Like Eric Burgess of the Forum, I too attended the long-debated city council meeting on Monday, Dec. 9. Unlike Mr. Burgess, I did not see anyone come close to being “heated” during the discussion over finalizing the 2014 budget.
Because I’ve been covering meetings (both in person as well as watching them on Moorhead’s Access TV channel) for nearly as long as Mr. Burgess has been alive and because I’ve written about several of the more “long in the tooth” city council members who have served for several years — many I’m friends with or certainly friendly enough — I know when they are “heated” or ticked off.
No, what Eric is confusing as being “heated,” I would describe as extremely frustrated. And not necessarily frustrated with one another because of disagreements between them on how to deal with a budget that needed to be fixed and finalized, but with the entire system. A system that has several levels to it, that has become unmanageable and, unfortunately, that at least a couple Moorhead City Council members apparently do not understand. Anyone who has bothered to actually read the Moorhead City Charter would tell you the very same thing.
My concern is with the incoming City Council members who may not be informed about many of the issues that stand before them as they cross the threshold into “governing” because they understand little about what has gone before them. History is a wonderful teacher, but only if one bothers to read about it or has lived it on a personal level.
If Moorhead has a broken budget, I’ve yet to hear one city council member who hasn’t served more than two terms ask WHY? What happened to put Moorhead in the precarious position it’s in? Was it bad planning? Was it disasters the city could not deal with?
I can say for certain that while Mark Altenburg refers to the “failed businesses” he claims as cause for dipping into “flood money,” there is far more to that story than he seems to recall. Why would one failed developer cause so much havoc? Could it be because without a secured letter of credit from the bank handling the loan it would leave Moorhead on the hook?
Has anyone on the council ever spoken with a local, MOORHEAD attorney about handling Moorhead’s legal matters or ever wondered why we continue to contract with a firm that is located across the river, two towns away and co-owned by residents of that city while also handling that city’s legal matters at the same time as Moorhead’s? Considering we do compete for the very same companies (i.e., COSCO) at best it looks like a possible conflict, at worst, it probably is.
Will the new Mayor and City Council members wonder why Moorhead Public Service is used as little more than a facilitator for all Moorhead’s public utilities and yet without its financial accessibility on demand, Moorhead would not be able to continually use it to borrow as much as $8 million, helping Moorhead balance its budget in order to keep taxes down? Does it make sense we keep tax levies down but drive the cost of our utilities sky high? In fact, so high we’ve been warned by the largest user in town if it does not cease to go up, they will leave our fair city! One of the last places Busch closed a malting plant was in Wisconsin and they did so because the cost of doing business due to the utilities went up to 64 cents per unit for them. Presently Moorhead is charging them 61 cents.
We just joined the “equalized billing” plan offered by MPS so that we can pay our bill in full each month without busting our household budget. The plan allows MPS to average our past utility bills while assuming possible rate changes and higher energy and water use during the coldest winter months and the warmest summer months. But on the “equalized billing” system, we know what our bill will be each month without the fluctuations and big surprises. Anyone who has lived in Moorhead at least a year qualifies. The only other stipulation is, in order to get into this plan, you need to have a zero balance on your present account.
The Moorhead City Council in many ways handles many aspects of keeping our town running fairly smooth. On issues such as continually using MPS as its piggy bank is not one of them and while they are entitled to do this by state law, it does not give them the authority or the right to demand outrageous overages when all it will do is drive out businesses we need to keep in Moorhead and cause other companies to rethink plans to come.
My hope is that the new Mayor and city council members who have been recently elected will ask questions in the future as to why something is being managed as it is when it may not be working at all, what precipitated the cause of whatever disaster they may be facing and demand far more answers from city staff members who have way more control than they should. But we can and should expect answers from them when we ask for them.
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Letters to the editor may be sent to: Tfinney@ncppub.com