News-Star Blogs

This is a letter I sent in to the Friday Gazette (McLoud’s Newspaper) Jan 25, 2010, and it was printed thereafter:

In last Friday’s Gazette, when city manager Dillon was mentioning “several homeowners on the edge of McLoud opting to hook in to city services this past year,” he did not mention anything about those households who if they did not opt to take the water service that they would be assessed a $17.00 per month availability fee under the threat of a $20.00 per day fine if they did not connect to the service.

It would be interesting to know how many pre-existing households in that area actually began purchasing water and how many are simply paying for a service they do not want, and they do not need, nor does it make the property more valuable unless that particular property did not have good water; it likely makes most of the properties less valuable. In and around most of McLoud, we have good well water when we pump it ourselves, and at present, it is plentiful and affordable. Additionally, I believe I can safely say that all the people I have talked with who are looking for a property in this neighborhood, have the goal of having their own well water as opposed to the local public water supply. Maybe one day, our source of water will be depleted, and it will be necessary to connect to a public water system, at which time I hope it will be available, but not to the tune of paying $17.00 per month that I need to support my family; however, a depleted water supply is a discussion for another day.

In the present-day economic climate, and the costs McLoud actually incurred to run the water lines to those residences, it would also be interesting to know if the $17.00 “fee” exceeds the point where the “practice allows the district to yield more than a fair profit,” and the “point at which costs become so high that assessing them upon the user constitutes a practical deprivation of services” as Judge Henry quoted in 243 F.3d 1263 (10th Cir. 2001). To be able to spend the day for a couple of city workers and a city backhoe along with a few hundred dollars worth of pipe to set yourself up to receive $17.00 per month in perpetuity from no telling how many households seems to me to violate the rule of a “reasonable profit,” and gets to being “unreasonable, excessive, and confiscatory.” (Judge Henry again) That is not to mention another of Judge Henry’s quotes in that the CPN’s rural water district as stated in the News-Star will not charge an availability fee.

And wouldn’t it be something if they charged this fee for a few years; then, it came to light that they did not have the capacity to have served all those households or if they fail any of the requirements, and the city has to reimburse them all; I think it would be.

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