. “When that growth doesn’t happen, this so-called system that we don’t have to pay for if we don’t use it…like hell. It’s going to show up in tax assessments. Somehow those bonds are going to have to be paid off.”
Boyer said with any investment there is a risk, but he feels there are a lot of ifs that would need to happen before taxpayers would be forced to pay for a failing project.
Glenn Terry, chairperson of the East Bethel Planning Commission, alluded to the issue that even though the Oct. 6 public hearing focused on project one, phase one, the discussion really has to do with other areas that are tentatively planned for city sewer and water because of the large investment the Metropolitan Council is putting into the sewer facilities.
According to Kreg Schmidt, engineer with Bolton and Menk, the Metropolitan Council Environmental Services investment is slated to be somewhere between $18 million and $25.5 million.
“Why would you want to put in a gargantuan system for a couple of businesses that may or may not actually need it?” Terry asked.
After Ronning asked for figures, Sell said that the city has not spent any money in working with Bolton and Menk. The approximately $650,000 costs have been covered by grants, he said.
Despite that rather lengthy excerpt, (showing a range of citizen and official feeling), please read the entire item, again this link, for full and further detail.
That said, "The Ramsey Town Center" mentioned in reporting ended up such a debacle that it was "rebranded." While imbued with a sense of failure and/or failed dreams, calling it "The COR" does not alter it being the same old brand as ever, only with whipped cream added, hence this site's rebranding of the rebrand: "The CORpse."
Like it or don't.
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As the reporting notes, "The city of Ramsey was left with a mess in the Ramsey Town Center," one which the learned seven council members (those installed after the 2008 election and holdovers), in their wisdom, bought for millions in cash plus millions of "abated" revenue. Roughly 7/15 of the total $15 million of cash plus "abated" tax, was in cash paid out of City of Ramsey reserve funds so that this council could chest-pound about not raising taxes, short term, while ignoring mention of lowering reserves, long term.
Now one of the sparkplugs of that Ramsey official thinking, Look, wants to "call it a success" and quit on Ramsey's situation, giving up his council seat to chase Natalie Steffen for the now vacated Anoka County Board District 1 seat.
And that's hardly even mid-stream; but changing horses nonetheless.
Why they paid so much can be viewed many ways, and I view it as unsound judgment. Why they bought it at all, they know. I can only guess it was not ill-motivated. However, the present appearance of things is it has been made a cash cow -&- play toy for Darren and Mike at Landform, with Landform having a non-transparent flat-fee five-figure-per-month ongoing cash flow out of Ramsey Taxpayer money; i.e., Landform being, figuratively, attached to Ramsey Town Center [aka the CORpse] like a giant sucking tick.
An alternative, once the MinnWest lender repudiated the past development agreement [which after buying the present council deep-sixed] would have been, if the motive was to take public ownership, to after repudiation pay off the senior tax lien position of the County and foreclose the assessment and back taxes lien the City held as senior to the mortgage [government makes the rules so that government liens are made senior]. Under the now deep-sixed development agreement there was to be forbearance on the city liens. But once the bank repudiated the agreement, the city stood in a position to repudiate any duty of forbearance. Then the bank would either have had to pay the approximately $8 million senior city lien if it wanted to take project ownership in its foreclosure - something it apparently did not intend - or it would have seen its mortgage extinguished in the city's foreclosure, being paid zippo by Ramsey instead of millions.
Unless my thinking is flawed, I cannot understand why the choice was instead to pay millions to a bank without need to do that. Any reader spotting any flaw in my argument, please send an email or leave a comment. I know there was some concern at one point with a site-prep contractor's mechanics lien status, which might have been a factor in how things were handled. But no timely foreclosure of that lien ever happened. It seems only that MinnWest walked away with five million of Ramsey Taxpayer cash, mainly because of largess from officials not spending their own money, but money of others (under a public trust duty).
Sell, the East Bethel City Manager/Administrator by an earlier email assured me, so I can assure East Bethel readers, that Landform has held no consultancy contracts with City of East Bethel; so that concerns about planning-spending per latter parts of the Hagan article are independent of Landform --- with it appearing that Bolton and Menk, an engineering firm and not a PR mill, has generated most fees from East Bethel spending. [Tinklenberg Group authored the most recent East Bethel Comprehensive Plan, as I recall reading, obviously for a fee; and any reader knowing otherwise is asked to send an email or post a comment.]