Our city has a water and sewer system in dire need of repair.  City Hall has forced home owners to pay for the piping that connects to the public system; even though the connecting lines are city property.  This slight-of-hand saves the city money but unfairly impoverishes home owners.  Will you stop this barbaric practice if we elect you?

— Anthony M

Responses

Casey Dresser

This is 100% something I will address, if you elect me. City leadership’s main jobs are to ensure the safety and well being of its constituents and make sure infrastructure is maintained. How have we mismanaged funds so badly in this town that we are making citizens pay for upkeep of city property? This is embarrassing and I will put an ended to it.

Anil Dwivedi

Yes. I agree this policy needs to change, and as Mayor I will lead the effort to change it.

If a sewer line is serving the public system and running through the public right of way, I do not believe an individual homeowner should suddenly be handed an enormous bill without a fair sharing of responsibility.

Eureka absolutely must modernize its aging water and sewer infrastructure but we cannot fix City infrastructure by financially breaking homeowners.

I will work with the City Council and staff to create a fairer policy, pursue state and federal infrastructure funding, and make sure the cost of maintaining our aging system is not unfairly pushed onto individual families.

This is exactly why I am running: when a policy doesn’t make sense or isn’t fair to the people of Eureka, we shouldn’t defend it simply because “that’s how we’ve always done it.” We should fix it.

Anil Dwivedi

Kim Bergel

I appreciate the opportunity to clarify the need for this ordinance.  The City was sued by a third party, Ecological Rights Foundation, in 2022 related to our wastewater. The courts issued a consent decree that required that any laterals that were compromised or made of clay need to be replaced. This requirement was also added to our wastewater permit. While council could have chosen to raise everyone’s rates across the board to cover this, they chose to put the associated costs on each property owner.  Had the council chosen to raise everyone’s rate to accommodate this consent decree, citizens rates would have been raised to a much higher amount than currently reflected. Council is required to make difficult decisions for our city that impact all of us, including council themselves. The city has provided support with no interest loans to help folks with the process. Thank you, Anthony, for your question but I wouldn’t want to promise anything outside my role as your mayor. If you have further questions, feel free to reach out to me at 707-616-2178.

 

 

 

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