Life22

Day 13,610 - Storm Sewer Disconnect Clarity.mp3
Transcript
00:00:07 Kevin
Hey, gang, Kevin here. Life 22 and a brief podcast for you this morning. I just wanted to touch base with you all on what we discussed yesterday. I didn't know I went on a little bit of a rant, but there was.
00:00:20 Kevin
Some I saw some people in the comments were like, did you really read amyx's Amy Sherburne's post? And I'm like, no, I just saw the rain barrel. I saw the first part before it says press more so. But I had the rough gist in my head and I wanted to read it again to myself today. The whole thing in its entirety. So not again, but finish reading it.
00:00:41 Kevin
And it's and it. And I wasn't putting any blame on Amy is what I was trying to get at it. What I what I did was.
00:00:48 Kevin
UM.
00:00:51 Kevin
Amy's post is just kind of falling in line with what people are expecting, right? You go to the common Council and these people show up and they're the they're like the minority opinion, right? They're not, like the opinion of minorities. They are the minority opinion. Like most people, you know, want this or want that. Like, there's a lot of residents in the city that want a ton of stuff, right. They're like, oh, I want this. And I want that.
00:01:14 Kevin
I want World Peace and I want all this and it's like a lot of people want World Peace. But at what cost? Right. And so a lot of people don't understand that. So like.
00:01:24 Kevin
You know, there's Alderman out there that want a ton of, you know, cuts, but they don't want to take any services away. There's, you know, there's residents who want that. There's people that, you know, hey, you know, the cost of doing business is going up.
00:01:36 Kevin
But we.
00:01:36 Kevin
Don't want our trash stickers to increase or we don't want the trash stickers to go away and they're they're fight the change and they fight the dollar value of stuff and it's like, sorry guys.
00:01:45 Kevin
The dollars go up, but it's it's one of those things. As these people go up there to these meetings and they they gripe about, you know, the storms were disconnects and whatnot and what all I was getting at yesterday.
00:01:58 Kevin
Was that a large portion of people?
00:02:02 Kevin
Like are just gonna be like, well, you know, and there was one particular, you know, I would call him a protester up there that always decides to say, well, you know, it's it's easy for you to enforce the disconnect from the sewers. It's like, yes, that's fine. But nobody is.
00:02:20 Kevin
I'm big on property rights, so which you you all should be too, because it's like there's documents that found our country that say, like, you know, these are important values. And if you don't hold them important values then you don't deserve any of it. And so you should have no free. You know what I mean? Like, there's this. It's it's one of those.
00:02:36 Kevin
Like, here's the rules to the house or don't live here, right? Like that is that's an important thing to and people like. No, that's not true. It's like, yeah, because if you don't follow certain rules, they send you to jail. So yes. And now you're no longer, you know.
00:02:51 Kevin
A resident of the house, right, like they restrict your rights. They were, you know, you mean like you're it. It is what it is.
00:02:59 Kevin
But what I was getting at was what happens with politicians, especially if you're just coming into it like, oh, I'm going to take the side of this people cause I have this coalition of people that will back me up and it's like, yeah, but you're you're only picking a minority position was so First off, that hurts your position running for candidacy but secondly like.
00:03:16 Kevin
You can't just say, hey, look at we have to disconnect our our downspouts from the city disconnects.
00:03:24 Kevin
Willy nilly? Well, they're homeowners. They have all this money. It's like, no, they're not the rich. Like a lot of homeowners in our society, do not have tons of money. That's why houses are dilapidated. It's not that they just like, I bought an extra house and I can't afford it and blah, blah blah. It's like, no, they didn't just do that. They bought an extra house, but they bought their only house and they been living in it for 80 years, trying to make ends meet. Maybe then have a great job. And now all of a sudden.
00:03:47 Kevin
They're on retirement and they're barely making ends meet, and so all of a sudden.
00:03:51 Kevin
You come in and they're like you don't seem. Nobody seems to realize this at the government level like that. That's 90% of the people that you're forcing to disconnect from the storm sewer. So now they're either gonna let their house be more dilapidated so that you don't find the Christ out of them instead of sitting down and saying, OK.
00:04:08 Kevin
You know, and people are gonna be like, well, that's the mayor. That's the mayor. Well, yes. The mayor is in charge of enforcement, but the.
00:04:15 Kevin
The common councils in charge of making the rules and delegating the money, so here becomes your issue is it's like you wanna you wanna start enforcing a rule that may still be on the books that disconnect from the storm sewer or from the city sanitary with your gutters. But you're you're missing the point in that.
00:04:33 Kevin
People need to you need to have some sort of like a rollout program like they go around and they find people for sidewalks, but they now they have a program because seniors can't afford it. Homeowners don't want to deal with it, and it's one of those things, it's like, OK.
00:04:47 Kevin
Well, I mean, in every other municipality, it is the city's responsibility. You want to create a public right of way, a path through my property. Guess what? You can maintain it. You can put it in, you can take, you know, you can replace it when it needs to be replaced. That's most places across the country only is one of those unique municipalities. That puts it on the home owner.
00:05:07 Kevin
And they've got this look at this clever way. We just saved the city money. The problem is, every time the city saves people money, they don't realize, like it's sometimes it's just a short term. Like it's a lot, has long term effects for short term games, short term term gains and so.
00:05:22 Kevin
Like hey, we just saved the city bunch of money by doing this. It's like, OK, great. And then where the savings go? Ohh, they. They blew it on something stupid like. And then that those savings are, you know, just built into the cake now where they're just like ohh now it gets spent on something else that's dumb and frivolous and it's like well. And so we save all this money by not putting in sidewalks in people's places and because it's.
00:05:41 Kevin
Other people's property.
00:05:43 Kevin
Yeah, it's my property. But you stole it to have your stupid walking paths for drug addicts to walk by my house and drop their needles and litter. Because littering isn't a crime anymore, apparently.
00:05:52 Kevin
We just had the street sweeper go by. The thing about the street sweepers? It's great. Except for the fact that it still just needles on the ground like it doesn't pick up a lot of. Like it'll pick up Rd. dust and little stones and in some big pieces of trash that are lightweight. But like, I don't know, every time I go out there, it's like, oh, there's there's still, like, pieces of people's cars and all these other things that can't get and taken into the machine.
00:06:14 Kevin
And it's like when we have the sidewalks that are filthy because they're just.
00:06:19 Kevin
Cause the yeah, the the drug addicts walk on the street and whatnot. Anyways, I'm going down rabbit holes.
00:06:25 Kevin
You have a program for the sidewalk.
00:06:27
Yes.
00:06:28 Kevin
But you don't have a program for the disconnects and what's gonna end up happening is it's gonna be just like when you rolled out the the savings to the city for the the sidewalk program. You're gonna go around with a strong first, and you're gonna say, hey, all you people, you have to pay to fix all your sidewalks, and we're going to find the Christ Eddy. And then they do it.
00:06:45 Kevin
You do it and then what happens is everybody turns around and they're like well.
00:06:49 Kevin
Well, the seniors can't afford it and then they rollback the policy a little bit. They they they keep the enforcement there, but they offer like a 50% rebate. OK, well that's great. The problem is nobody's they're going to do the same thing with this, you know? Hey and all I was pointing out was that Amy's pointing out the rain barrel and thank God we have something to disconnect it so. Well, there's no enforcement. So if she becomes mayor.
00:07:10 Kevin
Or, if the current mayor gets kicked in the pants too many times by these people that show up to the meetings and he's like, oh, we're gonna enforce this.
00:07:17 Kevin
It's political suicide because you're gonna make. You're gonna make people hate you because you just you. You know, there's this law on the books you didn't enforce it. You. There's. No, it seems like no warning. Cause the general public doesn't really, like watch a lot of these things. And then, oh, we have to disconnect so we don't discharge in the storm sewer. It's like, OK, what about all those seniors who can't afford to?
00:07:37 Kevin
Like they've got now, they've got a higher a neighborhood kid like. Yeah, the cheapest.
00:07:40 Kevin
Like the.
00:07:42 Kevin
Disconnect it from the side of the house from the storm sewer and let it dump onto the yard. OK, that's great and all, but what are you gonna do about the the seniors? Like, what are you gonna do about the long term fix? Like there should be a program to rolled out where like hey, you know, because the city's making you do this because it's a, you know, something we they never enforced. For years they allowed you to build your house.
00:08:03 Kevin
150 years ago, without putting in a storm sewer like it was.
00:08:08 Kevin
An afterthought.
00:08:10 Kevin
And they let people do it. So I and you know, it's like, hey, I'm not about government subsidies, but I do think that if I'm putting my money into the tax, the tax coffers like, they can have a program for the people that are, like, delinquent, especially on a huge thing like, oh, it's like, oh, they built my house with a septic tank. Well, now we have a law that says no septic tanks. You have like, 30 days to get rid of it.
00:08:30 Kevin
Like, wait a minute. The subject has been here for.
00:08:33 Kevin
Years and I pay to pump it up and I pay all the other costs of it. And now you're telling me I have to get rid of it so I have to cost to remediate it? Have to cost to do a phase one to test the soil and make sure that that like oil that came from our house didn't leak into the soil. Like it's just a whole rigamarole over something that.
00:08:50 Kevin
Is.
00:08:51 Kevin
It's still arbitrary. I don't care what people say. It's still an arbitrary issue and all of a sudden you're just gonna cost each and every homeowner. It's like, hey, you know, their taxes could go up by this much to fix city problems or their taxes aren't, you know, the taxes are going to go up by that much, and each homeowner is going to pay $8000 to have it tied into this, the storm sore from the.
00:09:12 Kevin
Like I just, I think that a program a sit down discussion is needed here, especially because most of the people you are going to be hitting are going to be hitting people that have already neglecting their homes, people that aren't already doing this, people that aren't already setting up rain barrels and you know what I mean like.
00:09:28 Kevin
I'm not retired, I don't have time to run around and drain rain barrels when they get overly full or you know what I mean. Pipe in and overflow system. I'd like. I just, I don't have time for that.
00:09:37 Kevin
I have time to like maybe spend one month out of my, you know, decade to tie into this or to three decades to tie into storm sewer. But the problem is now you're gonna go to every single property that I own, every single property that other people own. Like, my properties aren't dilapidated, but man like, I'm sure 95% of them, which 95% of the the buildings in this town.
00:09:57 Kevin
Do not have storm sores.
00:10:01 Kevin
And I guess one last point before I leave for leave you for the day into the the abyss of Kevin Lessness.
00:10:12 Kevin
Most of the buildings on N Union St. had storm sewers and doing work on N Union St. for a lot of different clients. They all had storm sewers that were very expensive, that were new for their age and they were expensive to put in. They're all 6 inch lines going into the building next to their 6 inch sanitary sewers.
00:10:28 Kevin
Opposite sides of the building and that was like a common place for almost all of these buildings was to have a storm sewer. Well said. You did N Union St. and the train basins were too shallow and so a lot of places people just got, like random mailers and like, you know, they got well, maybe one notice from the city, like, hey, by the way, we just discovered this you got like.
00:10:48 Kevin
You know.
00:10:49 Kevin
Five days to figure out your own contractor before we bury the road on, you know, connecting to the storm sewer. It's like, well, and then there's people that bought buildings there afterwards that weren't notified that the city disconnected their storm sewer. So it's like you have all these buildings that like, yeah, they're not going into the sanitary anymore, but they're just disconnected under the curb, which is destroying the streetscape. You can see sinkholes in front of certain buildings. And it's one of the.
00:11:11 Kevin
It's like, I mean, if you want to take a valiant effort, then you should probably people should. They should also set up a program to go back and indemnify people for property that they damaged property that they screwed up. But that's, I mean, what are you going to do? Government Accountability. That's for the birds anyways.
00:11:32 Kevin
Hope you guys enjoyed this lovely morning with Kevin and his his apparently baritone and we will catch you tomorrow on life 20.
00:11:39 Kevin
2.
00:11:41 Kevin
Title taxed.