The City Manager Said What?

Guess what? The new sewer bills were sent out, and that means that the City has some ‘splanin’ to do – because your next four sewer bills are going up by 38%!

I must say, even though city officials claim to not pay attention to my website, they sure say and do a lot of things that are responsive to things that I’ve posted here and on the Clarkston Sunshine page. I really don’t mind – I appreciate the fact that they’re paying attention and taking action, even though they claim not to read what I have to say. What I do mind are misrepresentations about what’s happening – and I’ll always respond to that.

I warned you that higher sewer bills were on the horizon because of the city’s financial mismanagement in this post:

https://www.clarkstonsecrets.com/fiscal-irresponsibility-a-financial-windfall-and-the-sanctimonious-chutzpah-of-our-city-council/

In essence, the city council “borrowed” $300,000 from the water and sewer funds – our money, not theirs – for the City Hall renovation and DPW expansion. This was in spite of a multi-faceted, city-wide protest against spending money on this project the first time the city council tried to shove it through.

The money that the city council “borrowed” was money that we taxpayers paid over and above the actual amount owed on our water and sewer bills. This money accumulated in the water and sewer funds and was expressly intended to pay for emergency repairs for water and sewer issues, not city council building fantasies.

After the city council raided the water and sewer funds, an actual emergency happened – and gosh, whoever could possibly have anticipated that emergency funds would be needed for an emergency use? 🙄 The emergency is the unavoidable repairs needed for the Oakland-Macomb Interceptor Drain, and Clarkston’s share of that cost was calculated to be $98,921.06.

At the same meeting that the city council learned how much we would have to pay for sewer repair, they also learned that the city was going to receive a $57,165 financial windfall from the close out of several special assessment districts. This “extra” money came from overtaxing citizens who paid more than the actual value of the improvement in each of these special assessment districts. Rather than refunding the money to those who had overpaid, or applying the money to the $98,921.06 that we owed for the sewer repair to reduce the burden on all of the taxpayers, the city council decided to spend $33,000 (over half of the $57,165) on signs because:

• • Our signs look old
  • It would add a “great visual” at a time when we are trying to attract businesses and it makes Clarkston appealing to support them
  • The signs keep the look and feel of our community
  • They wanted to do something “uplifting and positive” for the residents
  • They will improve the look of the city

Heaven forbid that the local businesses don’t think our signs are pretty enough! (Do you ever get the feeling that city council cares more about a select few business owners than they do you, even though you pay the bulk of the costs of running the city? If so, it’s definitely not your imagination.)

Sue Wylie, Jason Kniesc, and Al Avery all voted no on blowing the money on signs. Eric Haven, Joe Luginski, Ed Bonser, and Gary Casey chose buying new signs over easing the burden of the $98,921.06 sewer charge or paying down the $300,000(!!!) of City Hall renovation/DPW expansion debt. All of this was discussed at the August 24, 2020 city council meeting that I’ve summarized here:

http://www.clarkstonsunshine.com/august-24-2020-city-council-meeting-held-virtually/

Better-managed Independence Township fronted the $98,921.06 for us and had to be paid back. Because the city council had plundered both the water and sewer funds to pay for the City Hall renovation/DPW expansion, and they needed to find a way to repay Independence Township, they decided to rob Peter to pay Paul by transferring the entirety of the remaining $300,000 loan obligation to the water fund. In other words, they repaid the sewer fund with the water fund, and then used the sewer fund to pay the $98,921.06. (Whenever an average Joe juggles loans like this, it usually means that they are in serious financial trouble.)

And now, the city wants to replenish the sewer fund by raising your next four sewer bills by 38%, because after all, we need to rebuild that fund so that we have it for emergencies! (Note that they haven’t even considered an ordinance to require that all money from the increase to our sewer bills must remain in the sewer fund for sewer emergencies rather than be used for some future building wish of the city council – nope, you’re just supposed to trust ‘em. Gee whiz, how has that worked out for us?)

I have no idea what they did with the approximately $24,000 from the “extra” money that remained due to the close out of the special assessment districts. But since the City is passing the entire $98,921.06 onto us in four installments, they obviously spent that money elsewhere. (I’ll bet it was on something super important. 🙄)

In an April 21, 2021 letter to all Clarkston sanitary sewer customers and included in the city council packet for the April 26, 2021 meeting, the city manager had the following to say:

A related question that is often asked is, “I heard that the City borrowed from the Sewer Fund to pay for the City Hall renovation and expansion, is it because of this borrowing that the City needs to recoup the OMID repair costs from the residents?”. Initially, the City did borrow from both the Water Fund (66%) and Sewer Fund (33%) as a low cost way of funding the City Hall renovation, but the City has since restructured the loan to be 100% from the Water Fund and made the Sewer Fund whole once again. So no, the decision to recover the OMID cost from residents is not related in any way to the City Hall renovation/expansion.

As they used to say, “smooth move, Ex-Lax.” Given what I’ve just told you about how we got here, do you really think that it’s truthful for the city manager to say that the decision to recover $98,921.06 from residents “is not related in any way to the City Hall renovation/expansion”?

Compare councilmember Sue Wylie’s comments during the September 14, 2020 council meeting with the statement from the city manager’s letter to sanitary sewer customers (cut and pasted from Clarkstonsunshine.com):

Wylie said that when we agreed to the city hall construction, we did so with the understanding that we were not going to raise taxes, but that’s what this is. She voted for the city hall construction because she thought it was the right thing to do, but if we hadn’t borrowed the money to pay for city hall, we wouldn’t have to be raising fees now. Haven said that this just happened, it was an unforeseen thing, we are trying to handle it expeditiously, and he thinks Wylie understands that.

At the time that Wylie made these comments, the discussion was focused on setting up a new special assessment district to pay for the sewer repairs, which would have placed the $98,921.06 burden onto your back in a different way. After consulting with the city’s auditor, the city manager later recommended simply tacking on the money to your next four sewer bills without first establishing a special assessment district. Either way, you’re still paying for the $98,921.06 – and it most definitely is because the City blew $300,000 on a City Hall renovation/DPW expansion over taxpayer objections.

The entire September 14, 2020 city council meeting is summarized here:

https://www.clarkstonsunshine.com/september-14-2020-city-council-meeting-held-virtually/

If you want to listen to the discussion and hear Councilmember Sue Wylie’s honest comments for yourself, you can find it at this link at video time mark 0:44:29:

http://216.11.46.126/Cablecast/Public/Show.aspx?ChannelID=2&ShowID=3260

It’s bad enough that the city council authorized a project that the taxpayers didn’t want, using taxpayer funds that were set aside for water and sewer emergencies. It only adds insult to injury when the city manager – someone whom I normally have only praise for – puts a slick spin on things in a way that tries to obfuscate why we are where we are today.

The fact is that we are in the hole for a $300,000 City Hall renovation/DPW expansion that the city manager championed and helped push through. If the city council hadn’t spent this money, then they would have been able to pay the $98,921.06 without breaking a sweat. The worst-case scenario would have been to transfer $98,921.06 from the water fund to the sewer fund and not burden the taxpayers with a 38% increase in their sewer bills.

Ah, but they can’t do that . . . because they’ve already blown the money. They also didn’t care enough about you to apply the $57,165 from the close out of the special assessment districts to reduce the amount that you have to pay on your sewer bill because of the poor decisions that the city made.

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether the city manager’s statement – that the 38% increase in your sewer bill “is not related in any way to the City Hall renovation/expansion” – is accurate and truthful. You probably don’t have to think too hard or too long to know what I think about it.

It would be nice if city officials would stop insulting our intelligence. They screwed up and should own it, particularly since they now also claim to have a “mission to ensure government transparency.” Sadly, I really don’t think that Clarkston government even knows what that means.