Monday, April 16, 2007
Will downtown building owners pay?
As At Large Marshall City Council Trustee Ron Goodwin pointed out tonight, as he has in the past, downtown building owners affected by the upcoming alley improvement project may be slapped with the bill to finance their hookup to the newly sunken lines which, as he said, cannot be connected to the outdated buildings' 60 amp interior service panels. Who must pay for the interior building upgrade when the city seeks to sink the overhead power lines? That is the question the city council and staff is currently exploring, according to Director of Utilities and Infrastructure, Tom Tarkiewicz. In the meantime, the council voted 4-2 with Mike Kinter absent to approve a resolution to authorize the sale of $1.05 million in bonds to finance the burying of conduits and vaults in the back alleys behind the two main, north and south blocks downtown this summer during the alley improvement project.
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3 comments:
It seems Marshall voters have chosen the to replace the New Direction Team with the Miss-Direction Team.
Since the beginning of February the method for keeping the minutes for city counsel meetings has been changed to leave out any mention of public comments while certain members of the Miss-Direction Team are telling us what public opinion is.
This was done without notice and when I contacted Mayor Smith he claimed he didn't know what I was talking about and said he'd look into it, but that he would not get back with me or tell me what he found out.
The counsel rules clearly state:"members of the public wishing to address the counsel must state their name and address for the record"
The only record I can find of the counsel meetings are the meeting minutes. It has been the practice of The City Of Marshall to include a summary of public comments, or if presented in writing the complete comments, in the minutes for as long as I've been going to council meetings starting back in the 1980's.
It is also interesting to note some smoke and mirror tricks that these new counsel members are pulling, like the alley project...
The plan started February 20th with the alley project being financed with "Revenue Bonds", that would be paid by revenue generated by the project with no increase in electrical rates UNLESS they can not raise the rest of the money for the project, then we will all pay for the project.
At a rate of about 3 to 1 members of the public came forward and said it would be pretty but that we should hold off on the Alley/Wire Project and save what we could for the future and not do a project we could not afford right now.
So many people spoke that the meeting was extended at 10:00pm to hear additional public comment. (that fact is in the minutes)
But the minutes would tell you that there is "overwhelming support" for this project, but this is not even supported by the Alley Committee Minutes.
At the March 5th counsel meeting the Miss-Direction Team told the public that the bonding company would not sell "Revenue Bonds" for the alley project because it could not generate the required revenue to pay for itself.
They then voted to issue "General Obligation Capital Improvement Bonds" that,"The City intends to pay the principal and interest of the bonds from electric utility rates and charges..." or if need be, property taxes.
This doesn't mean rates will go up, but I'm sure they won't be coming down anytime soon.
It also is the plan Mayor Smith and the Miss-Direction Team said they would not support and then turned around and did.
It was presented as "free" but no one knows how much it will cost or who pays for what?
How many people who live in the downtown apartments will be left homeless after The City Of Marshall pulls permits on these buildings, then has private contractors pull the 60 amp services only to have the building inspector condemn the buildings for dangerous wiring.
There is no way I would let the city pull a permit to work on my downtown apartment building without a guarantee in writing that The City Of Marshall will pay for all needed upgrades to building electrical systems and services as were found needed to meet current building electrical safety codes.
If the concern for public safety was real, this would have been the first issue addressed.
While storefronts may not be affected, apartments and buildings containing them could not be approved for people to live in until the power drops to the building were upgraded to 100 amp services. To do this you would need to re-wire the entire building in many cases, while in others it would only be the apartments that would need to be re-wired and only an upgrade of the storefronts service panels from 60 amp to 100amp.
How much did it cost to rewire the BROOKS RUPTURE APPLIANCE BUILDING? I'm sure it's 2 or 3 times the cost of re-wiring most of the other downtown buildings because of the hospitals planned needs, but that's still far more than many downtown building owners could afford.
The CRONIN BUILDING will need to be re-wired as part of its make-over, how much will that cost?
With the cost of these 2 building projects it would give us a baseline that could be used along with a pre-inspection of the other downtown buildings to at least give us an idea of what the real cost of doing the alley/wire project would be.
I would put the cost of re-wiring most downtown buildings between $150,000.00 and $300.000.00 each, on top of what is currently the planed budget for this project. Who will pay for this... nobody knows, they didn't think that far into the future.
The last comment is interesting, but do you really think the building owners did not take that into account when they repeatedly begged for the project? I think the most interesting thing in the last comment was the part about public comment. If the Mayor ignores your question, I'd say we have a serious problem with a guy who promised to end the "old-direction" and bring decorum to the meetings.
(1st poster wrote)
Since my last post I've learned that the building owners were told there would be no need to upgrade their service panels, and one manager was told that they wouldn't be moving their meters from inside the building to the outside of building (Fact: that is requierd in the electric code for fire safety) but that cost for moving the meters is put at $18000.00 per meter in the Alley Report presented at the Feb. 20th City Counsel Meeting and at $140,000.00 for at least one building.
This means the owners were lied to or that the people pushing this project don't know what they are doing.
Don't expect people to know about things like the National Electric Code when their business is selling beads and trinkets.
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