Street fee accepted.

So as I thought the city council did in fact pass the street fee ordinance last night.  The vote was 6-3 with councilors Krug, Gardner, Sipress, Larson, Russ, and Julsrud supporting it.  Those that voted against where Fosle, Hanson, and Filipivich.  It was interesting to listen to the debate all of the councilors said they did not support it yet they did, why?  Well the reasoning basically was because they could, and that it started the process.  Your kidding right?


So as it sits right now the fee is set at $5.00 a month, the monthly fee this year will raise 1.2 million and on a full year will raise 2.8 million dollars a year for years.  This is so little it accomplishes little to nothing for roads.  The fact is that if the city wants the fee to be proactive the fee would have to $15 a month.  Here is the thing, this fee could come up as early as November of this year.  What my thought  is that this fee will not stay at $5 this year, it will be increased to at least the original $8 this month.  I would not be surprised if it goes to $10 a month.

Now lets talk about the council conversation that took place last night.  I must say I don't know what crack pipe councilor Julsrud is smoking off of.  She said last that your local streets are now apparently a national issue. Yes that's right lets pass what should be a city issue and core tax service the city should provide.  She said streets around the country are in poor shape, yeah so that is each city's problem to deal with.  One other thing that came up was approaching the state to see if they could set up a city gas tax many of the councilors brought this up.  Now this would at least be a bit of a user tax, that anyone that drives would be paying including citizens and tourist.  But it is a still a tax, here is my question if we go that way, instead of having all of Duluth pay for bike trails, why don't you put in place a user fee?  That will never happen but it should work both ways.

Now on to a councilor I really respect, and that is councilor Joel Sipress.  We may not always agree but we can respect each others opinions and talk about the issue civil.  He said the city last local government aid it received from the state, it also has lost the casino money.  This is true but they knew both of these where going to happen over month and years.  Yet the administration or council choice to do nothing about or come up with a plan to combat that. Sorry but that lays on you elected officials not the citizens. You are the ones that dropped the ball on that.


The other interesting issue brought up by councilor Howie Hanson was to make a for profit casino that is city ran.  It is an interesting issue and I will talk more about in a different post.