Whether or Not to Protest – Food for Thought

SEELEY LAKE - For you sewer residents still deciding whether or not to protest the proposal, here’s some more food for thought.

The Board has no current engineering estimates for sub-districts 2, 3 and 4. They will undoubtedly run into the millions of dollars to build the collections systems. The Board is counting on getting the financing for these sub-district projects from the State legislature. But that is a very “iffy” assumption. Here are a couple reasons why:

• The State government uses mostly coal tax trust fund dollars for infrastructure funding...and coal tax receipts are in the toilet as the U.S. starts to move faster and faster away from the use of coal.

• The State government just met to fix a $227 million deficit and the legislature did so without raising any money...it shifted dollars and cut services. The cuts will mean a shift of costs to the local government. So expect your county taxes to go up again as the Commissioners will be forced to raise taxes to cover the shortfalls the state forced on them.

The net effect will be to delay or even prohibit the construction of sub-district 2, 3 and 4 collection systems. So the sub-district one folks will continue to foot the sewer bill without their help. And it will go up considerably from $87 per month...in three years or so.

Sub-district 2, 3 and 4 folks will be paying for a service they may never see or enjoy.

Residents wishing to protest the Seeley Lake Sewer proposal should use the street address or the legal description of their properties rather than their Tax ID numbers.

Here’s why: If you combined your lots for water billing purposes they will appear on your Tax ID as one property. And since the Sewer Board is neither trustworthy or transparent it has neglected to tell us it may count the Tax ID protests as a SINGLE protest when in fact we are entitled to a single protest for each and every parcel we own.

The Board is only interested in winning approval for its sewer proposal...it is not interested in assuring us our civil right to vote on incurring indebtedness. If it were, it would have made provision for renters to participate in this decision.

Remember, you have until Dec. 18 to get your protests to the Seeley Lake Sewer District, Box 403, Seeley Lake, MT 59868