By Jim Sack

There will be the water rate increase the Henry Administration wanted and it will be mercifully spread out over three years. There will not quite yet be a revision of a taxing structure that Councilman Mitch Harper wanted, but tune back in in two weeks. There will be., to the chagrin of the administration, a new face at council table. And there was a smart, but indecisive debate over the fate of our sewers and how to fund repair of cascading main breaks.

First, the new face: council attorney Joe Bonahoom introduced his new understudy, Jim Howard, the former purchasing director for the City of Fort Wayne who was just recently fired by the administration to the disgust of some and the head-scratching of many. Why ever he was fired we probably will never quite know, but now he will have a seat at the city council replacing the able Mr. Bonahoom when other duties call. There is some irony in this turn of events and it will be interesting to see how the old “friends” comport themselves when a matter of courtly etiquette falls to Mr. Howard to decide.

The director of City Utilities, Kumar Menon, came to council a third time last night to win his forty percent rate increase in your water bill. He got what he wanted, the compromise, after answering a few re-asked questions. It was an inevitability. Mr. Menon presented a case that was hard to ignore, but this new council probed and questioned on a range of “on-subject” topics that taught us all quite a bit about the subterranean workings of the city. For example, we now know that in the golden era of America, the post-WWII housing boom, that manufacturers sold the city cheap, low quality materials that are now rotting at an alarming rate. We learned that their shoddy materials contribute to leakage of some 24% of the water purified at the Water Filtration Plant at the Confluence and pushed into the pipes. Almost a quarter of production is wasted! We learned we have tasty water, that the plant produces clean, safe (and tasty) water in abundance, but our distribution system is rusting away, thanks to the willy-nilly development of the 50s and the niggardly willingness of government to buy cheap…for the long run.

So, the question turned, after passage of the rate increase, to PILOT, payment in lieu of taxes. Councilman Mitch Harper wrote an ordinance that would have changed the system, a bit. PILOT is essentially a tax on City Utilities, a business, much akin to the property tax a business would pay, or you would pay for your house. The City Utility system is valued and assessed by government, but instead of tossing the payment into the great pool of local taxes that fund everything from a bus ride to the genealogy department at the library, as well as city, county and township government, the money goes to the city general fund. Mr. Harper wanted to cap the current PILOT amount at $7 million or so.  Any future increases in the assessed value of City Utilities resulting in higher property tax payments would be earmarked for improvements to the water distribution system to catch up on repairs and reduce that 24 percent that soaks away into the soil.

His bill was tabled. The City Controller, Pat Roller, and Mr. Menon both raised concerns about a change…not quite objections, but concerns. Other members on council also had concerns about the “law of unintended consequences.” To be sure, the way taxes are levied and used by government conjures up visions of a spaghetti bowl with strands twisting and turning, intertwined with their the beginnings and their ends impossible to find. So are our finances. Mr. Harper’s point, however, that PILOT should be modified in some way, was well received by council and will eventually be passed, but Councilmen John Shoaff and John Crawford, two old hands at city finances, wanted to table the ordinance until the administration could detail the ramifications and options that might be created to insure the money is wisely used.

The options are three: end PILOT, modify PILOT or leave it alone. Each, according to Dr. Crawford, has merit, but without a more thorough review and the studied approach this council prefers, the nine men could easily solve one injustice and create a dozen more fore-head slapping “why didn’t we think of that” unintended consequences. The rush to make new law will take a two week pause for a bit of pondering.

Mr. Harper, during the debate, noted that council is at a severe disadvantage in this discussion as they have only one researcher who has already piles of paper on her desk and a wall of “get-to-this-yesterday” sticky notes. Consequently, the administration with its legion of resources, will set the tone of the debate and provide the information upon which the agenda for the discussion will be formed. Mr. Council President Smith later ruminated that such a complex matter (a can of worms?) as a discussion of our taxing policy and spending priorities would make high-quality grist for his next 5th Tuesday forum, but the matter, instead, will reappear in two weeks and be buried in an agenda that will include a dozen or more other matters that will take time and distract members. Council would be wise to put this off for a full night’s discussion. What, after all, is the hurry? Any change would have to work through the system well into the fall before money would be diverted and the pace of repairs go from a 400-year cycle to a 100-year cycle, another tid-bit from last night’s discussion. To hurry is to confuse motion with progress.

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