The Bainbridge Ratepayers Alliance sent out the following press release this afternoon:
Bainbridge Ratepayers Alliance filed suit in Kitsap Superior Court against the City of Bainbridge Island, Wednesday, April 22. At issue is how the city has used, and plans to use, fees paid by 2,200 water utility and 1,800 sewer utility customers. In addition to portions of Fletcher Bay and Rockaway Beach, city utility ratepayers live within the Winslow core area from New Brooklyn south to Eagle Harbor and from Sportsman Club Road/Finch to the eastern shoreline.
In a statement issued at the time of filing, Bainbridge Ratepayers Alliance Secretary, Sally Adams, said “We greatly regret that the City has pushed the ratepayers so far that it became necessary to file this lawsuit to counter the misuse of utility ratepayer fees. Under law, COBI utility ratepayers may only be charged for services they receive. They may not be charged for costs that benefit other public projects.”
The City is planning to tap ratepayers for an additional $4+ million dollars to complete the $14 million dollar Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) upgrade. The City’s proposed $6 million dollar financing plan is $1.8 million more than what is needed to complete the WWTP. The City is also pursuing an additional $5 million dollar proposal to finance the Winslow Way utility upgrade; $4+ million dollars of this would be paid for by a pool of largely residential sewer and water utility ratepayers. Bainbridge Ratepayers Alliance estimates the Winslow Way utility upgrade will cost $2,000-plus for each city utility ratepayer household.
Bainbridge Ratepayers Alliance supports the completion of the WWTP and the City undertaking or encouraging environmental improvements, but asserts that projects be financed and paid for according to state and municipal laws.
Blog host’s note: You can read the complaint filed by Bainbridge Ratepayers Alliance with Kitsap Superior Court here: bainbridge-ratepayers-alliance-v-cobi-09-2-01023-6
I don’t live in Winslow, but I agree with the Ratepayers Alliance. All of us will benefit from the planned improvements to the island’s infrastructure and we all should pay. It simply isn’t fair that they should pay $2,000 per family when we could all share the burden for about $400 per family.
I suspect that the Council had few options available for funding the wastewater treatment plant. In time, island-wide utilities should be acquired by the City and we should all become ratepayers. That would be more fair.
On the other hand, Winslow ratepayers would be asked to share the cost of utility improvements for the rest of the island. I wonder if they would consider that to be fair.
Barry Peters has an interesting post on the City’s economic history at http://bainbridgevoter.wordpress.com/
It’s called the Peter’s Principle, because in the void of leadership, market supply and demand will tell you what the voter/consumer really wants.
In this way, a civil society leads itself and doesn’t need economic history at all.
And do you believe anything Mr. Peter’s writes or says. No creditability there!
Why would those not on the Utilities even think about contributing 1 red cent to such a mis-managed mess? I trust before it is over the State AG is called in and Peter’s and followers go to jail! I would bet Mr. Peter’s wife does the checkbook as he has shown management of money, for sure other peoples, is beyond his capabilities.
Thanks, Bill, Debbie, and Kim for at least being a voice of concern and representing the people. You are talking to either four deaf people, four who have their own agenda, or some ex-boxers who have been hit in the head too often or a combination of all of the above!
Are We Being Astroturfed?
Who exactly is behind this mysterious “Bainbridge Ratepayers Alliance”? A so-called “citizens group” that doesn’t even appear to have a website? Concerned about Winslow rates skyrocketing, but their spokesperson leaves on the South end of the Island? And, who according to Zillow lives in a 4500 sq ft., $1M+ home? It’s hard to see someone who can afford that being all that anxious about paying their utility bill.
And, what’s up with short-circuiting the political process and filing a lawsuit, before the Council decision you are objecting to has even been taken? If you are really concerned about taxpayer dollars, why force all of us taxpayers to pay legal costs to fight your suit. I might feel differently if I’d been reading letters from Ms. Adams in the local papers these last months, but I don’t recall any complaints about supposed “illegal” misuse of fees. I do recall concerns about Winslow rates going up, arguably disproportionately, but that’s fundamentally just a difference of opinion. And, we live in a representative democracy. If you don’t like the decisions being made on your behalf, elect some other folks. Suing at the drop of a hat costs us all and is bad citizenship.
Frankly, this smells of business interests hypocritically putting up a sham “ratepayer” outrage. A handful of Winslow property owners trying to avoid higher utility rates, attempting to underhandedly apply pressure to the city, in a way that if successful may well cost all of us taxpayers more.
Maybe I’m wrong and BRA is a longstanding group of honestly concerned individuals, who have exhausted the political process and made every effort to bend public opinion before feeling like there was no option but a lawsuit that is truly in the public interest. But, the published reports sure don’t make it sound that way.
And, where does the money trail lead? I.e. who’s paying their lawyers?? If this is a real citizen group how come no website dunning for contributions, and how come this Winslow resident has received no mailers about it?
I’m not saying the Council decision to float the bonds etc. was great. I don’t know enough, and as a Winslow resident I share the concern about rates skyrocketing. But shame on us if we fall for astroturfing.
Sally Adams, care to speak up for your group?
McCoy:
If you are right, this lawsuit will go away with nary a stir, and the city can go on with it’s jolly business. What if there’s merit to the lawsuit, though? What if the people filing the suit honestly think the city hasn’t played by the rules? Have you had a personal matter that you’ve brought to the city and gotten a response from them on? The fairest reading of the situation is that people have tried for redress and been ignored. Most people don’t go to the expense of a lawsuit unless they have exhausted other means.
DysOb,
My main concern is that the people involved here appear to be astroturfing: business interests cynically attempting to portray themselves as a grassroots movement. And, that local papers and blogs seem to have been buying this – hook, line, and sinker.
As to whether they have exhausted other means before suing, I think it’s up to anyone suing all the rest of us, and yet claiming to be doing public interest, to make the case that this is a last resort. These folks have not made that case. And by filing suit before the vote was taken, it has much more of the smell of a attempt at a preemptive warning shot. In other words, trying to use legal saber rattling to sway the legislative process, rather than as a way to gain redress after that process has failed them.
Stepping back I feel that we’re all forgetting that *we* are the City of Bainbridge Island. Many of us are fed up with Mayor and Council squabbling and staff ineffectiveness (which I’ve experienced personally as well). So now we’re predisposed to take anyone attacking City decisions at face value. But at the end of the day it’s our tax dollars that are being wrestled over here, and I for one want to know who exactly is behind this particular attempt at a grasp. And, if we encourage everyone who has a beef to file a suit at the drop of a hat, that will just be a downward spiral. Because the party on the other side of all of these lawsuits – is all of us!
Community involvement, not lawsuits, is what it’s going to take to fix our City. Emaphasis on “our”.
This appears to be a waste of ratepayers’ money to fight a frivolous lawsuit filed by a few misinformed or ignorant people. All the other ratepayers should realize that stopping a project, already approved and well underway, is going to cost them a bundle and for no reason. Never have so few, done so much for so little. Perhaps the best law suit would be one filed against the Bainbridge Ratepayers Alliance for all the damage they’ve done to the rest of us. Finish the project and be done with it.
Concerned Citizen: You are buying into Barry Peters scape-goating, that we simply need to get “these people” out of the way, so that the good employees downtown can finish the project. Has it occurred to you that this project has been underway, and out of control, for years? That you, as a property owner, are paying surface water management fees, and that the city is using this “utility” as a virtual credit card that dozens of employees bill time to? The Ratepayers have requested an audit. This seems like a reasonable request, one that many individual citizens have been making to the city council this last year, to no avail. Perhaps it takes a lawsuit to get such commonsense measure in place. Have some faith in our much vaunted legal system. if the suit is truly frivolous, it will go away without much cost. So far, however, one of the best law firms in the Pacific Northwest, Foster Pepper, has been unwilling to issue a letter that this lawsuit is “without merit”. The absence of a letter is in effectively a statement that the suit does have merit. Since we, as a city, are paying this firm big bucks for strategic advice, it seems reasonable to treat these charges as serious, and to correct the problems rather than simply bad mouth the group. If the charges have merit, what does it matter who is filing them? The correction of these problems will benefit us all.
Go Sally and Company. Show ’em what it means to follow the codes and laws on Bainbridge. Unfortunately suing the city is the only language they seem to understand. Too bad it has to come to this again. What, almost 40 lawsuits and counting against Darlene’s crumbling empire?
For Damage Control,
Vote YES on May 19th for Council-Manager.
Great news that lenders have pulled back and put the City’s attempt to borrow more is jepordy. Darlene is seeing the chickens come home to roost. Hopefully Peter’s will push the other three donkeys into voting to borrow from the water utility fund and this will be found illegal and off to jail he goes.
Great possibility of ridding ourselves, MAYBE, of two of those who have lead the City into this huge mess.
DisOb writes “The Ratepayers have requested an audit”. Note again the use of a grassrootsy term – made into a proper noun, no less. But, who exactly are the “Ratepayers”? I thought this term means all of us citizens. Yet, it is we who are bearing the cost of this legal action. Wouldn’t we feel differently if instead of “The Ratepayers” DisOb called a spade a spade and said “a handful of major Winslow commercial property owners”? That’s why we shouldn’t let astroturfing pass unchallenged.
Here in Navels we recycle astrograss. We are grass rootsy.
We are an oil transition town.
We are recycled rubber and Ezra says, “You are organic glue”.
Ciao from Navels, Penny and Ezzie
We are just 1 week away from the big election. Although this new form of Gov’t. will be a big improvement, everyone is well aware that were it not for the fact we have an inept Mayor there would never have been consideration for the upcoming change. I am hoping that the four Council people who were in lock step with Ms. Ineptness understand the people are addressing them too with what in affect is notification by the change that their behavior and their not implementing the desires of their constituents is unacceptable. The plan of course, not rocket science, will be to deal with any of those four up for re-election in Nov.
First the Mayor and then her stooges!
Then in the future we can eliminate hopefully these law suits as ineptness by Council and Mayor will be NO longer.
Lily — don’t count your chickens before they hatch re May 19. The 14,000 “unwashed masses” may not be into the same magic thinking the insiders are on this issue. In the event the appointed outcome is not to be, the issue will be for candidates to come forward as alternatives to Mayor K.
That guy does not speak for us. We are voting Yes!
Well, now that we know what Unwashed Masses voted, I guess the suspense is off. Zzzzz ! How many chicks was it, Unwashed?
And when it is all over a work party the next day to help the Mayor move out of her office is in order. No doubt we could fill Winslow Way with volunteers! The day can’t come fast enough.
Next on the docket are the replacements for the 4 Council people who just can’t seem to comprhend that it isn’t their personal agenda that counts it is the wants and desires of those they represent. November can’t come soon enough and I sure hope that with the change of Gov’t form that Bob will again run for Council even though his desire was Mayoral as he brings good thinking to the party.
Jim, Check with the auditor. I can’t count that high.
Hey, Unwashed Masses — it was one live chick for COG.
On the $42,000,000 over-reach bond, that chick did not make it.
One YES, and one very important NO.
What gives with reports about the Council Manager 2009 cadre meeting with COBI administration in private. The Council-Manager cadre should disband and allow the Council Manager form of government to work without the first set of insiders leaning on them. Council/Manager will have to fill figure this out without the “private meetings” from a special-interest group that just one an election.
The more we CHANGE, the more we stay the same.