>How about that water test fee of .48? Boy I bet that adds up fast.
Zach, that fee goes to the state, not the city. They just have to
collect it for the state.
And Minneapolis is hit especially hard by that, since the state changed it
to charge the fee statewide on a per-customer basis, rather than on the
basis of actual costs of doing the test. Thus Minneapolis and connected
suburbs, with around 500,000 water users, overpays greatly deal for the one
test that is done annually for their system. The tests cost about $20,000
each; Minneapolis pays the state $3-4 million each year for this
testing. Meanwhile a small town in outstate Minnesota, with a couple
hundred water customers, will pay about $1,200 for the same test.
This was specifically changed a while ago because the small towns
complained of the hardship of having to pay the actual costs of these
tests. Yet another hidden way in which Minneapolis & the Metro area
subsidize the rest of the state.
I don't really object to this; I think it's important that everyone in the
state have clean water to drink, and I can see the financial difficulties
this presents for small towns. I just with Minneapolis occasionally got
some credit for all the ways in which it's residents carry the load for the
rest of the state!
Tim Bonham, Standish-Erickson, Ward 12
P.S. About bottled water -- read the labels carefully. Much of this really
is just the regular city water, filtered, flavored, and put in a fancy
bottle with a greatly-increased price tag. Great business, if you can find
suckers willing to buy it. And there appear to be no shortage of those.
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