We have a series of lakes nearby, our county has been working on a clean up plan for these lakes for the past four years. They finally presented the plan to the neighborhood last night and let us know that they were able to get over $300k from the state to kick start the lake cleanup effort. What they wanted to ask everyone is if we were willing to pay extra on our taxes to continue the project into the future.
It’s really no big deal, $42/year per lot and it goes up for lots closer to the lakes. But like anything that involves getting people to pull out their money, the pitch is the key to the sale and theirs was pretty bad. The most entertaining thing about the entire meeting was that just when the tone would settle down to a pleasant level, some old guy would jump out of his seat with his hand up and shout, “I HAVE A QUESTION!”.
This really cracked me up, the first two times it actually startled me. Then it was even funnier that he would ask the same question that they guy from the county had just answered twice before.
So there is no telling how the cleanup funding will go, the sales effort was very bad so they actually alienated most of the people in the area which is why they were all so angry when they showed up last night.
But that’s not even the best part! The county has raised and is about to spend over $300k to begin a cleanup effort and believe it or not, the City has already spent over $300k to prepare a plan to dump storm water runoff from the streets on it’s side of the lake directly into the lake! That system is going to cost them another $700k to construct and would most likely foil the efforts of the county to clean up the lakes.
So our little lake cleanup meeting was even more interesting than promised when all of the protestors showed up to stop the drainage project! You really had to feel bad for the guy from the county who had no idea about the City’s plan until the week before this presentation. The worst part for that guy was that he was cleaning the lakes anyway, he was just there to pitch a simple plan to fund continued work on the project.
We skipped out before the guy from the city started speaking. That looked like it was going to get ugly even though he said four times while we were there that the project was put on an indefinite hold.
Maybe those community meetings aren’t so boring after all!