Response to Letter to the Editor

I received a letter to the editor that clearly took issue with my opinion about the financial mess otherwise known as the Sac Aquatic Center.

This is that letter: http://thesacnews.blogspot.com/2010/04/letter-to-editor-reader-defends-aquatic.html

...and this is my response. Original text of the letter in bold.

Curtis
I was one of the "out of touch idiots" ten years ago that responded to a vote to fund an aquatic center. A vote that passed by 86%.

First of all, I would have voted to fund the aquatic center myself… who wouldn’t have? A water park in our own town just for us? How cool is that? Frankly I’m shocked that this wonderful idea didn’t pass by an even larger margin.

So now that your misunderstanding about how I feel about the wonderful people of Sac City is cleared up, let me say this. I think it is the city council and mayor from that time period that were out of touch idiots for not leading the community properly. There were several critical infrastructure systems that were on the verge of collapse, and they instead bonded for a hole with some water in it. As a result of that and several other fiscal blunders, our taxes went up and up until, (for a time,) we were paying more in property taxes then all but three of Iowa’s cities and bleeding population to boot.

…And when I say that they were “out of touch” and say that they were ‘idiots”, it’s because I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. The alternative is that they deliberately misled the people into thinking that we could afford it. It would take more evidence than what I’ve seen so far to convince me that they were actually criminally negligent. In fact, only one of them turned out to be an actual criminal who can no longer vote or own guns.



The action was in response to a need identified by the community.

When you say “need identified by the community”, you surely aren’t talking about those little staged meetings the supposed marketing geniuses in this town like to put on every so often in the basement of the bank where roughly 25 people show up and vote about what they think is important, are you? 1.08% of the total population shows up, unelected, self appointed, representative of only the smallest minority of the public, and decided that the pool would be next, right?

Tell me something. Did anyone with feces floating around in their basement after every rain speak up and suggest that maybe what the community needs more than a couple of barely functional waterslides are working sewers? I’ll bet they were too busy trying to clean up from the last rain sprinkle without getting sick to show up.

Did the waste water treatment guys attend your little meeting where this need was identified and say something along the lines of “Hey, folks… you know, we haven’t fixed the sewers in about a bajillion years and we have, like MILLIONS of gallons of extra water we are treating after every single rainfall with toms of nitrates and stuff getting into the river that the DNR will probably start fining us for pretty soon. If you’ve got money to burn on a sprinkling mushroom, maybe you could float a couple bucks our way?” I doubt it. They were probably busy trying to figure out new ways to wrap duct tape around jury rigged hoses while their warnings that the WWTP was going to need fixed pretty soon went ignored by the city council and Mayor.

I highly suspect that those meets were attended by the same kinds of people that attend them these days. People that have a lot of money to burn and that want a sexy end result on which they can hang a brass plaque with their name inscribed.

What I imagined happening was the same kind of thing that happens these days. About 25 of you brought your little pet projects to this meeting where you made up a little pamphlet that you gave out to people to check a box next to whatever idea they think is best. I’m willing to bet that if you went so far as to actually seek guidance from the public outside of the few that showed up at the meeting, the pamphlet didn’t have any realistic choices on it like, “fix sewers” or “save money in case future group of idiots get lured into giving up a major highway going through the middle of town.”

…so pardon me if my personal experience with these sham steering committees where the needs of the community are “identified” begs for a great big grain of salt to make your claim tolerable enough to swallow.

Cost of center was app 1.3 million, 750,00 of which was bonded , the rest was donated by the community.

…and the hundreds of thousands of dollars (exact figure being researched right now,) in water that it leaked out of it over a period of ten years because the city council and Mayor from ten years ago didn’t take care to make sure the job was complete before allowing it to open. Where did the money for THAT come from? Are those same donors going to step up again and take care of that so we can afford to start the annexation process north of town, instead of spending all of that money fixing that mistake?

The center will never be self supporting but if run more effectively with emphasis on volume the deficit would be decreased.

I’m detecting a whiff of implication that the former manager of the pool had something to do with the fiscal problem the pool is experiencing, so let’s review that quickly.

The pool was allowed to open and run for nearly a decade with a leaking pipes the cost of which subtly cost the taxpayers of Sac City so much money, that I suspect I’m going to be paying for nearly a full day of Adam and Sandy’s time to track it all down. (and yes I AM doing that.)
…so underground leaking pipes that the city council and Mayor from ten years ago were responsible for making sure were installed correctly is the problem we are discussing here.

You may or may not have an opinion about the former manager of the pool, but make no mistake, there is nothing he could have done differently that would have made a perceptible dent in the fiscal problem our town is experiencing due to the aquatic center. The only people that could have stopped that were members of the city government ten years ago.

…But as long as you went off topic and brought it up, I think you are making a perfectly obvious but misleading observation. Of COURSE if there is more volume it will make more money and decrease the deficit. Unfortunately because of the irreparable harm the city council and Mayor from ten years ago caused this city during their tenure, including, but not limited to higher property taxes, higher fees, and a generally not very user friendly government, the population responded by fleeing from the town to the tune of nearly 10% in the last decade. That cost the city a dramatic amount of volume at the aquatic center.

Why not elaborate and tell us just where THAT volume is supposed to be made up from?


Government response to deficits is to raise taxes or charges, very seldom do they react with expense cuts and increased volume.

Well, maybe that was a typical governmental response ten years ago, that’s why your asses were voted out. Luckily the new crop of city council people and Mayor are not tax and spenders like the city council and mayor from ten years ago were. (well, two of them have an amazingly long record of voting to raise fees and taxes, but then… they WERE members of the city council ten years ago, so what do you expect?) Lucky for us, they are fiscal conservatives who are busy filling the town’s boards and committees with like-minded fiscal conservatives. They have lowered taxes, and taken extraordinary measures to keep fees from going up in every possible instance except as a last resort.

Citizens should come forth with positive ideas to improve the bottom line.

If only we would have been so lucky to have a city council and Mayor that were concerned with improving the City’s bottom line ten years ago. Oh well, leave the mess for the next generation, right?

Marketing the center should be a top priority.

I disagree. I think a more realistic priority might be to minimize the fiscal damage the aquatic center did to Sac City by finding other entities that are clearly failing and cutting off or lowering their stipend so that we can afford to funnel that money into something like… I don’t know…. maybe a industrial park on north 5th street

I know that’s crazy talk, but we need to drop this silly notion that some business is going to want their semi-drivers going through a school zone, the town of Early, or making turns at 5th and Main to reach a badly planned, too small industrial park on the wrong end of a couple of miles of a 25MPH zone.

If you and your cronies want to form a committee and discuss ways to market the aquatic center, by all means, do so. Just try not to form any more non-profit corps that live off grants from the Sac City taxpayers while you’re at it. Deal?

Curtis Bloes






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