Trying to make sense of the latest mess at City Hall in 350 words or less is probably impossible, but let’s take a shot at it. It begins with city officials now shifting the blame to a convenient scapegoat called the Bainbridge Ratepayers Alliance. The group has filed a lawsuit, which, among other claims, challenges the city’s use of utility bonds to fund capital projects without a utility commission’s oversight.
The lawsuit basically puts a hold on the city going out for a $6 million, 20-year bond needed to complete the Waste Water Treatment Plant project. An attempt to get a bank to loan the city the money until the bond can be arranged has failed. Now the city wants to use water utility money as a line of credit – up to $3 million, payable in May 2010 – so it can keep the project going. To stop it would cost about $1 million, the city says.
Nobody at the city is excited about robbing water to pay sewer, but right now there’s $3.7 million in the water fund and about $5,000 in the sewer fund. What else is a council member going to do? After all, the city has been living more and more off utility ratepayers’ fees and appears to have no compunction about continuing the practice since fees are what’s keeping the city afloat these days. They have become its “rainy day” fund.
Which, of course, brings us back to the ratepayers group. City Administrator Mark Dombroski is not an attorney, but he is quick to dismiss the lawsuit as meritless. He hopes that everything will be just fine once the lawsuit goes away. Sally Adams, a member of the alliance, is less inclined to offer her opinion on the outcome of the litigation but will predict that the ratepayers won’t be going away anytime soon.
It seems to be a rather small corner that the city has backed itself into, especially since the successful completion of expensive projects such as the WWTP and Winslow Way reconstruction – scheduled to begin next year – are dependent on the city borrowing from outside sources on the come.
Perhaps, considering that most economists are now saying that our economy will remain “flat” for a while, it might be wise for a city with no money to at least explore compromising with the same ratepayers that are instrumental in paying its way.
