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City of Ann Arbor SSWWEP - Citizens Advisory Committee Coordination — City of Ann Arbor

BUDGETS, can we afford a Cadillac, Chevrelet, or ...... Corvair...

Posted by Frank Burdick on 16 Feb, 2014
Category: No category

The purpose of this question is to help establish the budget allowance we should be working with as we begin to study alternatives to the FDD program.  I am formarlly presenting it here on Basecamp in case it does not make the "meeting summary" from the 13FEB meeting.

At the 13FEB CAC meeting we learned about some basic concepts of alternatives from Sample Town. The 3 types that were presented all come with varying cost implications.  We should have some idea of what WE CAN AFFORD before we begin shopping or narrowing down the options.  The City should present some cost/ budget data to us. It's possible that we could include in our final recommendation that the City increase fees on both the sewer and surface water portion of the Utilty bills to each resident to help increase the budgets for our proposed solution

For example, an underground storage tank or linear storage pipe complete with "odor" mitigation, may be a viable solution but it will come with a very large price tag.  Hence a Cadillac solution.

Please refer to the February Ann Arbor Observer article where it implies that it will be 5 years before the $8.5 million of recommendations of the other ongoing CAC (Upper Malletes Storm..) can be implemented due to budget restraints

Hence, the City needs to tell us..... Can we afford a Cadillac or a Chevrolet?  Or do we settle for the 

Corvair-Footing-Drain Disconnect Program as the SSO Task Force did in 2001? 

 The city council at that time took the cheaper option.. and that has proven to be "UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED" as evidenced by the resulting survey from this CAC.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed

Comments

Joe Conen on 16 Feb, 2014:

I believe sewer rates were raised years ago to pay for the FDD. It would be interesting to hear about any current balance in that fund (possibly due to the partial suspension of FDD), the cash flow from rates that is dedicated to this project, and its duration.
Thanks
Joe

Lori Byron on 24 Apr, 2014:

CAC members, 

The response to Joe's question is a complex answer that gets into the Capital Improvement Plan and how it works. At the May CAC meeting, we will have a Utilities Capital Funding presentation and discussion where we can address these questions in detail.